How not to 'fill the gaps' for men

[daringdoris]

Inspired by the discussion on the Billy Bragg thread about left-wing men thinking that women are just there to make the tea and make sure there's enough paint for the placards, and Blibbyblobby on the 'Diana' thread, who said you've never been a professional woman stepping up to do boring admin to help the team because someone has to do it then realising the men don't even register you've been filling the gaps for them

I've realised I do this. The men around me are nice people, but now I think about it, nearly all the boring admin in a venture we're involved with is left to me. It is voluntary work, but in a context where we have to be extremely professional and well organised.

I really want to not only stop doing it, but get them to realise that the gaps are being filled by (almost) the only girl in the venture. Is it possible? Has anybody done it?

I'm happy to be pointed towards an existing thread if this discussion's been done to death already.

And you have been consistently rude and unpleasant god knows what your problem is. If this topic upsets you so much why post on it?

I might point out you were the one who started throwing around accusations of being a MRA or a man. I have found your posts rude and narrow- minded. You also seem very keen that women should conform to your narrow minded stereotype. If you are a "feminist" heaven help any young girl who might come within your sphere of influence.

You seem to have a problem with the idea of a woman who doesn't fit your idea of a submissive doormat "filling in the gaps" even where there is no requirement to do so.

As I said I'm I'm frequently amazed on here about the boasting that goes on about how posters eschew any trappings of femininity but are apparently incapable of avoiding "filling the gaps"

I'd appreciate so insight into how I win my fight with the misogynistic lot... Including my father!

Don’t think of it as a fight, and don’t think of him as your father. Instead, think that you need to make the business case for promoting you to your MD.

Put together a short, punchy presentation or document linking what you do to revenue generation/client outcomes.

Eg,

for the most recent 3 big sales, tell a story that starts with the sale being agreed then moves to the actions you took to ensure delivery. Make it clear the sales guys are just the first step in the chain and you are the one who makes the money land.

Identify the 3 biggest threats to the company (eg failure to meet legal obligations, staff retention) and state the activities you do to remove or mitigate the risks.

Decide what you want (job title, salary etc) and show how what you do in these examples is typically the role of the person with that title.

If DF has a reason not to promote you now, ask to agree a roadmap to get there.

If he won’t do that, be prepared to find another job. Everything you’ve done is excellent preparation for that too!

Thank you Blibby that is really helpful I was just saying to my Dsis that I'm going to write an email to him.
Sometimes you just need someone else's insight into how to manage a situation in a different way. I've made a lot of headway from being bought in 2 years ago to assist my cousin in managing the business to being seen by our factories but not the sales team as their boss.

As my mentor said to me your biggest stunning block won't be your abilities or knowledge it will be your extended family. Who want to not do any of the work but also don't want to give up their power.

@DidoLamenting

Your first post was this:”I have no time whatsoever for this pathetic "all the admin falls to me because I'm a woman" shtuck. All work places have a hierarchy. If you are at the upper range of the hierarchy you should be asserting authority that those lower down the chain do the admin/filing/booking transport or whatever.”

While most workplaces these days still have their formal hierarchy which determines HR stuff like salary and promotions, it’s the informal heirarchies and networks that are how stuff actually gets done. Very very few companies still operate with the top down command model because the last couple of decades have seen a deliberate restructuring into flexible, Agile models, at least for the levels below SMT. Furthermore, there are fewer and fewer admin staff as companies move to online self service for stuff like booking meeting rooms, booking travel, submitting expenses etc. Which all works fine for individuals but when scaling up to larger events/initiatives there is no admin expert to own it, and that’s when people tend to look at the support humans to step in.

If you haven’t worked in that environment or are senior enough to be in the “strict hierarchy, people do what I tell them” levels that’s great, but the reality for most of us is that we do our jobs by negotiation and relationships not by giving directives. In that environment, the unspoken and different expectations placed on women vs men are real and relevant, and it is necessary to find strategies to recognise and avoid the socialisation traps without alienating colleagues whose goodwill we still need.

Well put, blibby

sick be more alpha man. Tell your dad you demand directorship now. Don't make a case. Just tell him you want the director role now. It is down to him to make a case for you being unworthy.

