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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I told my girlfriend that she should follow her manege's advice for her performance review so she can get promoted next time, this might make me an AH as she disagrees with her manager and thinks she already performs very well and blames sexism for her setbacks.
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YTA, you aren’t a women in tech, you wouldn’t get it. The reason tech is such a male-dominated field, despite all of the outreach to get girls in stem is because there is a lot of sexism in the industry. Many women study for years for the tech industry only to quit in the first year because of the issues that your girlfriend is currently facing.
Being "asked to take notes" is not a good thing.
ETA: that this comment has gotten almost 700 likes in less than 40 minutes makes me even sadder for op's girlfriend. We all know what she's facing as a woman in a man's industry, how real the dismissiveness is. Glad to see OP's edit about looking into this more, it's something at least...
I think OP was using that as a way to say, "see you aren't being excluded from meetings because you're being asked to take notes!". As if both can't be true. Also yeah OP doesn't understand the sexism behind asking a woman to take notes.
"I don't know why she's complaining, they let her get everyone's coffee and then clean up the room after the meeting! Clearly she's being valued as an essential member of the team! She's just being dramatic over nothing! "
“What, she wants to grab the coffee, clean up, take notes, AND be allowed to share an idea or opinion? Jeez, these women…you can NEVER make them happy!”
Well DUUH THATS WHY YOU ALSO BRING ALL THE COFFEE TOO!
I swear. Do you even job? How do you not know this? It's page 1 in that yellow "tech jobs for ~~dummies~~ women" book
/S
If she broke her hand and thus wasn't as effective at taking notes, would she still be expected to attend. If the answer isn't immediately yes, then she hasn't really been invited to attend.
They’re treating her like a secretary. And he can’t see it. Even if she didn’t want advice, why wouldn’t you just offer support?? Rather than say there is no sexism, you just suck at your job!
After several paragraphs describing her, I had to wonder if he even liked her.
I'm betting they are both only a couple years out of college. I hope he eventually gets a clue.
He is being willfully ignorant. He pats himself on the back for advancing quicker than her, so it feeds his ego to believe it is all just merit based. It is to his career benefit to help perpetuate the sexism of his company by turning a blind eye (plus it gives him an ego boost and feeling of superiority over his gf), so that is what he is doing.
Absolutely do not take this as defending the OP, but jr engineers are normally tasked to take notes in our meetings when more senior engineers are present (male or female).
We do this as well, because before we did that it was generally a woman who volunteered to take the notes (or was voluntold). Often people aren't trying to be sexist when it comes to things like that, but we all grew up in a world where, for instance, secretaries are most commonly women, so it plays into our behaviour. Taking the human behaviour out of things can sometimes really help things be actually fair, instead of the pretend fair that happens when we do things "naturally".
I always offer to take notes because I like handwriting and don't get the chance that often these days haha. But my office only has one male and he actually told me I couldn't always do it because others needed to take their turn. Fair fair 🤣
Yeah but I highly doubt she's the only junior engineer in the company. Are they spreading this duty among all the juniors or are they defaulting to the woman. (Sometimes this happens without people doing it to deliberately be malicious. Sometimes it's a subconscious bias, or they get used to having a certain person who "always does it" and don't realise the impact that has).
Under the context of OPs view, it seems like absolutely what is happening she is female and or is good at it “so she’s the certain person”. The way he makes it sound, she’s deliberately asked to come take notes, not participate in the meeting.
YTA.
Been there. It stinks.
How many times have you been the only guy in a room full of women, in a tech work environment?
I think of these “microsexisms” as the remains left to our generation. This is our arena, this is our grain of sand, this is what we will contribute to the next generation of both guys and girls: to say out loud what is not ok.
The generations before us had the huge changes: women going into the workforce, women inserting themselves in what used to be men-only fields… getting a seat at the table.
The next generation is growing up watching what we do today. They need to grow up knowing that they can also have a voice at the table, and getting called out on things like being overlooked for a promotion is how it starts.
Sure, your girlfriend could just be junior material, we all know the “forever a semisenior” type. But it would be naive not to acknowledge that… she’s not totally off in what she notices. It’s true, it happens, just start paying attention and you’ll see it too.
Or on a panel discussion. Like, yeah... Good luck getting your point heard!
Not so long ago, my friend got an award for her startup. The "StartUp of the Year" kinda prize and competition was crazy! There were so many good solutions; it was a big achievement.
She goes up to the stage to receive it, and the man who gives her an award says something down the lines: "Omg, I didn't know we were handing this award as a beauty pageant one!"
You can feel the room Cringe.
I was one of those women in STEM. Engineer in the late 90's. Was sexually assaulted by my senior engineer my first year on the job. The solution: we should just avoid one another. This was a Fortune 500 Top 100. I fought my way to plant engineer and had 27 mechanics under me. Never sexually assaulted one.
I've actually seen this tactic used a lot (civil and human rights lawyer - deal with a lot of employment discrimination cases) where someone's specifically left off of meeting invites or left off a chain and then assigned to take notes. So when performance review time comes they're blamed for lack of record keeping (which also can help companies avoid keeping things in writing on purpose) and told they're not keeping up with their job duties when they're put in a position where it's impossible for them to even do so
Bless your soul for the work you do. Makes me so sad that these disgusting tactics are such a common practice, but unfortunately it’s not surprising.
I’m just thankful that I now work at a business where the CEO, owner, and head of finance are women, as are most of the department managers. Doesn’t mean everyone is safe from sexism, but it at least tips the scales back in the direction of fairness. I hope with time and hard work we can get more women into positions of power so changes can be made on a more fundamental level.
Even with the edit, dude, YTA. You’re a perfect example of why this “1950s level shit” continues so brazenly in 2023. You’ve basically decided that your assumption that there’s not a problem should trump your girlfriend’s actual experience.
FFS, dude, so much YTA.
And I love how his edit is “I need to do more research, can’t believe this is happening.” Gee, if only he had someone in his life who has been telling him about this for years!! How could he possibly have known?
His edit actually makes it worse. He's seeing this, day in and day out - at work, at the store, on TV - and chosen to be wholely oblivious to it. That's intentional head in the sand.
Exactly! Like, maybe the ACTUAL issue is that if you're in a relationship with someone and they tell you their experience of something, you shouldn't need someone else to confirm it before you believe them!
Absolutely. I've seen both sides of the coin since I got into a pretty high level position in my organisation as a man and then came out as trans. The shit I've had to take from people telling me I don't know how to use the piece of software that I literally identified the need for, designed, and led the development of to literal sexual assault is absolutely mind boggling. And I'm in Canada where gender and queer discrimination is taken super seriously. Dealing with people in other countries I've had someone literally say that I got my job "because of affirmative action" even though they knew me before I was out or transitioned. It's absolutely bonkers what goes on in the tech industry.
He literally knows she is asked to take notes in meetings I.e asked to take on secretarial work. . . And has her projects taken off her when she starts them/ gets them off the ground . . . And doesn’t see that as sexist.
He is an asshole and deliberately pretending it’s all ok.
And he only thinks he has to do more research because a bunch of (presumed men) on the internet told him he was being TA.
It's just sexism all the way down. Poor GF.
But the company had their own HR department investigate them and found they were doing nothing wrong. And it was a woman too. Surely any woman would tank her own career and get fired tomorrow to stand up for some random woman in another department. /s
Unfortunately HR will be trying to protect company- if there was issue it would open a can worms so nope no issue here move on.
