When you know it is sexism / because you are a woman, but ...

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

Not sure where I am going with this, but it has been sloshing around in my brain for a while now, so I thought I'd attempt a post.

Leaving aside those of us who have never experienced sexism or different / discriminatory / adverse / lesser (etc.) treatment because we are women, (in a desperate attempt to stop BTL comments), have women here experienced moments where 'something happens' and we know that it would have played out differently if we were men, but, it is hard to impossible to actually articulate how we are so sure of this, and to prove our case?

I seem to have encountered this rather a lot lately, and it is getting me down. Thing is, it's always events that feel sequential and connected to me, because they happen one after another and after my half century on this planet have all added up, but to others, they look like isolated events.

I've had conversations to that effect, which basically boil down to 'I have been treated badly because I am a woman' and the response has been 'it was just that one time', or 'just that one person and he's a knob', or 'you are over thinking it', or 'how do you know they would have treated you different if you were a man, or 'you always say that, it's because you are looking for sexism' or 'eyeroll'.

I could give examples, but I thought I'd see if there was any resonance first.

I think what I am ultimately aiming at is how do we articulate the patterned nature of these experiences and the cumulative effects they have on women, and how do we make people stop and think about this?

Yes I was looking at him the whole time with my "WTF are you actually saying & do you even know" face on.

Cognitive dissonance indeed.

I was asked if I had childcare in place if my children got sick, by an all women panel. I was shocked. I told them my husband. They laughed.

This is really interesting. I've had many many incidents where I thought a man would have been treated differently but, as you say, because it's just one incident anyone I mention it to minimises the situation (especially at work). Just a few examples I've noticed (and been told are definitely not due to sexism) are:

• At work everyone is busy. Yet whenever there someone leaves/has a baby/gets married etc a woman from their team is asked to go round the office collecting money and buy (and wrap) a card and gift. Despite over 50% of the staff being male I have never seen a man do this job. Apparently this is just because the particular person asked to do it has done it before and knows what works best. If there was a tedious job that a male colleague happened to have done once before, the usual response was that they should not be asked again as they had 'done their bit'.
• Similarly most HR related tasks seem to be handed out to women (recruitment, performance management etc). I'm not belittling HR work, but in our industry we are all asked to meet financial targets and clearly time spent on HR issues does not bring in money. Again, apparently people asked to do this are asked because they are seen to have suitable skills. I did once make a bit of a fuss about the fact that I was expected to do this but did not seem to get any formal recognition for it and the (male) boss added a recruitment target to my objectives for the year, but left all the other objectives the same as my male colleagues (on the same pay).

For me it was that, despite wearing ordinary, non uniform clothes, a stethoscope, pager and badge that said Dr Poppyred I still got called "nurse." Or the assumption that the male doctor I was doing a ward round with must have been my boss (it was the other way round.) I still get it now outside of work if I say something that makes people think I may be medical. "Oh, are you a nurse?" Often this is from other women.
I did once get pretty cross with a patient's son who kept calling me "girlie" while I was trying to explain his Mum's condition to him. When I challenged him on it he tried to pass it off as saying it was a northern expression that we didn't have down south. There was no way he would have addressed a male member of staff in that way or with the patronising tone he tried on with me.

This post literally couldn't have come at a better time. I applied for a new job yesterday. My partner felt all guilty because he has been moaning about my shifts, I snarled and said "my new manager is a misogynistic prick and I need out". He stands that bit too close to me, getting in my personal space, and mansplains over the top of me. Every day sexism at it's finest!

Oh I have another one.

A few years ago DH was in a job with an utter cunt as a boss. I had my equally important, just as full-on (but not quite as well paid) job elsewhere. DH's boss expected me to be the one EVERY SINGLE TIME to take time off if one of the DC was ill or had a dentist appointment or whatever. He actually said the words "Why isn't your wife doing that?" He definitely knew about my job. He was just a sexist prick.

The older I get the more I realise this is "the patriarchy" is action - we feel it in all these subtle ways. It doesn't have to be big in your face sexism - it is subtle, pervasive, persistent and impossible to avoid.

I can no longer listen to Chris Evans - the world may shout at me "he's not sexist, it's just his manner" but he is unbearably sexist - he can't help himself. It patronizes every woman he encounters on that show. And he's probably the most listened to Radio DJ in the country.

Mine is medical. I do wonder if I was a man rather a woman who's given birth, would the hip pain I get be taken more seriously? I really think it would.

Good point Flavia. I think the same could be said for lots of aspects of pregnancy/childbirth- especially the way it is dealt with in the workplace. I'm not someone who expected to be fawned over when pregnant and was quite happy to do my job as usual. However, I got rather fed up with being expected to work incredibly long hours, travel constantly (including to training courses which I could easily and more effectively been on after I returned). If men had to do something that made them very tired, have hip pain etc in order to grow the next generation of people I suspect this would be treated as Very Important (and not an irritating thing that women will insist on doing) and a few small adjustments made (without it having any impact on their career opportunities of course). I also think that if men gave birth they (and their workplaces) would also expect the other parent to do a lot of the work after the child is born (and would support this, and recognise/value the skills that being a parent involves).

I have developed a fine 'fuck off'face and manner to match as I've grown older, which usually deters this kind of behaviour. But, it happens to my adult daughters all the time.

The milkman who knocked the door when I was wfh the other day clearly didn't pick up on my fuck off face though, and had short shrift when he asked me 'Are you the lady of the house?' He was touting for business - my regret is that I didn't think to reply that door-to-door milk deliveries went out in the 1970's, the same as the way he's just spoken to me.

