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?

YY to all that Anti.

I totally agree AntiGrinch. I've mentioned this story before but when my DH's boss was promoted the department suddenly decided that they could no longer pay for her (male) PA. Every single other person promoted to that job before her had a PA, but of course they were all male. They reckoned a woman could just do without a PA. But of course she would then be blamed if the lack of a PA caused her to be less efficient than her predecessors. Thankfully she threatened to take her millions of pounds worth of business elsewhere and they suddenly saw sense, but she shouldn't have had to fight for something that had been considered standard for men.

Same thing but at a different level - when Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister - regardless of what people's politics were, she was always talked about as a female prime minister and people (mainly men!) would say they never wanted another one, in a way that you never hear anybody say hat they don't want another male PM.

Even now we only have a female pm because some male politicians made a spectacular misjudgement and gambled on the Brexit referendum which blew up in their faces and meant they had to jump out of top politics.
Theresa May has been left with a poisoned chalice - because the boys never expected to lose nobody ever scoped out exactly what Brexit entailed (not helped by neither side wanting to be the first to commit to something so whereas staying in meant one thing to everybody Brexit was a dream sold that meant different things to different people, none of which could ever be the reality as we just don't know what will happen).
In the future I think that people will talk about the cock up that Brexit has become - the remainers because they are never going to like it and the brexiters because she didn't manage to get the ideal deal they thought she should have done ignoring the fact that Europe don't want to give us what we want.

I don't think it's any surprise that May got in because the men didn't want it this time- they want it next time when they can pretend they have sorted things out and got things back to normal again.

Good point Confugled1 I would also add that post Brexit, they knew that Trump would possibly get into power and they didn't want to be shaking hands with him.

I work as a solicitor and answered my male colleague's phone the other day. We are both on exactly the same pay grade but the caller asked me if I was my colleague's PA.

This happens to me all of the time. I initially thought it was just coincidence but my colleague answers my phone and nobody has ever asked him if he is my PA. No, rather what happens is they elevate him to the status of 'senior solicitor'. So for example, I will get a follow up email saying 'further to my telephone conversation with the Council's senior solicitor Mr X.....'

When I worked in private practice this still happened. I had a client who would not deal with me because I was a woman. My colleague (male - not legally qualified) had to liaise with the client whilst I did all of the work.

I have only recently become awakened to all of the misogyny which surrounds us. Now I'm aware of it, I find myself becoming irritated on a daily basis.

If a client comes into the office to see us, 8/10 times they will address our male colleague first (2 female, 1 male).

It's outrageous.

Its the wifework stuff. My mother is particularly bad at blaming all the women in the family for this. She will for example still phone me and say 'remind ds to send a card to his auntie for her birthday' Ds being 28 , married and in good job, but no apparently its my fault if he forgets. (His new wife is being given a pass at the minute because 'she's not english and doesnt know whats expected yet' despite the fact that she is a highly intelligent young women who also works with my DS at the same level.
I make a point of directing anything regarding our side of the family to my son as his responsibility. I will not be dumping wifework on my new daughter in law.

This is a very interesting discussion. I work in the public sector in a very traditionally female dominated profession. At my workplace recently there have been a number of new appointments. All the male appointments have jumped straight into promoted posts (often with very poor track records and in one case a confirmed failure not once but twice) whereas the women who had been working hard towards promotion have been passed over yet again. It's become so blatant that a number of us are now openly questioning what the hell is going on.

I just had on my FB feed this study about resume pitfalls... HBR

Tell me again why we don't need feilminism?

Theresa May is a great example of the "glass cliff" effect - an organisation in trouble is more likely to go for an untraditional candidate, partly because they may have no choice, but it means that even though a certain percentage of women are getting senior positions, they are much more likely to be getting the ones that are poisoned chalices and likely to fail, which will be seen as 'proving' they can't cope.

When Margaret Beckett became the first female Foreign Secretary, one interview asked how she coped with criticism of her dress sense etc. She said she took such comments as total endorsement of her policies, as clearly they were unable to say anything against them! I admired her for that, though I bet in private some would still have stung (for reference, Beckett was the only Minister in Blair's Cabinet who had also been a Minister for Callaghan pre-Thatcher's win in 1979).