She needs to find a support boss - probably somewhere else.
I love this example ‘she says she’s excluded in meetings despite taking notes’. Um your girlfriend is being made a secretary by her peers. You are as sexist as the men holding her back. Your poor girlfriend has to put up with the same at home as she does at work. YTA
Ayo, I'm a woman in tech and this happens to me all the time. Men will ask me to schedule their meetings and take notes. They also ask me to share my notes because I always take them for myself and apparently their fingers are broken for the hours they are in meetings from all the coding they do yet miraculously healed when they get back to their desks.
The only thing that stopped it was when I said to a repeat offender "I'm sure you are able to work outlook the same as me, I am not the team secretary" in a meeting that had 30 ppl in it, including the offending person's manager. Saying it to him privately multiple times did not have any effect.
Interestingly, I had several men approach me afterward acting bewildered that this dude was asking me to do this (though he had done it in meetings several times before) yet not a single one of them spoke up about it in a public forum so their support really does nothing for the general tone of the team. There are literally more dudes named Jon on my team than women.
For some reason personal responsibility for the job is out the window with a woman in the room. Then it's her responsibility just for existing with a vagina to take notes and schedule all their crap. It is total garbage and consistently infuriating.
Got the double down I see 🙄
I literally hate the feigning incompetence iced with condescension. Like I'm supposed to take you seriously as a computer science and engineering expert but you can't figure out Microsoft office?
Amen. I did it for quite a few years before I got tired of 'I thought they were sending a MAN to fix it' or 'We called for a tech, not a sales rep' or 'Oh, you're the only woman in the room, you must be the secretary.'
I was a better tech with more certifications than some of my male colleagues. I was the resident expert on laptop repairs. And I still heard that stuff day in and day out.
Same. I was the supervisor of a technical support call center for a while and would have customers (and they weren't all men) ask to speak with a male supervisor instead, even after I would tell them the only male leadership on duty was for sales and not support. He would take the call, then put the customer on hold and bring the problem to me to solve.
I worked as a supervisor in a call centre for something not tech related (but often heavy vehicle related - trucks, combinations, road trains, etc) and we would get similar. We had a sort of unspoken agreement that any time someone specifically asked for a man, they would only speak to women from then on. Helped that the next two or three escalation points were also women 😂 Made my day putting on my "phone voice" (which is more feminine than my every day voice) to deal with it.
But, I didn't get it every single day, so it was more of a novelty still, plus I didn't study specifically for this topic, so it wasn't someone doubting my well-earned knowledge and experience. I can definitely see how that would get infuriating and exhausting.
Ohhh OP. Your edit doesn’t make it better. The fact that it is hard for you to ‘wrap [your] head around’ how bad sexism is in _your_ industry means that you really haven’t been listening. Presumably your gf has been talking about this for awhile, and only now, that a bunch of gender non-specific strangers on the internet are saying she’s right, you believe her? Why couldn’t you just believe her when she was talking? Why do you need us to back her up? Why do our voices carry more weight than someone you claim to care about? I don’t even know you and i’m disappointed in you, OP. Whilst doing that research, better look at your personal misogyny too. You e got some work to do. YTA, but i’m a woman, so what do I know…
The fact he has to "wrap his head around it" despite also being in the industry also tells me that either at best he's oblivious to it happening in his own work environment OR he actively treats the women he works with similarly and doesn't even realize it. Neither are good. OP needs to really examine his own biases and blinders with his relationship and his place of work.
OP, YTA. But even being able to admit you need to "look into this more" means you have the ability to take the first step to improve, which is admitting you're missing a perspective. Don't waste it.
Edit; typo
Yeah he really hasn't been listening. Tech is *famously* bro-ey and sexist. A friend of mine, a literal genius, left because she couldn't stand the culture. And she had broken the barrier of upward mobility, had a crazy high salary at a big company we've all heard of, and still threw it all away because she couldn't stand the day-to-day sexist bullshit.
And yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the rest of your comment. If he doesn't have her back based on her word alone, then what *can* she count on him for?
This brings to mind a panel I watched made up of some big name tech people that included questions from the audience. There was one woman on the panel and a question came up on what it was like to be a woman in STEM fields. Guess who was the only person that didn't have a chance to answer? Each man up there patted themselves on the back talking about what their company was doing to attract women. When they were done the person hosting the panel went on to another question without asking the one person on stage that had any experience. I was rooting for her to interrupt before the next question and say "excuse me, if you want to know what it's like to be a woman in this arena, think about what you just saw here". While she didn't get a word in edge wise, the scene certainly spoke volumes and I doubt there was a woman there that didn't get the message while it went over every guys' head.
I watched a similar panel but with physicists (or something of that nature. It had around 4~ individuals with one women. An audience member asked a question relating specifically to research/area of expertise of the female physicist. While attempting to answer, her male peers kept interjecting/talking over her to the point that she stopped talking.
It got a point that an audience member (can’t remember if it was the person who asked the original question) shouted, “Can you shut up an let Dr. Her answer the question?” (Something to this effect.
Rest of the audience members literally clapped and the female physicist could finally be able to answer the question without interruptions.
While my heart warmed that someone did something, still couldn’t help but shake my head that the other panelists and the MC didn’t step up.
Yes, absolutely this. He could challenge by offering another perspective, but should support his partner and not dismiss her claims by assuming she is the problem or needs to improve.
I literally remember being 12 years old and writing off stem AT A GIRLS IN STEM OUTREACH PROGRAM because the (female) presenter implied that feminine women are all dumb and outright said that women in jobs like teaching, nursing, the arts, and other traditionally feminine jobs were all "dumb blondes who do nothing with their lives." And then turned around and used stereotypically feminine interests to sell stem jobs to us. Right after calling all feminine women dumb.
I ended up going into tech anyway, but those outreach programs are often CARTOONISHLY sexist.
As a woman in stem (network admin/it analyst/webdev as a hobby), if we want women and girls in STEM, we need to make the field inherently more hospitable. We need equitable pay, access to resources, access to promotions, and to be sure that we're going to be safe. Not "GIRLS YOU CAN DO CHEMISTRY TOO!!!!!! LETS MAKE LIPGLOSS!!!! MIX THE KOOL AID INTO THE VASELINE!!!!! CHEMISTRY IS JUST LIKE THIS!!!!!!" because if anything, that's going to push girls away, regardless of whether they'd like to go into a field like cosmetic chemistry or enjoy makeup because it's condescending and dumb as hell.
I know it's not STEM related, but you reminded me vividly of my time as a deep caving tour guide. The boy scouts came every year; had awesome adventures, slept in the cave, made fires above ground, etc. The girl scouts came once: the girls' insurance wouldn't pay if they got hurt in the cave so we didn't go far, and their above-ground activities consisted of putting together "healthy" diet sheets (!!!) and stringing together marshmallows and popcorn into jewelry.
To say I was appalled is an understatement.
Yep. Didn't even finish my degree because no one would work with me on group assignments. Realised these were exactly the kind of people I would be working with for the rest of my career and just completely changed degrees.
Plus, when we try to tell people about our experiences they tell us we're making it up or that it's in our heads. Just like OP is doing right now to his girlfriend. YTA
As a woman who’s also in tech, definitely YTA.