You have to be ready to walk. Know what you would do next instead of this. It will show. Be in the position financially and psychologically that they need you much more than you need them. Then the negotiations are easy. Ideally have something else lined up. The fastest way to promotion and pay rise is often "I'm leaving" - that's when they realise good old donkey who always keeps trudging must be given tlc. Do not accept jam tomorrow: that's a refusal. Today. Directorship role offered today in writing, paperwork sorted within two weeks.

I thought I'd managed to not do many of these things -- yet I read Blibbyblobby glue link and suddenly saw I was on that exact path.

I didn't stick around to see people promoted above me - but various things happened that made me realise a lot of what I was doing wasn't noticed by upper management and immediate people above weren't interested in my carrer progression so I moved on and life went other places.

I think it added to imposter syndrome I felt at times and helps explain why I seemed to be working longer and harder than many male collegues as I was doing a lot of managing newer collgues and their work and future planning with no recognition of it and my own coding on top.

This thread has really resonated with me.

I have recently started a new job (healthcare) I am the only woman of my grade and everyone higher than me is male.

Im doing my clinical work, all the admin for my work etc. I am clearly becoming the reliable one. The other men at my level will do the clinical but then just neglect all the admin, they just don't do the very basic tasks. Unfortunately if they don't do them these fall to the nurses/admin staff/cleaners etc who already have enough to do. They will leave so much for me to do the next day and no one fucking notices! I am constantly picking up the slack for their lack of speed and disorganization.

The problem is the men my level can get away with it. If I let even one thing go it will be picked up by the men above me, I am held to a much higher standard. There's one area of work where the others my grade have been slacking and I've just found out that the bosses have been talking about us as a group doing badly in this area, actually no I'm fucking not.

I'm finding it hard because they get praise for doing things that I just do. But when they do things wrong suddenly I have done things wrong too? I can't just not pick up the slack because then I will get blamed.

Honestly I feel like department is just 'very important' men being facilitated by lots of women and they don't even notice. There's women in my department who do everything for these men and I just don't understand how they are so oblivious to this.

Where on earth have I said that I want women to fit into a stereotype? My position is for whatever reason as explained by many posters women do seem to fill the gaps by doing office drudge work and ideally we need to not do this but it’s hard to change it due to socialisation and expectations of others. Obviously not ALL women and If you haven’t experienced that that’s great but lots have. It’s not a good thing obviously where on earth have I said it is?! Honestly your attitude on this is really strange! It’s like you are desperate for a fight!

Wow TheOwlandThe, that sounds hard. Is there a sympathetic HR person you can go and see? I have zero experience in a healthcare environment.

Is there any advice on this thread that you could put to use in your situation?

Tbh I had similar, although not necessarily because men expected me to fill in the gaps but because senior management was poor, we had different locums every day so no case continuity and as one of the only permanent members of staff you inevitably become the overstretched safe-pair-of-hands fighting fires and handling complaints all over the place. The final straw for me was a gaslighty team building day when we were effectively told that there was nothing wrong with how things were running, only the attitude of the staff who raised concerns.

I left in the end. About 12 of us did in the space of a year. Sometimes it’s the only way.

I started this thread because I started to recognise a behaviour in myself. Despite being a fairly confident, sometimes even 'bossy' person, I was filling in these gaps. I wanted to understand why.

Because of being 'nice', because of expectations, because you don't want things to go wrong - a mixture of all these probably.

Somebody said
Sometimes you just need someone else's insight into how to manage a situation in a different way and that is what I needed when I posted.

Interestingly, I have 2 part time jobs, and one of them is not like this AT ALL. In fact, it is the first time I have had to deal with this in my professional life (I'm in my early 40s), which tells me that depending on the job, your colleagues and the context, your experience could be quite different.

Thanks to you all for your wisdom.
@Blibbyblobby, have you created your own lexicon around this? You have quite the collection of brilliant terminology!
@TorkTorkBam, and others too.

Yes yes yes to 'office chicken'

One example of this was that I volunteered to sort tickets to an annual work event for a group of colleagues. Not my job to do so, I was just being helpful. All enquires about this event, that I was not organising, also seemed to come my way. I answered them because I am helpful and agreeable.

I did it the following year. Then the next.

The fourth year a male colleague asked when I was getting his ticket. It was a lightbulb moment.