We already know that greater value is placed on mens health. The trial of the male contraceptive pill eas stopped as some of them encountered unpleasant side effects like mood swings and depression. The ratio suffering was exactlythe same as women with the same side effects. But if its not good enough for men then its good enough for women.

To be fair the female contraceptive pill was developed in the 60s when controls were more relaxed. It's not really appropriate to compare medication licensed 70/80 years ago to medication being developed today. Although unfortunately I can't think of examples (not a doctor), I thought old medication often has worse side effects than is allowed with new medication.

You're not crazy. We're not crazy. And I only disagree with your demurral of "even if you've never experienced..." - I dont think it's necessary because it's happened to Every Female Born.

Men get sexism, too, of course (and I rather adore MrNC ), but I'm not going to derail.

In fact, I'm not even going to add anything. I wouldn't know where to start, and I'm already pretty fucking depressed.

"it's happened to Every Female Born. "

Not to Lass.

Not to Lass

You behave yourself :)

Thank you everyone for your replies to this thread. I'm thinking through them all and will get back to a reply when I have something vaguely sensible to say. :)

theshitcollector yes, you're right. It's incredibly depressing.

It's hard to imagine a male being expected to work while having to go to the toilet to throw up frequently.

It's the insidious nature of sexism which is so annoying.
I work with female colleagues in a professional capacity in small unit. The company has been taken over recently and regrettably the managing director is turning out to be both useless and a sexism. He had 2 efficient women working fr him who left recently so he's now in a panic that he'll have to do some work. He paused from ignoring my female colleagues recently to give them unreasonable grief and then was seen 'going out for coffee' with a male colleague who the very next day was promoted along with another bloke into md's immediate team - hard to prove it wasn't on merit but like helll it was.

Meant to say he's a sexist although he is turning out to be a sexism in his own right!
Another example is a male friend who got a job as a council town planner. Another job came up and when the female planner was out of the office the senior planner went through all of the applications and binned those from women saying 'one woman was enough'.

Chris Evans thinks women are silly. I remember back in his heyday, listening to his breakfast show in the morning on budget day. A female reporter had asked the Chancellor some searching questions in an interview then reported back to the studio.

Whereupon the ginger fucking clown proceeded to say 'oh Sarah listen to you being all tough! But you're so niiiiiice, you don't fool us' etc.
Sarah had to giggle along with the silly cunt, those were the rules. I wanted to climb inside the radio and nut the little twat.

Definitely had the people assuming my very shy older male junior colleague was my boss, in a way they didn't assume if I went to the same events with an older female colleague.

I've been the only woman in the room (even of up to 60 people) more times than I can count, and while I didn't object to helping with drinks when I was also the most junior, I've made a stand since then, getting other people to do it - and somehow the result is people not even in the meeting end up doing it, who tend to be the mostly female and mainly black admin staff... Purely coincidence?

Preemptive Yes, MrNC is pretty good on this stuff, though not perfect in many ways. He certainly enjoyed being a 'chivalrous knight' on that occasion. More frequently though he is fighting assumptions that he's a lazy arse for 'only' working part time (and the number of companies that won't even consider a part-time man seems even worse than the ones that won't employ a part-time woman, because there must be something 'wrong with the man'). It wouldn't matter so much but we need at least 1 FTE of us to be employed!

I've witnessed the coffee thing too but being older and wiser have asked meetings not to go ahead as not all were in attendance properly (I attended as an outside consultant). Once this is said others will chime in in accordance.

The best receptionist I've ever witnessed was a no nonsense phone answerer (sorry best description I could come up with). She did have a deep, rich, confident female voice and the caller was under no assumptions that she would engage in small talk. I could have listened to her all day. She did have a further remit and was the most organised person I've ever met. She was fantastic (and paid handsomely).

Another example is a male friend who got a job as a council town planner. Another job came up and when the female planner was out of the office the senior planner went through all of the applications and binned those from women saying 'one woman was enough'.

That is scandalous and should be reported. This is money from the public purse. Outrageous.

Mind you it doesn't surprise me. There is a reason why the Labour party has the Labour Women's Network.

When I volunteered to be the Women's officer in my local LCP, no one contested it, the first thing said afterwards was 'Make us a cup of tea darling'.

Yep I've been asked to sort tea and cakes for a vip visit. Male manager said he wasn't asking me because I was a woman, but because the men couldn't be trusted. What tosh. I complained and didn't do it.

The thing I notice at work is that if women get promoted, they never get to drop (fully) their previous work. So if they now manage someone who does their old job, they are held far more responsible for it than when they did it, and their boss was a man. They can be forced into a position where they find themselves paranoiacally micro-managing because there isn't anything that won't be considered to be their fault. Men seem to be able to adopt an airy "above all that" (even to things that actually are their job, if they consider them to menial and administrative) and fuck-ups just don't stick to them.

What I think happens, is this: if a woman is doing well enough to be promoted (and it is proven numerically in unfuckable with terms), then she might actually get a version of the promotion - in the sense that the senior management will think "yep she's making loads of money at that level, let's give her greater scope to make us more money". But what isn't happening in their heads is true respect that they see her as a real player at the new level. they can be given more to do but they can never be promoted out of being seen as essentially menial people.

If a female assistant to a female boss is given a promotion, it is always at the expense of the boss. It never happens that PA to female marketing manager gets made junior marketing manager, and then marketing manager gets a new PA. what happens is that marketing manager loses the PA and has to make up the work. It's like you can never just admit women are now senior players, there is only a certain amount of seniority they have to share between them and they can never fully escape menial work.

Another thing: a fuck-up by a man can be noticed but the man will essentially be rewarded for it by getting more training and support. The woman who fucks up will be punished for it and won't get second chances.