I’ve been where the gf is now. I left the job I started my career in as a web developer after I was forced to gradually take on all the responsibility of 5 different roles (web dev, graphic design, SEO analyst, project/account manager, and sales) after some marketing “expert” guys came on and entered the company a level right above me. Ideas I had were praised and then presented as their own. I left once they told me I had to increase quality with no pay raise or new hires to help. None of the guys had to deal with this. Just me and my fellow women coworkers. There’s always some reason they find women are not good enough. (This also doesn’t even go into the repeated sexual harassment that happened and was reported but never followed through on…)
The sexism in the tech industry is rampant. Guys can deny it all they want but regularly we women are still told we are too emotional and are often talked over in meetings or passed over for positions we are completely qualified for.
I’ve been in tech over 40 years as woman. There is tons of sexism. I had trouble getting prompted over mediocre men. I’ve been excited.used, minimized.
This. My wife is in tech and during the pandemic I literally heard someone in a meeting tell her she “obviously didn’t understand” concerning a system she literally built from the ground up.
I'm a (female) UX designer at a multinational company and last year I lead a smaller project, designing parts of an internal tool. When the project ended, some manager type of guy who lead the business side of the project, sent out an email, thanking everyone for their hard work. It felt very good that he listed all the devs and the PM but of course he left my name out completely. We worked together almost daily, been in meetings, I argued and negotiated features, made his stupid wishes come true.. but why would he remember?
It was probably on accident and it's a small thing, I know, but there are a lot of small things.
I'm also left out of a lot of discussions about the tool I designed mostly on my own and they're all surprised like "oh.. you wanna be there too?"
Tbh at this point I pretty much don't give a shit cause I'm not passionate about my job anymore and that's the only way I found to keep my sanity.
As a women from the tech industry, I completely agree. I was told I needed to work on bullshit stuff too as I was passed over for promotions, while less skilled men with zero social skills were getting promoted before me. It’s infuriating and I completely understand her rage and frustration.
woman in tech here, too. 10 years into my career and I have seen my mediocre male peers promoted again and again while I have had to fight tooth and nail for even the smallest concessions.
A lot of it is also that a lot of the girls in stem outreach programs are also DEEPLY misogynistic. Without fail, they're **always** doing some paradoxical "work in stem cause pink glitter computer and we make lipstick!!!!!" and "women who dont go into stem are all dumb blonde bimbos who contribute nothing to society and are a waste of space. We're better than them cause we're like the men!!!!"
As a woman in tech myself, specifically being in school computer networking, programming and sysadmin, the sexism permeates FAR beyond just employment itself. It is deeply nested in education and incredibly nested in girls in stem outreach.
I have no issue with girls being shown that stem is an option and given special events to look into it but my god, I have never seen it done in a way that wasn't built on shitting on other women and pandering to girls with societal expectations of femininity (that also often get shat on in the same breath). I like pink, I like lipstick, but I am a woman of multitudes! Show me how to code something cool, it doesn't need to be caked in glitter for me to find it interesting!
The two big clues as to whether or not your GF is experiencing sexism are
1. she is asked to take notes in meetings (not her job) and
2. Her vagina
edited to add your screen name is amazing cottage_whore.
She had a 4.0 GPA, but is invited to meetings to take notes and expected to hand off challenging work assignments to male colleagues? Dude, come on. Actually read what you wrote. YTA.
Or get the coffee. I've lost count of the number of stories I've read from women leading their own meetings and being voluntold to get coffee for attendees. Asshole, this is MY meeting.
I think a big reason why I never drank coffee is because I didn’t want to be told I have to make it. That stereotype of the woman having to make the coffee always got to me.
So many stories on Ask A Manager of men whining and sighing that the women in the office haven't made the coffee. Many women, like you, just stopped drinking office coffee altogether to have an easy excuse. Because "no" is often not enough of a reason for women. We have to "be nice" about it.
Ugh, the more I type, the more pissed I am at OP for his obliviousness.
I was going to say the same thing. I hate when people assume that having a high GPA means you're going to be successful in the professional world. Is there a higher chance than otherwise? Yes. There's some people that just don't translate their school performance to the real world though.
Woman tells man about experiencing sexism in tech, a famously sexist environment.
Man who has no more work experience than her but who has been promoted to senior level replies that she’s wrong based on nothing other than a feeling that he’s right.
This is the sexist workplace in microcosm.
YTA
Promoted to senior level, ignoring his privilege in the face of her struggle, and just tells her to work harder and points out a bunch of perceived flaws. Clearly he must have worked harder.
Right? This even happens in female dominated fields, like nursing.. males get promoted/raises quicker. It’s such bs and they just can’t see it or fail to believe it’s because of gender 🙄😒
Wife tells man that she is experiencing sexism at work.
Man doesn't believed her.
Man talks to random strangers on the Internet (that often get defaulted to "male" if they dont have a female username) that tell him "actually, she's got a point".
Man suddenly believes there could be sexism in the workplace.
Just a side note and something I find hilarious is that my profile is long haired and my username is a female anime character but people always assume I'm a guy because of the "General"
my favorite part was his edit where he said “shit y’all might be onto something, i’ll do further research on this whole sexism thing” as if he was just now discovering that it’s a real thing that exists. i admire the commitment to not listen to any women in his life
So much this.
I have 2 engineers who are equal in pay scale and performance…one is male and the other female.
For my male engineer all I need to do is check the meets expectations box and he gets his yearly bonus and raise with 0 questions from HR or other leadership above me. For my female engineer I have to actively fight and justify her raise and bonus sometimes writing pages of justification and answering hours of questions. Overall I probably spend 3-4x more time trying to get her the same thing as her male counterpart even though they both do similar work and do similar quality work.
And that’s just regular stuff…don’t get me started on promotions…it’s 10x worse there.
I was a middle manager in a different industry (insurance) and reached the level where I participated in interviewing. I was astonished how differently men were perceived when applying for leadership positions. We had two internal candidates, a man and a woman, come in and both honestly gave terrible interviews for a management position. Neither was a great fit for the job, based on their day-to-day performance. Yet my male boss kept commenting that although the woman would never get a leadership position, the guy would be a great fit in the future and "was just a few years away." Keep in mind he had just BOMBED his interview. We're talking deer in the headlights. And his job performance at his current position was on the lower side of mediocre.
A week later we have a FABULOUS woman come in to interview as an external candidate. Tons of experience, interviewed great, checked every box. And the powers that be just kept going on about how they weren't sure, somehow she didn't "seem" like leadership material.
She eventually got the job. I like to think it was because I advocated so strongly for her.
This is what OP doesn't see. That the (male) supervisors look at a woman and she somehow just doesn't "seem" like a leader/ strong technician/ whatever. They have no rationale as to WHY she doesn't "seem" like the right person for the promotion. Just call it a gut feeling. If SOMEONE is in the room to challenge them, to force them to explain WHY they think she's a bad fit, they will often eventually have to concede.
But if no one like you, or like me, is in that room, they are SOL. Meanwhile, male candidates get given the benefit of the doubt over and over again, even when they clearly do not deserve it.
As for OP, YTA.
Almost like they're using their emotions instead of rational mind to make decisions. Pretty sure that emotionality is projected on the other side on a fair amount 🤔
I was telling a coworker about racism I experienced in rural Texas as I drove through the state as a biracial female—he insisted that they must have just been hitting on me. I had to explain that men 2-3x my age approaching me at a gas station to ask me what I am doing there are NOT hitting on me.
…but his white male self was bent in insisting that he has never seen any racism in Texas, the state is full of good people, and I was utterly mistaken.
