My boss thinks women do not have it harder in our male dominated workplace.

[BayLeaves]

In a 1:1 meeting I mentioned that as women it's harder to get our voices heard and to appear confident at work. We're in a male dominated tech organisation.

She said, well that may be your view but I don't believe in that.

I found this really disheartening for some reason.

Maybe I'm over thinking it. But I feel that I have created a divide between us by expressing a feminist viewpoint. Ugh.

She should have asked you if you had any specific complaints or experiences you wanted to share...NOT made you feel separate from her.

You never created the divide SHE did.

I'm a woman in tech and a boss and I very much disagree with yours said, if it helps!

I'm lucky in that my (male) bosses all appreciate and to some degree even admire me and my male dominated team look up to me - it's only cost me whatever aspirations at a so-called personal life I've ever had and my eternal soul!

Women in tech have to be better and tougher than men to get anywhere at all. If you're not the kind of person capable of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, you've already lost.

That's not so much of a problem in terms of a comparison between high achieving men and women - both tend to have these characteristics. This ability of high achievers to work more and harder and take more shit may contribute to successful women's feelings that they're not at a disadvantage - I'd actually agree that IME really brilliant, extremely hard working women do almost as well as really brilliant men. But these are the top 5% of people in any given organization, so not the vast majority, exactly.

What tends to get ignored, however, is the sheer number of absolutely mediocre men who somehow still get ahead. Take my offshore counterpart: nice guy, decently competent but nowhere near a top achiever. He's on the same career level as me (since my last promotion) and has been with the firm for 10 years longer than me. I simply couldn't afford that. For me it's a question of keep swimming and rise to the top or sink to the bottom whereas for him floating and drifting is, apparently, entirely sufficient.

I'm actually on something of a crusade for women's right to mediocrity. Yes to the right of women to be kind of useless for years and eventually get promoted for it - just like the men are!