Award goes to a bloke over a woman

[wotaloadashite]

Have recently had a works award ceremony where there is a particular prize for someone who has gone over and above in their work and it involves a considerable sum of money to go towards personal development. This person is considered to then be on the pathway to leadership within the organisation.

Nominees are a) woman, 26, has turned around a particularly unsuccessful project; won hearts and minds so that an external group have brought in to the project; acted as a mentor to colleagues in a different country in implementing their version of the project and invested in her personal development, and b) bloke dressed as a woman, late 30's, who helped organise a pride event and has 'changed the way that customers interact with the business'.

Guess who won the award?

Slight giveaway in the title of the thread to be fair

Are you the woman?

For fuck's sake. You'd think they'd be over this crap by now.

Ooohh let me think 🤔

Also if you are the woman get your CV updated your company doesn't deserve you

No but I have a lot of time for the woman in question and I am angry that she has been overlooked based on what I perceive to be an attempt to join the bollocks bandwagon.

That's what I very much hope she does.

I think if you tell her discreetly how you feel about this, she might really appreciate it.

I would like to but I won't. The organisation is deep in 'be kind' and about 5 years behind on the TWAW thing. I'd lose my job if there was
any suggestion of publicly disagreeing with this.

Is the prize supposed to be for women?

Tbh I hate things like this, they’d be better off having a succession planning scheme distributed more evenly for a series of employees who show promise. Things like this just ends up being a favouritism game and causing tensions when people pick sides.

That's not right

‘The bollocks bandwagon’

Spot on!

How exactly does a Pride event change how customers interact with the organisation? I'm really puzzled what they mean?

Is the prize meant to be for women only?

My guess is they stop interacting with it altogether.

Hopefully the woman fucks off to somewhere more appreciative of her.

I'll be using bollocks bandwagon from now on!

I'm sure you could say that you were sorry she didn't get the award because she deserved recognition for her achievements without mentioning the man in question. It would be a good way to show her some support. (Also, I'm sorry you have to work in such a ridiculous organisation)

Of course you can tell her you're surprised she didn't get the award because of all the great work she's done. You don't have to say anything about the other person.

You know what the company values then, as does she. She may well appreciate your kind words, as others have said. Is there a way you could get involves in challenging this in future?

I doubt award ceremonies like this are ever truly objective though, and if it wasn't a TIM who'd got the award would you be as annoyed?

Thanks to those who pointed out that I can say something supportive to her without referring to the person who did win. I was too deep in my feeling of unfairness to think of that before. I will speak to her.

The award is not for women specifically. It's open to anyone but this time it was just those two shortlisted. One person for something relevant to their job and the organisation and the other for being involved in organising pride. For a little bit more context, last year the person who organised pride (a different person) was a woman but she didn't get put up for an award and I don't even really remember her getting any thanks for doing it. This is totally down to gender bollocks. I would mind less if the person who didn't win wasn't so obviously deserving of the award.

Or, the bollocks wagon, as it is (with a few stupid women on board). Totally agree with you. Rowling tweet on X sums it all up well.

You can say you feel she deserved to win without sticking your head above the parapet but it's quite understandable to want to protect yourself

I my experience work awards never go to the most deserving person, but they do typically go to the most prominent/visible employee.

I work for somewhere that doesn't have any of this nonsense, but the employee award always goes to someone who is very vocal about company process/rules etc and doesn't do much work, whereas the people who work hard go unnoticed.

@TheCatsTongue that's a good point and fits the bill in this case too.