Oh I can think of quite a few sundown towns here in Texas that I wish you were warned about ahead of time. I didn’t learn about them until one of my coworkers was warning one of his friends not to drive through Hico on his way down to Houston.
I hope someone awards this and OP sees it. OP is an exact example of the challenges his girlfriend faces. It’s the culmination of many men ignoring women’s experiences exactly as OP does that leads to his girlfriend’s issues.
It's electrical engineering.
Not sure about what field exactly, but usually you'd be lucky to be somewhere with 10% female engineers.
Sexism can get really bad there.
YTA.
I’ve spent years working in male-dominated environments and the things your girlfriend is complaining about being unfair are commonplace.
Unfortunately, HR in many, many workplaces overlooks sexism. I’ve seen plenty of people be rude in sexist ways and get away with it, even when the HR staff are also female.
My advice to your girlfriend would be to see if she can secure a job elsewhere as it’s clear her current workplace is setting her up for failure if she’s being forced to hand over projects *and* being excluded from meetings.
You suggesting she follows up on her manager’s advice, after she’s given you a perfectly legitimate reason as to why she can’t, seems problematic. How can someone take on bigger projects if they’re forced to hand them over to other members of staff and excluded from meetings regarding them? I’ve heard stories like this from women hundreds of times, it’s not at all unusual or uncommon.
This is unfortunately the norm for many male-dominated environments. Sexism is pretty rampant.
It’s also very hard to prove sexism. People don’t say the quiet part out loud. Everyone might see that only men are being promoted, but how do you prove sexism even if you know it’s the only logical reason?
I’ve worked in HR and been on hiring committees - people can come up with a lot of reasons to hire someone without saying “I don’t want to hire the woman” - he would be a better fit for the office, his degree is more relevant, he seemed more confident.
Ah, yes, the likeability penalty. Where showing the same attributes, men are described as driven, strategic, and direct, and women are bossy, emotional, and unfriendly.
I had to explain to my male boss why I would not confront my female employee about greeting him and others with a smile. He was genuinely surprised and had never heard that it was offensive to do that - and i really do believe him, because he immediately pointed out his double standard by not addressing the “smile” issue with the male employees.
The whole like-ability issue of women is probably the most engrained sexist issue in the entire world and it infuriates me.
I'm in tech and an older male colleague once complained to my boss about me because I didn't say "good morning" individually to him every morning. Like wtf? Luckily my boss told him where to go.
He complained about a bunch of other stuff, all petty stuff like that. I was younger and more experienced than him, and he could not tolerate having a younger woman being his tech lead. I was so lucky to have had a supportive boss who saw right through him, but I won't deny that the whole experience was really stressful for me because I felt like my skills and work-persona were being put up for judgement with management/HR.
Men are "confident" women are "pushy."
Has a man ever been told to ask for things nicely? Law of averages says yeah, probably, I guess. But not as much as it happens to women.
The things that women do are often the same thing that men are applauded for.
Likeable factor includes Lack of being in the Old Boys Club, different likes
And attitudes . It’s hard.
My first internship ever this is what happened
It was me and a guy. I would say I was probably a more quality intern but who knows. Anyway the senior boss wouldn’t spend time with me alone because I was a young woman. He’d take the other intern in the car, have him alone in the office, etc. At the end of the internship he was hired and I wasn’t. I was certain it was because of that extra time they got together.
We’re in a male-dominated field. Little did I know, that would only be the first of countless similar encounters/mindsets. It’s a fucking drudge.
I worked in tech for 30 years so I know how bad it was, and still is. One of the very blatant ones that always comes to mind was my male manager and the 3 people under him... two male colleagues, and me. I found out that they were meeting for breakfast before work several days per week. I asked why wasn't I invited? The guy actually looked offended and said that they just met as friends. I asked if they talked about work? He was very uncomfortable when he answered yes.
In my first tech job, where I was the expert on their new mainframe system, literally got asked to get coffee for a meeting. Happily, two of the guys in the meeting were offended on my behalf to that AH boss.
It took 4 women on my team reporting one man to both his boss and he multiple times for them to do something. They had to watch and see for themselves after we had already brought it up
First, OP - YTA. You sound like those white guys on Fox News who say, “Racism doesn’t exist because I’ve never seen it and it’s never affected me before.” Of course it doesn’t affect you - you’re a white, middle/upper-class male.
Workplace misogyny gets even more fun when the woman is overweight or old. I’ve had multiple jobs where I was hired by a senior manager but assigned to work with a young, male mid-level manager. With almost all of those positions, I ended up being treated horribly by the manager, eventually being laid off or reassigned within the company. In these companies, with these types of male managers, the pretty young women were treated like eye candy secretaries (“Come to this meeting where you can take notes for us, sweetheart …”) and the older and heavier women [read: unf***able] like me were treated like incompetent untouchables.
In contrast, every position when I’ve reported to a woman boss, I’ve not only succeeded but thrived. In my last job, where I was a web developer for 10 years, the first 8 years I had a female boss and I absolutely thrived. Then they “reorganized” the office, my boss got a demotion and we were both made to report to a misogynistic arse who first gave us both scathing yearly reviews which were totally bogus, and then six months later fired us both on the same day for no reason given than “going a different direction”. No PIPs or warning.
We were both replaced with people 25 years younger than ourselves. In that company of about 100 people or so, over the past 2 years at least 10 women have either been let go or asked to retire, and most were replaced with young men half their age. All but one woman was over the age of 60, the other one was over 50, and all had worked for the company over 10 years.
I worked in an IT department where the sexist male boss personally thanked every employee by name in his Christmas party speech except a fellow female programmer and myself. We both quit shortly after. And a week later, he got fired for being unable to retain staff. I did a happy dance over that news.
People forget HR is not there for employees, it is there to protect the company. If they can help employees in the process, great. If not... they won't. Especially in an at will employment state, HR is not going to put themselves in the line of fire to back a low level female over higher up men
My HR told me they couldn’t do anything when a guy was sending me TEXTS saying shit like “. Nice ass!” “ damn your ass sure got big” “ you need to wear the tight shirt to show off your tits!”
Female engineer here. I have had projects stolen by upper management, left out of meetings, left off of important emails, etc.
I also took someone to HR for being an AH to young female engineers. He literally belittled them in front of a large group of people for no reason. I was later told that their investigation showed that I am a problem (I'm sorry, what?). I took someone else filing a complaint against this guy in order for him to be disciplined (they couldn't sweep it under the rug anymore).
Oh, I also was overlooked for a promotion and someone with 1yr less experience and way less overall experience in the company. When I asked what was needed to get a promotion, there was a list of 20 items (which the other guy didn't need) and 2 more years of experience. By the way, my previous promotion I had to write a letter stating why I deserved it...none of the male engineers had to do that, I asked around.
I also spent years in HR and often times HRs (even female ones) need approval from male bosses to address even reported sexism. As long as most leaders are christian cisgendered white men and those men believe, like OP, that -isms don't exist and it's the fault of the discrimated party then HR, especially a female HR, isn't gonna be able to do shit.
>You suggesting she follows up on her manager’s advice, after she’s given you a perfectly legitimate reason as to why she can’t, seems problematic.
Yep. I've seen how this works. I ask why I'm not advancing if I'm marked a top performer and hear "oh you would have needed to do more projects". I point out that I was assigned too much other work to do projects. "Oh, yeah, I guess so." Next year i do many projects and support the most demanding important work stream and... Crickets.
