the 'girls' in the office

[BerylStreep]

Please, I need to vent, and also to somehow gather my thoughts about a culture within my workplace that I really object to.

I work in a very large, male dominated public sector organisation. I am in a middle management role. Our admin office has a team of about 10 women, most of whom are in their mid-50s. No men in the team.

The (female) line managers in the admin office always, always, without exception refer to the team as 'the girls'. I'll ask 'the girls' to do that, I'll talk to 'the girls'. I absolutely hate it, but the women in the team all seem to be quite comfortable with it. I make a point when I am speaking to the office managers of referring to them as 'your team' or 'your staff', but it seems too subtle to have made any difference.

Because it is so persistent, I have noticed that other people from other teams also refer to them as 'the girls'.

It really annoys me. I do not have direct management responsibility for them, but I feel really strongly that this is an inappropriate phrase to use in a professional setting. I think it is patronising, and infantilises grown women, and somehow demeans them, but I'm not sure if I am explaining it well. It eventually stopped being ok to refer to women as 'love' in the workplace, so how is it ok to refer to women as 'girls'?

As a women in such a male dominated sector, I know how difficult it has been over the years to be taken seriously.

Do you think I am over-thinking it and should just get over it? I'm contemplating raising it at our next management meeting, but given I am not their manager, there is potential to be seen as meddling and militant. But I do think there is a need to challenge this lazy and unprofessional way of referring to women in the workplace.

I've hard a hard day and am tired, and I know I am not expressing myself well, but what do you think?

I think it is partly because "the women" doesn't sound as polite as "the men" (this would of course change if it was used more, chicken and egg!) and "the ladies" sounds a bit lay-deeez now.

On a prior thread, there was a movement in favour of "the dames"

What about 'the xxxx team' or the 'xxxx staff' ?

I hate 'girls'

oh god, i despise this, and i even asked Athena Swan and rhe RSC if they had a matrix.to assess whether an organisation that encouraged a sexist-looking workforce outside the assessed main grade was problematic, eg if you were assessing career progression for female academics but to all intents and purposes the rest of the department looked like women did support roles, and men did 'real' roles.
.because it magnified the 'oddness' of wimen in the main role. They didnt but were intrigued by the idea..

My place was 50:50 women to men in admin until a covert sexist came in. He openly said 'boys were untrustworthy' in support roles, which soumds pro women, but within three years tge departmemt was a cliche ..all female admin staff with a male head of admin staff..on a salary that jumped £30,000 from the next level down. It sounded pro female.. but the net result of female biased recruiting was a dept that looked like it used to when support staff made tea and cakes for academics at breaks. This meant that female academics sort of looked like jumped up admin staff, and were often treated like that. .asked to take l minutes and do admin if no support staff were there. male senior admin (useless) would often say 'the girls in the finance office will sort that out' etc etc ..
it was only a few years ago but it was like this guy was trying to live out a 1930s office famtasy. it was even clichéd in that he was an incompetent, whose ass was being saved by 'the girls', but he never got challenged by them

i even had an email fromhim burbling away about how it had all been easier when he'd had three secretaries..blah blah blah..yes to cover up your uselessness. ..

i think its awful when roles are split by gender but it 'seems' fair..the thought expeeimemt is 'if thoae roles were male would they be 'the lads' or 'the senior team' etc..

Same situation here - 50+ male dominated, public sector.
It's even worse as my colleagues expect "the girls " to do small admin jobs like scanning and photocopying and to manage the staff kitchen surplus ( soap, tea/ coffee etc)
We don't though

I'm similar to you ScaryClown and LunaJuna. our branch has 13 specialists, of which I am 2nd most senior and one of 4 women, so 4 to thirteen ratio.

We also have 15 admin staff. Of the admin staff, 2 are male, both of which work for me., so it is 2/15 male. The remainder work in the general admin team, all of which are female and are referred to as the girls.

Despite being the 2nd most senior specialist in the Branch, I have been asked to take minutes before, which I have refused to do, but is enlightening to our culture that 'girls' take minutes.

I think I will raise it at our next management meeting. Along the lines of the need to improve our professionalism when referring to our teams rather than making it a gender issue. I will let you know how I get on.

I freelance so am regularly communicating with different teams and employers. Mainly men, but yes, back office are often women and in the less forward thinking companies are referred to as 'the girls'. The men are never the boys. Their group is known as their job title.

Good plan, to raise more professional terminology at a management meeting, Beryl. If I turn work down and am pretty sure I'm not going to need to work for that company again (rare, to be honest) I mention it along those lines in feedback about why I'm unable to fulfill the commission.
Maybe I should be braver and speak up more often.

