I work in a male dominated office - is this sexism?

[sunsettosunrise]

I work in an office with mostly males 30+ (there are a couple of older women but they are WFH / PT so only in the office a few hours every week), I am a 25 female, and due to resignations and new staff the office has evolved into a male dominated office last year. They (including management) go round calling each other man/mate e.g "hey man", "what you up to mate", which is really annoying as my manager / team leader only refer to me by my first name, not that I want them to start calling me 'woman' like father Jack but it is the principal of the matter.

What really gets my goat, is that I asked for a pay rise since June. In September, my Team Leader said he was going to recommend me for a pay rise to senior management but as of mid December he still had not got round to writing and sending the flipping email / memo. I wonder if it would be different if I was his male mate.

Is the above two points sexism or am I just making it up in my head and I have January blues?! Was thinking about talking to HR but dont want to look like a self-absorbed twat wittering on about third wave feminism.

And it would be really nice for some female company, as they all talk about stuff that I dont have anything in common with, although I accept that is how the cookie crumbles.

I do like my colleagues and the organisation, and I do generally have a good relationship with my Team Leader, so I dont want to leave at this point as I realise the grass is not always greener.

It's not really, sorry. Calling you by your first name isn't sexist, nor is being slow to give you a pay rise unless you know of a male member of staff who was in the exact same position being treated differently or paid more for no reason apart from his sex (extremely hard to pin down even if it was).

You can follow up on your potential pay rise but I'd leave sexism out of it as you might sound a bit unhinged if you used your examples above.

No. Neither of those seem like sexism to me.

Not sexism, but I know what you mean about how the men all behave differently with each other and everyone is mates, and as a woman you stick out. I work in a primarily male environment too and it does bother me too how mate-y everyone is and you are spoken to differently. It's just the way it is sadly,a consequence of there not being many women, but not sexism on anyone's part.

The pay rise issue could be sexism. Do you have any way of finding out what your mates are making? You could try being more assertive.

Nothing sexist. Men call each other mate. If they called you Love instead of your name then that would be sexist

I think the 'hey man/ mate' thing is nothing it's just a friendly way to chat and I think if you start making this the threshold for being annoyed you'll find similar things everywhere and it'll take over your life.
I get what you mean about the other thing re pay rise. It's probably due to time of year etc but definitely bring it up again and see what can be done. Good luck.

Using your name instead of mate isn't sexist unless they say it in a sneery way.
I think calling all the men mate between each other is just a lazy casual thing rather than preferential treatment.
As for the pay rise thing, it could be that you're not being taken seriously which could be an age or a sex thing... Or could just be that you're manager isn't very pro-active or organised and it would be the same for anyone.

I'd ignore the first thing and push for the second thing.

It's low level sexism - doesn't sound at all malicious and not at the level that merits complaint. But you're being treated differently.

Is there nothing you're interested in that any of them might be?

Thanks all for giving me a reality check!!

Re the pay rise, my Team Leader said he would do it whilst I was on AL in September, never happened, then I reminded him in November, still nothing, and I asked if we could expediate the process, and still no progress. I have not had one in two years so I dont think I am being U in asking, if I get told no then that is fair enough but I just want an answer.

Always nice to hear a shared experience, unfourtantely, a couple of ladies who were in their 20s/30s have all left, and now its just me so, and them all calling each other man etc just reinforces that but I am just going to have to get use to it, you are right its not a battle worth fighting.

I've always worked in female dominated professions, it's a bit odd, they are tighter with each other, it's just life really. Now I run the org, I'll talk about payrises if people ask (no promises though) but really they are only likely to happen for the new financial year, is there HR you can talk to and say, he said he'd recomend me in Sept, hasn't happened, it's a bit frustrating, how does it work here?

@ErrolTheDragon We do chat (generally about current events) and there is the odd topic (e.g music) we are interested, but some female company would be nice to talk about more femine things. I went to an all girls school, maybe that is why its more of a struggle. Its a big organisation so I go to the staffroom and have lunch with some ladies from other units, which does save my sanity.

Based on my all girls education yes I would probably agree that women are tighter, although also more dramatic! There is no formal process as far as I am aware, other than it goes to the big cheese. By financial year is that end of March? maybe I would hold off going to HR until then but I would like some movement or a timeline.

I'd say ask what the process is, some companies go Jan-Dec others April-March, if yours get decided ahead of April you could miss it for a year, I'd just say he's been saying he'll talk for a while, just checking there isn't an annual timetable (sometimes it's linked to appraisals). There's a guy called Ben Askins who does some interesting fb videos about rubbish bosses, this reminds me of more than one of his.

To add to that, even some of the men who I'm quite friendly with just have a very different way of speaking to other men, even ones they know don't know well. So while it's not explicitly sexist, it does get in the way of how comfortable they are with you in sharing info that they share more casually with their male counterparts which means you are out of the loop sometimes with office politics. Because they are all men, they mostly won't think about including you when going out for lunch or drinks where again a lot of work related convo happens which you are left out of, and over time this does lead to preferential treatment of their mates because they all have more opportunities to socialise and are more comfy with each other. It's not intentional on their part but it does have longer term consequences for women.
No solution to it other than getting more women into male dominated areas (I'm in a Tech Engineering role) - something I'm not very hopeful about seeing progress in, seeing what I have over the years in both large and small organisations.

What do you want them to call you if you think being called your actual name is sexist?

I worked in a female dominated workplace. I dare say that the very few men experienced a social communication downside to being such a minority, too. But absent blatant sexism and inequality of treatment, that's just life.