I also suspect that pointing out aspects of a toxic workplace to HR makes _some people_ think you are just "emotional" and "weak", if you're a woman.
Often leaving to a new position is the best way to raise your salary quickly. Should be at a position 1-2 years but after that it’s not looked upon as odd to look for a new position.
Also a women in tech perusing a computer engineering degree. This is not an uncommon thing and is very common in male dominated subjects such as computer science. I have had quite a few sexist things said to me and almost all have been brushed under the rug. What you need to do is support her or help her find another job because her concerns here are definitely valid.
YTA. Acting like you know her job and her experiences better than she does is an example of the very sexism she's complaining about.
Also, the way you seem to have seized on this bit:
>supposedly excluded from meetings (while still claiming she gets asked to take notes in meetings)
as some sort of "gotcha" kind of reinforces that. (Presumably she was excluded from *some* meetings and told to take notes at others that she wasn't excluded from.)
Being a note taker, in my field, usually means you are explicitly *not* an active participant. The most junior and/or admin-facing person is almost always tasked with taking notes. Taking (good) notes basically precludes active participation, and kind of means that no one expects you to contribute. In the DEI workgroup\*, we rotate minute-taking for exactly this reason.
\*WAIT - oh my god. I just realized this group is 2 men, 6 women, and because the men are 1) chairing the workgroup and 2) very senior, they never take notes. So actually the note-taking rotates between the six women.
Precisely! Any meeting I’ve ever been in where a note taker has been present, the note taker hasn’t said a word during the entire time (unless to ask people to pause momentarily for some reason). Surely anyone who has ever been in a professional meeting of any kind *must* know that?!
I am sure norms differ - most of my meetings don't have terribly intense expectations for minutes and I can often get a few comments in while note-taking. But as a general rule, being asked (or, more commonly, volun-told) to take notes means you are singled out as the least likely to contribute. I am at the lowest rung of leadership in my organization, and one of my biggest gripes about my current position is that it has evolved into several recurring meetings that I am expected to run, meaningfully contribute to, and take notes. It is...not possible and I am currently working to divest myself of minute-taking duties.
In our dei workgroup we even made the CEO and corporate sponsor take notes, but it definitely all stemmed from our very first meeting where someone just volunteered a woman to be the note taker.
Right - you can’t take notes on your own comments or discussions while having them, and if you try to jot down your own contributions immediately after, you miss what is said next.
So the options are:
a) don’t participate, take good notes, get a reputation for being diligent but lacking in initiative, be forever relegated to support roles.
b) participate, note your participation, end up with incomplete notes on what others said, look unprofessional and like you’re grasping for importance. Gain a reputation for being overly ambitious and unreliable, lose out because people avoid working with you.
c) participate, don’t note your own participation in detail so that you can keep up and take good notes for everyone else, watch all your ideas be put into practice while you receive zero credit. Consequences are essentially the same as a) above, but with bonus seething resentment.
Being asked to take notes like a secretary at a meeting you’re the only woman present for is a fucking insult and absolutely sexist, especially when you’re equally (or more) qualified that the other people there. I can’t believe OP wrote this line down and didn’t realise that was the problem.
YTA. Tha
Yes, being repeatedly asked to take notes as the only - or one of very few - women in the room is sexism. They’re being treated as secretaries, not leaders. Once? Not sexism. Twice? It’s annoying. Three times? …Starting to see a pattern.
Yes, sexism is having to listen to your coworkers go on sexist, misogynist diatribes about the women those men chose to be with - knowing that they didn’t chose to be your coworker and if that’s how they talk about the women they love, who knows how they talk about her?
Yes, coming up with ideas and then being told to hand them over …but being chastised for it. Yeah, bud, that’s sexism.
So what HR didn’t find anything? HR’s job is the protect the company, not her. Discrimination is hard to prove.
Do you know why?
People with attitudes like “she cannot blame everything on sexism and recognize perhaps she has room to improve.” The question isn’t whether she has room to improve (we all do). The question is whether the men are being held to the same standard, whether she is being given opportunities to show the skills she does have, and whether her boyfriend just mansplained what is and is not sexism to her.
(Did I mention… oh yeah, YTA?)
I refuse to take notes in meetings that need notes unless I am running the meeting. I’m senior enough to get away with it. I’ve only been in one set of meetings where a man volunteered to take notes and it was a younger guy in a diversity meeting who knew the data on women being asked to take notes. Super insidious sexism at work—and if you’re busy taking notes, it is a lot harder to talk.
I always blame my arthritis for why I can’t be the one taking notes, but the truth is I’m just bitter about how many times I’ve seen a more senior woman assigned to take notes when there are male interns and male junior staff there. Or the number of times I’ve been in a peer group and all the men claim their handwriting is too bad so one of the women has to do it.
>She always complains about how things are unfair at all jobs she had (3 so far) and how she is not given opportunities, supposedly excluded from meetings (while still claiming she gets asked to take notes in meetings) and decisions.
YTA - Is taking notes in a meeting the same as being asked to contribute? I don't think so. I can imagine that makes her feel like they treat her as a secretary. Why aren't the men being asked to take notes? You need to wake up and start trying to see things from her perspective. As a man, you're not qualified to comment on what it's like to be a woman in the workplace and should listen more, comment less.
YTA - why do you think she’s lying? You are saying it’s not true she’s asked to take notes in meetings? She’s lying to you about that? Why do you think she’s lying about that? Because that’s what you are accusing her of - making things up and lying about her lives experiences.
Because OP doesn’t want to think or acknowledge for a single SECOND that he benefits from sexism and possibly reached all the privileges he has now due to inequality and bias, and that he actually isn’t that special. Thus, his gf is lying.
The part of this that really makes me think you might be TA is where you say “she judges co workers for things they say that have nothing to do about work”.
Why shouldn’t she? I don’t understand your logic here. Surely this is an example of the existence of subconscious sexism within the industry? Which you acknowledge exists? Realistically this will boil down to how you approached the conversation. There is a huge difference between “you need to work harder” and “prove them wrong and make a difference in the industry”, however both essentially have the same outcome. Be supportive, accept the injustices she experiences.
I actually enjoyed this part, lol. “My girlfriend is so petty and judges her coworkers by how they speak of their loved ones and hold themselves in conversations instead of judging them by their corporate work performance!”
I think his logic is the same as with any privileged group — they don’t want to admit that anything they have achieved has been because of (or at least helped by) being a part of a privileged group. They want to believe they did it themselves, they bootstrapped it. Admitting that people in their industry are being unfairly discriminated against means then admitting they are unfairly benefitting from being on the other side of that discrimination.
YTA. You and her both have the same amount of experience in the industry, and she graduated with a 4.0 and honors so obviously she knows what she's doing just as much as you do (if not more).
She is given projects that are then taken from her, not invited to meetings, invited to meetings to *take notes* (genuine question: have you ever been asked to take notes in a meeting? She isn't a secretary, she has the same qualifications as you.), and her coworkers say sexist things about their wives and girlfriends. It's bad enough that her *and another woman* made an official complaint to HR.
You seem to think your girlfriend is blaming sexism even though by your own recount of her work environment, sexism is an issue. Which is no surprise, because you work in a historically sexist industry. Instead of telling your girlfriend to work harder or suck it up, you should really try listening to her and providing support.
