"Micro" acts of every day sexism...

[GunpowderGelatine]

...you know the kind of things that, if you didn't look for it you wouldn't even notice?

For example, I'm at hospital today for an outpatient appointment. I noticed that when the staff (Male and female) would call out for patients for their appointment, they would use women's full names (e.g. "Emily Dixon?") and for men they'd use their salutation ("Mr Roberts?"). Every. Single. Time.

I feel like if we look out for things like these we'd notice a lot more? Is it just me going mad or do other people have things like this happen?

I am the breadwinner. I also organise holidays. Even though I do the booking and make the payment, DP is always listed as the lead booker.

We bought a house together. DH doesn't really get involved in this sort of thing. I chose the solicitor. A call from me to discuss fees, then email correspondence from me to them giving all information. They call DH the first few times to ask questions. He passes them on to me repeatedly until they give up that approach.

I am the 'handy' one, but at a dinner party, DP gets referred to as being really handy, DP points out that that's more me than him really. Friend knows this as among other things he has borrowed my tools to remove a radiator and received instruction from me on how to do it and seen me up a ladder replacing a light fitting. Still praises DP on his decorating skills and insists that DP is really good around DIY. Basically disagrees with DPs assessment of me and his own knowledge as it doesn't fit his view of the world.

Every animal in my toddler’s book “Little Monkey” is male. When I noticed this, I noticed how many books feature exclusively male characters - for no reason. I’ve edited them so they’re equal. I am also mindful of saying “look at the dog! Isn’t she friendly!” Etc and I realised I was also defaulting to “he”.

When I had my son I was told off for leaving my 48 hour son, after I fed and changed him with his father whilst I went into the corridor outside the unit (it was 32 degrees in the unit) you would have thought I had left him with a stranger not his own father the midwives also completely ignored him and only spoke to me despite me asking them to include him or tell him if I was in the loo.

The 'Dear Sirs' things makes me think of Man Who Has it All on Twitter

I set up a bank account for my dcs with my bank. I have a joint account there with my DH.
Filled all the paperwork, signed them etc...
Letter came to confirm that the account was set up.... at my DH name, not even Mr Hey. A completely different name.
I was fuming

Just heard an advert on the radio for some insurance company (Admiral, I think)...something along the lines of man has been so busy with life admin lately, last week it was his wife's car insurance and now the home insurance.

WTAF?! Is this implying that women aren't capable of sorting out own car insurance? Why on earth would the husband be doing it?? Everyday sexism at its finest...

With the Mr and Mrs thing it could be that it is processed automatically and is done alphabetically. Sometimes that will be first names or surnames but often it is on the title - so it would go Miss, Mr, Mrs if all were listed.

That's just crap programming, then.

All the broadband ads are along the lines of it’s “dad” sorting it out for the family - BT broadband does it and there’s another I noticed on the radio. In my house I am the only one sorting broadband as I am the only adult.

I also have a lovely work-related story.

I fly large long haul airliners. Some parts of the world I fly to have a slightly dated view of women (mainly talking about the Middle East here.) One day, while passengers were getting on the plane, the senior cabin crew member called me and said she had a passenger who wished to speak to me. He had refused to show his boarding card to any of the all-female cabin crew and said his religion meant he could not and would not speak to them. He was really rather rude about it too. She had politely said to him that he MUST show a boarding card to someone. He replied 'get me a man, I can show it to him.' She replied that there were no male cabin crew working on that flight. So he furiously demanded 'get me the pilot then.' That's when she called me. I offered him the option of showing the cabin crew his boarding card or flying with another airline. He suddenly found he was able to talk to women .

My DC dad and I are divorced, see share care of DC 50/50. I have moved to the next town over and moved Doctors surgeries, but the one in my town is quite inefficient and hard to get appt, whilst the GP practice in ex's town is much better run, so we have kept the DC registered there. Took my then 4 year old in for his immunisations and ended up in a 10 minute argument with first the receptionist, then the health visitor that the DC would have to be registered at my GP surger and DC would have to have his immunisations there. I argued that they live in this postcode half the time, and that there was no more of an argument for them to be registered at my surgery than there was at their dad's one. They kept saying, but they have to be registered with the mum, but couldn't answer why. On and on it went, with my pointing out ExH was also their parent and care was shared 50 50 so we were BOTH primary carers and he was equally likely to bring them to see the GP or HV as me etcetc. Eventually practice manager got called, who luckily saw my pov instantly, and discreetly tore a strip off the HV and receptionist and called the argument sexist nonsense. The practice rang both me and my exH later in the day to apologise and say they were putting a policy in place in case of similar future situations.

Our new nursery was sending the emails with all the things we need to bring in/ dress up days etc (ie the wife work) to me and the invoices to my husband. They now know to send them to me otherwise they will get ignored as the last one did!
Strange assumption to make considering people using private day nurseries tend to use them because both parents bring in the money...

Those Male-specific ‘Chairman of the Board’ and ‘Master of college’ job titles held by women, drive me a bit nuts. They are making tokens of themselves, anomalies in a sexist structure rather than changing the structure to make it normal for a woman to hold that job or position.