As a male i am also uncomfortable with this. I work in a male dominated business although there are also women in the workplace at most levels. I cringe when i hear the word "girls" in reference to a group of women. Now i can see that to many its just an automatic figure of speech, a bit like workmen saying "luv",,and often there is no malice or similar intended . Its not a term i would use.

For a few years I worked as a corporate receptionist in the financial sector.

Predictably the entire staff of receptionists, tea/coffee runners and support admin were female, while the fund managers, Real Estate / legal teams etc were all male.

Our receptionist team was known as "The girls" I even forgot that my job title was receptionist because I was so often "one of the girls".

A colleague of mine took offense and during a meeting strongly spoke out how we are NOT "girls" we are corporate receptionists and asked our line manager to raise the issue.

I was used to it, didn't really see how sexist it was but I respected my colleague for pointing it out. We'd never, absolutely never refer to the group of fund managers as "The boys" we'd get fired!

It's absolutely worth raising this point. The admin staff will appreciate it.

Don't get it sorry, men are called "lads" or "boys" all the time, you seem to think girl is a pejorative which is surprising. "Go and ask the boys in the storeroom" Perhaps it is where I am from but men refer to each other as boys all the time.

I would never ever say "go and ask the boys in the storeroom". It's demeaning and patronising. Our facilities and postroom people deserve to be treated with respect even if they aren't on £££ and with 16 degrees. Which some of them may be, I don't know. Point is, calling the men in the storeroom "the boys" is the same as calling the women in the admin team "the girls" and it's got a healthy dose of hierarchical thinking. Have I ever heard the all-male board referred to as "the boys" - "Oh they'll have to put that to the boys on the board" - well nope and I can't imagine it either.

I do think this depends on location / industry to some extent but I would absolutely not refer to our facilities or postroom (all male) teams as "the boys" and if I did I would expect people to look askance.

Some of this probably really is location specific - I've been in offices in Dublin where they're referred to "the girls" and importantly "the boys" as well.

In my experience in offices in London, older men referred to "the girls" used to be common but no-one said "the boys" so that is when said girls can start getting the hump.

In my industry / circles this type of thing has mainly died out. I've not heard it for years.

I've never heard of a team being referred to as 'the boys'. Possibly this may be different in small offices? But when you work in a large, male-dominated office, 'the boys' isn't specific enough to identify one group anyway. There was a team known as 'the girls who answer the phones'.

70sDinnerParty - very true about the board never being referred to as 'the boys on the board'. It is about hierarchy.

The admin team where I work used to be referred to as 'the girls'. One day in a senior management meeting I pulled someone up on it and said something like 'I think we should call them the admin team as 'the girls' sounds a bit pejorative and outdated.'

So it stopped. No big deal.
But then we have a work culture where noone would be called 'the boys' either.

Couldn't you just raise it in a similar way

Oh sorry, I see you intend to.

Must read the full thread!

You know what? Today was the first day I heard a group of middle aged men referred to as the boys at work.
I work in healthcare and couple of porters were asked to transfer a patient. The nurse said 'oh can you spare two of your boys' to the head porter. And on the way out she cheerily added 'thanks boys.' I was slightly taken aback by it and actually found it as uncomfortable as I do when women are referred to as girls. It felt very hierarchical. I can't imagine she's have referred to a group of consultants or reg's as the boys (not least because in my field You'd be hard pushed to find one male senior dr let alone a group of them )!

I've had similar, in a small public sector workplace, there are just two of us in the office, both female, both over 40, and someone (a woman!) said to me when I started 'oh you're the new girl', and still calls us 'the girls'. I bristle but don't want to make a big deal of it. The woman that does it is not in a senior position. Interestingly, the senior management would never call us 'the girls'. Maybe it's a class / generation thing.

Should the Spice Girls have been called the Spice Women?

I agree strongteahotshower - it is hierarchical even if done affectionately as with the 'boys' in your example. It determines a perception of them which colud influence their chances of progress or promotion .
OP I suspect that if you spoke to some of those women individually you would find out that it annoys them too -although they might seem to brush it off.

Not to mention the Beach Men and Pet Shop Men .

But Bartholin 'women' would be no better because it is still completely needlessly defining a group of staff by their gender.

What's wrong with 'team' or 'staff' or 'everyone' if we have to use a collective term?

Anyway, I plan to raise it at our next management meeting in terms of there being scope to improve our professionalism when referring to our staff, both internally and externally.

I've already mentioned to a colleague, and he agreed that when he first started in our place (quite recently) he was initially quite taken aback that this was acceptable, but since everyone referred to the 'girls' without batting an eye-lid he assumed everyone was fine with it.

this annoys me too and harks back to the old typing pool harem days imo. Retaliate by calling all the 50 year old male managers "the boys"