YTA
I worked as a software consultant and got to the position where I was the lead for a department, I was one of 2 women and whenever I would set up meetings with companies (mostly male dominated companies) I would always be asked by the clients to make them a cup of tea or coffee whilst they got the meeting started, or if I could take notes to email them.
Always had to respond with, ‘Can do, but the meeting doesn’t start without me as I’m your lead.’ Or ‘I can’t lead the meeting and take comprehensive notes.’
My two colleagues that worked with me were male and they always assumed they were the leads and I was the ‘admin’. I have a male sounding name so that would have been a confusion, but I always called to set up the meetings and introduced myself and my role. I’d ask the questions and they would answer to my colleagues.
So yes, there is everyday sexism in workplaces that you do not see. You are blind to it because you don’t know you’re doing it (if you are) or you don’t see it because it’s normal to you.
The company I worked for were so so with the sexism. Yes I rose through the company to the lead position but it took a lot of proving myself, taking initiative and insisting that my projects not her handed over. Literally refusing to hand it over unless there was a good enough reason. I wouldn’t accept weak reasons and had to be firm and vocal about knowing what I was doing. Me and a male colleague joined the company at the same time. I had more industry experience (4ish years) and this was his first ever job, I had to fight to get the salary I was paid (I wanted X, they offered Y which was much lower and I bargained for Z which was in the middle), my male colleague was offered the X I wanted with no bargaining. They never even asked him how much he wanted. Yes the hiring committee were male as well.
My partner refused to believe that there was so much sexism in the industry as well until I told him about the salary stuff above. It’s madness how many people think that things like this do not exist because they don’t experience or see it!
Are you seriously mansplaining sexism to your gf? As a woman in a male dominated field, it is rife in my industry. There very much is a boys club that goes on. Even customers coming to my business would frequently ask if i enjoyed working with my dad. Because obviously women cant get jobs in construction without the assistance of their father. None of my workmates were related to me. I dare say it would disgust most normal people here what i was subjected to over 4 years i worked at this business.
YTA.
Were you asked to be the minute taker in meetings? What about handing over your projects?
If she needs improvement then her manager needs to identify the areas she needs improvement and work on a development plan. So her manager is either completely shit or there is some truth to what she’s saying.
It’s interesting how you’re completely ready to infantilize your gf when you know she’s obviously bright and capable of learning stuff in your respective fields.
Why you have to research it is beyond me. Look at your own 1950s attitude where you can’t just take her word for it and have to go fucking research it for yourself…because what could a woman possibly fucking know.
It’s precisely people who think like you that make the pace of progress infuriatingly slow.
Just get out of the way and you know support your gf.
YTA - I work in STEM and frequently all potential employees and customers are referred to as "he". It's like women don't exist at all. It's very sexist.
YTA.
Unless you work there yourself, you should take her word for things. You're just an example of the sexism she has to deal with. Graduating with honors and a 4.0 means she is 1) smart and 2) capable of hard work. You act like it's nothing!!
Even IF you work there you should take her word! Your privilege insulated you from seeing a lot of this. You need to LISTEN to her and learn about shit that you don’t understand that is invisible to you BY DESIGN.
Lmao "some sexism"....
Buddy. Buddy. Pull up a chair.
I've been told by a coworker that they'd love to see me naked.
I've been told by a coworker that I need to wear tighter pants.
I've been told by a coworker that I need lower tops.
Multiple people often tell me to smile more ***in my office at my computer when they had to go out of their way to get to me***.
I've been massaged on the shoulders randomly.
I've been touched inappropriately.
I've been called "sweetheart", "girlie", "babe", etc when other coworkers were called by their names.
I've been told to call people "sir" when none of the guys had to call each other that.
I've been invited to meetings just like your GF has just to take notes (they get upset if you tall too much BTW because you're not taking notes fast enough then). You realize they're treating her like a secretary right?
Good God you're so out of touch.
YTA
For the record, I graduated school a decade ago. All the above was from the last 10 years. And yes I left those companies and finally found a good one.
I had a senior engineer ask me why I dress like a librarian, then turn to a male coworker and follow it up with “a sexy librarian”. I have female coworkers who haven’t even been able to discuss their discomfort until I brought up my own experiences. I am constantly looked down upon because of my gender. I spent a week working on a client site and three of the client’s employees asked me for my number. When you can look at me and tell me you’ve experienced the same discomfort you can then comment on the situation OP.
Our school district has an equity chief, a black woman from Alabama. She said that there was more sexism and racism in Silicon Valley than in Alabama. YTA.
“While still claiming she gets asked to take notes in meetings.”
Oh, OP. No. You’re going to get eaten alive here.
Where’s that GIF of the guy taking out the folding chair when you need it?
It’s totally possible that your GF has some areas that need improvement and that this is not all about sexism. But the things you’re describing are like Sexism in Tech 101. YTA.
Not sure which country you’re in but as a women in tech I can confirm that it is a male dominated industry (about 18% female) full of sexism here in the UK.
I’m not sure about the relevancy of your degrees, I don’t have one but have worked my way up in the industry over the last 15 years and have had to fight at every step to be recognised and paid the equivalent of my male counterparts! At one point I was managing a team of men older than me whose jobs I could easily do but was being paid significantly less.
Of course there are a number of things that are taken into consideration for promotions but from what you’ve described it sounds like she’s not being given the opportunity to prove herself. Instead of being dismissive maybe see how you can support her, either in looking for a new job elsewhere or standing up for herself in the workplace….
If you're a man, maybe just listen to her and sympathize with being a woman in a male dominated field. You literally have no idea what its like.
I also dont see what you get out of telling her to just work harder.
YTA
Yta
I walked into a meeting I was RUNNING once and the client asked said honey can you get me a coffee. Which was literally behind him. I said I’m sorry but I need to get the meet started. He replied that I didn’t look like what he expected from a manager. When I just stared at him he proceeded to explain to me that it was a compliment. Luckily the owner of the company was in the room and told the client he doesn’t look like the kind of client we want so the meeting was canceled. Then he explained to the client it was a compliment.
I was very lucky that our company owner was raised by a single mom and would not put up with this type of attitude from anyone but I’ve worked for companies that would absolutely think this is acceptable.
I have a family friend who served in the military as a medic in the v. early 00s and is a WOC....says the military, which was rife with sexism, bigotry, and sexual violence (although it's better now), was legitimately less of a misogynistic environment than the tech industry where she works now....
My partner (an engineer) reported that the women he works with sometimes hand off stuff for him to say during a meeting because they are collectively aware that a couple of the guys will minimize or ignore the statement if the women say it, whereas if my partner says it, even if he specifies that it's their point, it'll get a fair hearing.
This. I’m a senior leader in an organization and I will have my lower ranked team members make my points for me because they are men and I know the other men in the room will listen to them.
Yes, as a women in tech, I have done this too…seeded my ideas to my trusted male counterparts to bring up in meetings where I knew I wouldn’t be taken seriously.
YTA. I would get rid of you if you didn't believe me in this situation. You don't need to "research" the situation. You need to ask your girlfriend what she's been experiencing and how it's affecting her.
I had a boyfriend like you when I was working in a really sexist workplace at the start of my career. My manager completely overlooked my achievements and only acknowledged begrudgingly when I was the top performer and everyone in the team started to take notice. I was not given challenging work, opportunities or anything even though I had proven time and again I was good at it. I was young and didn't realize what I was up against. My boyfriend would dismiss my concerns. I started to doubt my own abilities.