Then sometimes women’s job titles are kind of erased by expectations that only men do that job. Like in ‘writer’ (applies to both sexes) and ‘female writer’. You never see a man called a ‘Male writer’.

Or in those ‘the making of...’ bits in the big natural history documentary programmes, where they describe a mixed-sex ‘camera operator’ crew going off to film the troupe of hippos, then when a male camera operator is talking about what he’s doing, he’s called a ‘cameraman’ in the voice over. Because that is clearly a respected Male thing.
But then when the woman camera operator is talking about what she is doing, she’s never called a ‘camerawoman’. So her contribution and work is clearly not seen as a thing.

Never mind the micro acts! Did anyone hear Women’s Hour today? Two women who were clearly paid less than equivalent men - eg the chef on £16k after ten years while a Male equivalent earned £23k after 18 months. They took their employers to tribunals at massive expense, were subsequently dismissed and their lives destroyed. What hope for any of us?

Had to take my own Dad down a peg or 2 when he found out that Husband & I split all rent/bills equally - basically he was making 2 massive assumptions that my Husband must obviously earn more than me & that the men look after Woman and pay for things!

Really annoyed me fgs - he won't make assumptions like that in future lolz!

Estate agents ask my husband what he does for work but Ignore me. Three times that's happened.

Estate agents ask my husband what he does for work but Ignore me. Three times that's happened.

School nativity - boy as the doctor. Girl as the nurse

lostlondoner, when was the Nativity? That is shocking.

@mikeuniformmike - we had farmers and farmers wives....

Am I in some sort of timewarp?
My parents were farmers as were the parents of friends.
My mother and friends' mothers were farmers. There were farmer's wives but they tended to be much older. (I'm 50)

I would complain to the school.

I hate the terms lady doctor and male nurse.

Funny how it is almost always women who are expected not to mind being excluded by language. So "Dear Sirs" is still widely used but senior male nurses are called charge nurses, not Sister.

i rewrote a departmental handbook for my company last year and changed all the "he" to "She" (and other relevant female pronouns)

Called into meeting to discuss. Apart from the fact that 70% of the staff are women, I said "but it includes men too, don't feel put out by that"

Was "ordered" to change them all to "he" - and literally "it means everyone, you don't have to feel put out."

So i refused and password protected the file. None of the men wanted to make the new handbook so finally it was printed like that. And every man who got a copy received an apology that they were being excluded...

So many!

I am an academic and use the title 'Dr' sometimes and 'Ms' sometimes. Not really arsed. At the time I registered with my GP, I wasn't yet married to now-DH.

GP receptionist pursed up her lips and altered my title from 'Ms' to 'Miss'. In front of me!

Buying furniture. I handed the salesman my debit card. He tried to refuse it. I am actually serious. He looked a bit shocked and sort of waved it away. I insisted (obviously, as I wanted to buy the furniture) and he took it eventually, saying to DH 'I hope you're taking her somewhere nice for lunch after this.' - !!!

Taking out National Trust membership, again before married to now-DH. NT volunteer insisted on putting him first as the 'principal member' despite the fact I was paying and it was my idea to join. When I rang up later about the membership they would only talk to 'my husband' - !

Being admitted to transitional care ward after having DTs - this was last year - MW unable to believe that DH and I are married despite having.......wait for it....... different surnames . She kept shaking her head and saying 'Quirky. Veeery quirky.' She was about 30, too!

When getting married, registry office clerk asked me if I would be changing my name. I said no. Fine. 15 minutes later they come out with our certificates with correct names on, but in an envelope marked 'Congratulations to Mr and Mrs DHName'. These are people that do this for a living!

NDN returning post to us that had been accidentally delivered to his house. 'But I nearly didn't, because I thought it must be a mistake, as it says Dr on the envelope and your husband's not a doctor, is he?'

So bloody tedious.

Oh, more.

I work FT (currently skiving) and DH works half-time and is a SAHD half-time. HV will call me for appts, despite repeated requests not to. School put me first as contact - I explained that I am often unable to answer my phone - the reply was 'Don't worry, we always call mum first but we can ring dad if you don't answer!'

!

Again, at my GP surgery, a woman who has had a baby must be registered with the same GP as the baby. So if you are registered with a GP you like (as I was) and have a baby, if that GP doesn't currently have room on their list, you must move. This actually matters, as at that surgery they make appts by default with your 'named' GP.

So I had an older, female GP who shared my beliefs about home birth, contraception, etc. After DC, I had to move from her to a young male GP who I frankly don't want to talk to about my middle aged female health issues.

Of course, DH gets to stay with his lovely male doc who he feels comfortable talking to his prostate issues about.

Yesterday was at a round-table event. Split in to groups to brain-storm ideas and stories. Pens handed to the women as scribes. We then rotated groups - and the women handed the pens to the other women (THAT really annoyed me!). I kind of felt I had the last laugh though as I got to ignore the dumb ideas the men were coming up with and just write down the ones which -I thought- were good.

Oh, now, if we're going back forty years - I went to open a bank account and was asked if I had my husband's permission. A few years later, post-divorce, I was told by the building society manager, 'I don't mind giving you a mortgage because you'll be married again within a couple of years'. Inference being, I was young and attractive, obviously a man would come along and acquire me.