'Aha' I said. 'You know it's not my job to do this'

'Yes' he said. He didn't blink.

'I've done it for the last few years as a favour and now it's someone else's turn'

'Uh-huh'. He still didn't blink. Didn't speak. Didn't thank me for doing it in the past. Didn't offer to sort out his own ticket let alone get mine and the rest of the team's.

He followed up the conversation with an email a few days later asking if the tickets had been arranged.

I ignored it.

I only lasted a week before I caved and sorted the tickets again. 🤦‍♀️

I'm learning. For years I didn't recognise the issue. Then I recognised it, felt resentful but did it anyway. Now I'm old and grouchy and better at chicken. I am also more aware of my professional worth and less likely to do gap filling work to demonstrate my worth to colleagues.

The annual event has also been cancelled

I have in the past offered to take minutes as a surreptitious means of taking control of meetings that tended to waffle on without achieving anything. “So, just to clarify for the minutes, we just agreed that x will happen. Shall I put the action to Bob?”

Like a pp said, it also means you get to put your own spin on the minutes.

This thread has been so enlightening for me. Thanks for starting it @daringdoris. Bookmarking to consider more carefully over the weekend.

Also falling into the “hosting” role or basically being “mum” at work social events. So often used to find it was me asking polite questions and “drawing people out”. Again a form of chicken because I couldn’t bear sitting in awkward silence.

Also falling into the “hosting” role or basically being “mum” at work social events.

I noticed I did this to some extent, but this was an essential part of what was needed by staff at the events we hosted. Since I was a manager I made it a part of my assessment of my staff and talked up the fact we did it to our managing staff. It became a part of our quarterly appraisals. Turns out, if you make these tasks something that is, in some way, measured and appraised it becomes much less of an "office chicken" situation. But that only works for a few things.

@TorkTorkBam thanks for your thoughts.
That's is actually one of my long term plans, I'm paying off debts some of which we got because I switched from work P/T to F/T but with the same salary to do this job, so we ended up with extra childcare costs.
I'm also making sure I network as much as possible so people know me, that's working as I've been asked to speak at a couple of events that are now cancelled

I'm going to attack this two ways Bilby story but with the long term plan of going Alpha male on them and leaving.

The other men at my level will do the clinical but then just neglect all the admin, they just don't do the very basic tasks. Unfortunately if they don't do them these fall to the nurses/admin staff/cleaners etc who already have enough to do. (Theowl)

I really recognise this as work for the NHS. I’ve had issues with women members of my staff (band 6 clinicians) spending enormous amounts of time running around after consultants and smoothing their path by organising clinics, doing joint consultations where their only contribution is to do the notes and organising events that were nothing to do with our work and everything to do with the senior, male doctor’s. One was doing it on top of her own job and massively overworking, the other is underperforming in her clinical work as she’s prioritising his.

I am more in line with Dido’s way of thinking, so just get very cross with them and their refusal to see my point of view because I’ve managed to avoid doing it. But I don’t get on so well with these men and they do sideline and cut me out of things if they possibly can and reading blibby’s description of the modern workplace, I get why, but just can’t see the middle ground of how to do our fucking jobs without cleaning up their mess.

I don't actually mind taking minutes/notes and circulating them. Its when it becomes expected that I will do it and that's why I'm there.

I work in professional services at a day rate of upwards of £1000 yet have still been invited to a meeting by a client and patronisingly asked "are you getting this all down?"

@QuentinWinters you could reply with an incredulous "you want to pay me my day rate to take notes?!!!"

Working in office admin made me the radical feminist I am today.

That's exactly what I did scifi! Said something like, of course but you are paying a lot if that's the work you need doing.

I used to frequently use "Well, I could do that but surely there are much cheaper ways to get it done."

I've read this thread and had a lightbulb moment. I'm senior in my company and working in an advisory type role. I have been uncomfortable about something for a bit but brushed it off and got on with my job.

This thread has helped me identify the problem and the solution.

I work with a chap who quite simply takes my technical advice then delivers it to others as his own. Makes him look great as I have loads of experience and know my stuff. New rules for me. From now on I will never give him advice without an audience - no meetings alone, every email cc'd to a few people. Otherwise I'm invisible and he's the wonder boy. I need a slap for not having acted before!

Thank you good women of mumsnet for giving me a wake up call.