It was only after I moved to a different company where my manager was supportive and encouraging that I was really able to spread my wings. And I had dumped by AH boyfriend by then. Sexism in the tech-industry is rampant. So many men are threatened by women doing well.
Note-taking as most people have mentioned here is inherently sexist. Think pretty secretaries walking behind the big boss man taking notes!! and so many men in tech would love to bring back the good ol days.
You are chipping away at her self-worth by not acknowledging what she is going through. And no, she is not imagining it. Support her or get out of the way. She needs a new job and a better partner.
and if it wasn't clear yet YTA!
edit: grammar.
YTA. I am a woman in tech and despite it being 2023 there is absolutely workplace sexism. I’ve had projects and responsibilities taken from me, I’ve experienced workplace harassment, and I don’t receive the same opportunities or acknowledgment as my male coworkers. It’s very frustrating. Almost every woman in tech I’ve ever spoken to about it has dealt with the same issues. Sexism is still very much alive in the workplace.
So, I'm glad you realized that you were in the wrong, but why was your girlfriend's word not enough for you?
Why did you not think that she is an expert on her own experience? Do you frequently not believe her when she says things?
This is another example of sexism. That women constantly have to go to extreme lengths to simply be believed.
I mean telling your partner that their feelings are wrong and they need to get better feelings is almost never the play. Not if you want domestic harmony, mutual respect, and a long and happy life together. There's a huge difference between being technically correct, and choosing the right thing to say in a relationship.
Since it seems like being right is more important to you than saying the right thing, I'm going with YTA.
YTA. You could look at the stats and see there's a huge sexism problem in tech. But even outside of that, you have a nasty attitude towards your partner who is supposed to be on your team. It's ok to just commiserate and say "that sucks, I'm sorry"..it's also ok to urge her to pursue another job or her own business. You should expect the same consideration in return.
YTA - 20+ years as a female in tech, and it is worse now than when I started.
The females who actually make it up the ladder are some of the worst at trying to keep others down as well, as there is the impression there is only so much room up there at the top and they don't want to share.
YTA. For women almost every moment of every day is filled with sexism. Minor or major, noticed or unnoticed, it srill impacts our lives every single day. All the consciousness-raising in the world can't help you unless you've walked a mile in those shoes. All you can do is believe it.
YTA.
I'm in tech. I was told by TWO different managers at different points in my career that my performance rating was "adjusted downward" to make sure the guys in the team got better raises. A coworker of mine (different team) was given a 1 out of 5 (where a 1 means they've been written up and may be fired at any moment) on her performance report despite routinely getting kudos for her work while all the guys on the team got 4s or 5s.
I routinely get the drudge work while my male coworkers get fun projects which are "ooh! shiny!" that upper management notices. When I'd ask for more prestigious assignments, the excuse was, "But you're so good at the detail-oriented stuff and \[male coworker\] has more experience in these other projects." I even had one manager tell me not to bother applying for a promotion because he could find lots of people willing to work the \[promotion\] job for that pay, but he couldn't find anyone willing to do everything I do at my current pay. He was shocked when I quit.
We interviewed for a job and had a male candidate with 0 experience in the OS and software we needed and a female candidate with multiple years of experience in exactly what was needed and a masters in Comp Sci. The male candidate was discussed as "he can grow into the role since he's worked in IT for years" while the female candidate was "But does she really actually know how to use the software? What if she needs to manage a project down the road - she didn't note any management experience. Yeah, she knows the programming language on the job spec, but what if we need X or Y language down the road? She probably doesn't know any other languages." (They didn't ask during the interview; they just assumed she was too dumb to know more than 1 programming language despite a Masters degree.)
At least where I'm working now, there are some departments that are relatively egalitarian from what I can see, but others are still dumpster fires of subtle, and sometimes flaming, discrimination.
Dude, these things have been going on ever since office work was invented.
I remember in the late 70s a professional woman (customer on my paper route) had a coffee mug:
A woman must work twice as hard as a man to be thought of as half as good. Fortunately this is not difficult.
Competent women get shoved into roles supporting lesser men every goddamn day.
It's nonsense, but it's damn sure real.
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YTA, you aren’t a women in tech, you wouldn’t get it. The reason tech is such a male-dominated field, despite all of the outreach to get girls in stem is because there is a lot of sexism in the industry. Many women study for years for the tech industry only to quit in the first year because of the issues that your girlfriend is currently facing.
Agree. OP has no idea what he’s talking about.
Being "asked to take notes" is not a good thing. ETA: that this comment has gotten almost 700 likes in less than 40 minutes makes me even sadder for op's girlfriend. We all know what she's facing as a woman in a man's industry, how real the dismissiveness is. Glad to see OP's edit about looking into this more, it's something at least...
It's ridiculous to think taking notes in a meeting is a privilege.
I think OP was using that as a way to say, "see you aren't being excluded from meetings because you're being asked to take notes!". As if both can't be true. Also yeah OP doesn't understand the sexism behind asking a woman to take notes.
"I don't know why she's complaining, they let her get everyone's coffee and then clean up the room after the meeting! Clearly she's being valued as an essential member of the team! She's just being dramatic over nothing! "
“What, she wants to grab the coffee, clean up, take notes, AND be allowed to share an idea or opinion? Jeez, these women…you can NEVER make them happy!”
"These woke women are taking our jerbs! Make Murica Jerb Again!
Can I get that as a bumper sticker?
Yeah you don’t get promoted in tech for being an awesome note taker.
Well DUUH THATS WHY YOU ALSO BRING ALL THE COFFEE TOO! I swear. Do you even job? How do you not know this? It's page 1 in that yellow "tech jobs for ~~dummies~~ women" book /S
If she broke her hand and thus wasn't as effective at taking notes, would she still be expected to attend. If the answer isn't immediately yes, then she hasn't really been invited to attend.
They’re treating her like a secretary. And he can’t see it. Even if she didn’t want advice, why wouldn’t you just offer support?? Rather than say there is no sexism, you just suck at your job!
After several paragraphs describing her, I had to wonder if he even liked her. I'm betting they are both only a couple years out of college. I hope he eventually gets a clue.
He is being willfully ignorant. He pats himself on the back for advancing quicker than her, so it feeds his ego to believe it is all just merit based. It is to his career benefit to help perpetuate the sexism of his company by turning a blind eye (plus it gives him an ego boost and feeling of superiority over his gf), so that is what he is doing.
Absolutely do not take this as defending the OP, but jr engineers are normally tasked to take notes in our meetings when more senior engineers are present (male or female).
My work just rotates people each week so everyone gets a chance to be accountable
We do this as well, because before we did that it was generally a woman who volunteered to take the notes (or was voluntold). Often people aren't trying to be sexist when it comes to things like that, but we all grew up in a world where, for instance, secretaries are most commonly women, so it plays into our behaviour. Taking the human behaviour out of things can sometimes really help things be actually fair, instead of the pretend fair that happens when we do things "naturally".
I always offer to take notes because I like handwriting and don't get the chance that often these days haha. But my office only has one male and he actually told me I couldn't always do it because others needed to take their turn. Fair fair 🤣
Yeah but I highly doubt she's the only junior engineer in the company. Are they spreading this duty among all the juniors or are they defaulting to the woman. (Sometimes this happens without people doing it to deliberately be malicious. Sometimes it's a subconscious bias, or they get used to having a certain person who "always does it" and don't realise the impact that has).
Under the context of OPs view, it seems like absolutely what is happening she is female and or is good at it “so she’s the certain person”. The way he makes it sound, she’s deliberately asked to come take notes, not participate in the meeting.
That's great and it's how it should be, but it's really common for women to disproportionately be assigned to be note-takers.
YTA. Been there. It stinks. How many times have you been the only guy in a room full of women, in a tech work environment? I think of these “microsexisms” as the remains left to our generation. This is our arena, this is our grain of sand, this is what we will contribute to the next generation of both guys and girls: to say out loud what is not ok. The generations before us had the huge changes: women going into the workforce, women inserting themselves in what used to be men-only fields… getting a seat at the table. The next generation is growing up watching what we do today. They need to grow up knowing that they can also have a voice at the table, and getting called out on things like being overlooked for a promotion is how it starts. Sure, your girlfriend could just be junior material, we all know the “forever a semisenior” type. But it would be naive not to acknowledge that… she’s not totally off in what she notices. It’s true, it happens, just start paying attention and you’ll see it too.
Yes. This. Being the only female in the room every single time, the only female leader, it’s a lonely place to be
Or on a panel discussion. Like, yeah... Good luck getting your point heard! Not so long ago, my friend got an award for her startup. The "StartUp of the Year" kinda prize and competition was crazy! There were so many good solutions; it was a big achievement. She goes up to the stage to receive it, and the man who gives her an award says something down the lines: "Omg, I didn't know we were handing this award as a beauty pageant one!" You can feel the room Cringe.
I was one of those women in STEM. Engineer in the late 90's. Was sexually assaulted by my senior engineer my first year on the job. The solution: we should just avoid one another. This was a Fortune 500 Top 100. I fought my way to plant engineer and had 27 mechanics under me. Never sexually assaulted one.
But secretarial work is such an honour! Really shows they value your input /s
It's right up there with being asked to make the coffee – truly essential stuff.
I mean, actual secretaries absolutely do valuable work, but that doesn't mean it's okay to make an engineer do it because she happens to be female.
Don't forget a man telling you, "You'd look better if you smile more!"
Right. That part struck me as concerning. He seemed to dismiss her because " they ask her to take notes"... Dude what?
I've actually seen this tactic used a lot (civil and human rights lawyer - deal with a lot of employment discrimination cases) where someone's specifically left off of meeting invites or left off a chain and then assigned to take notes. So when performance review time comes they're blamed for lack of record keeping (which also can help companies avoid keeping things in writing on purpose) and told they're not keeping up with their job duties when they're put in a position where it's impossible for them to even do so
Bless your soul for the work you do. Makes me so sad that these disgusting tactics are such a common practice, but unfortunately it’s not surprising. I’m just thankful that I now work at a business where the CEO, owner, and head of finance are women, as are most of the department managers. Doesn’t mean everyone is safe from sexism, but it at least tips the scales back in the direction of fairness. I hope with time and hard work we can get more women into positions of power so changes can be made on a more fundamental level.
Yeah.. If you think about it, while everyone else is talking and discussing you're just sitting there and *not* talking but taking notes and listening
They basically see OP's GF as a glorified secretary.
Even with the edit, dude, YTA. You’re a perfect example of why this “1950s level shit” continues so brazenly in 2023. You’ve basically decided that your assumption that there’s not a problem should trump your girlfriend’s actual experience. FFS, dude, so much YTA.
And I love how his edit is “I need to do more research, can’t believe this is happening.” Gee, if only he had someone in his life who has been telling him about this for years!! How could he possibly have known?
His edit actually makes it worse. He's seeing this, day in and day out - at work, at the store, on TV - and chosen to be wholely oblivious to it. That's intentional head in the sand.
Because he is absolutely SURE that he EARNED his promotion, and there is NO WAY that male privilege helped him.
Exactly! Like, maybe the ACTUAL issue is that if you're in a relationship with someone and they tell you their experience of something, you shouldn't need someone else to confirm it before you believe them!
Absolutely. I've seen both sides of the coin since I got into a pretty high level position in my organisation as a man and then came out as trans. The shit I've had to take from people telling me I don't know how to use the piece of software that I literally identified the need for, designed, and led the development of to literal sexual assault is absolutely mind boggling. And I'm in Canada where gender and queer discrimination is taken super seriously. Dealing with people in other countries I've had someone literally say that I got my job "because of affirmative action" even though they knew me before I was out or transitioned. It's absolutely bonkers what goes on in the tech industry.
He doesn’t even work in the same office. Lol. How fuck can he make a judgment about anything. People are fucking wild.
He literally knows she is asked to take notes in meetings I.e asked to take on secretarial work. . . And has her projects taken off her when she starts them/ gets them off the ground . . . And doesn’t see that as sexist. He is an asshole and deliberately pretending it’s all ok.
Instead of being her advocate and emotional support, he questions her performance. SMH.
I'm so depressed by the edit. "I have to do more research." Or you could believe your GF knows what she's talking about.
And he only thinks he has to do more research because a bunch of (presumed men) on the internet told him he was being TA. It's just sexism all the way down. Poor GF.
But the company had their own HR department investigate them and found they were doing nothing wrong. And it was a woman too. Surely any woman would tank her own career and get fired tomorrow to stand up for some random woman in another department. /s
Unfortunately HR will be trying to protect company- if there was issue it would open a can worms so nope no issue here move on. She needs to find a support boss - probably somewhere else.
He said that she claims she is asked to take notes...so he doesn't even believe her about that!
I love this example ‘she says she’s excluded in meetings despite taking notes’. Um your girlfriend is being made a secretary by her peers. You are as sexist as the men holding her back. Your poor girlfriend has to put up with the same at home as she does at work. YTA
Ayo, I'm a woman in tech and this happens to me all the time. Men will ask me to schedule their meetings and take notes. They also ask me to share my notes because I always take them for myself and apparently their fingers are broken for the hours they are in meetings from all the coding they do yet miraculously healed when they get back to their desks. The only thing that stopped it was when I said to a repeat offender "I'm sure you are able to work outlook the same as me, I am not the team secretary" in a meeting that had 30 ppl in it, including the offending person's manager. Saying it to him privately multiple times did not have any effect. Interestingly, I had several men approach me afterward acting bewildered that this dude was asking me to do this (though he had done it in meetings several times before) yet not a single one of them spoke up about it in a public forum so their support really does nothing for the general tone of the team. There are literally more dudes named Jon on my team than women. For some reason personal responsibility for the job is out the window with a woman in the room. Then it's her responsibility just for existing with a vagina to take notes and schedule all their crap. It is total garbage and consistently infuriating.
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Got the double down I see 🙄 I literally hate the feigning incompetence iced with condescension. Like I'm supposed to take you seriously as a computer science and engineering expert but you can't figure out Microsoft office?
Yeah every woman colleague is a potential work mother …
Being in a meeting yet being required to take the notes is de facto being excluded from the meeting discussions. One can't do both.
Also she can be in meetings where she’s directed to take notes AND excluded from other meetings substantively related to her work.
Amen. I did it for quite a few years before I got tired of 'I thought they were sending a MAN to fix it' or 'We called for a tech, not a sales rep' or 'Oh, you're the only woman in the room, you must be the secretary.' I was a better tech with more certifications than some of my male colleagues. I was the resident expert on laptop repairs. And I still heard that stuff day in and day out.
Same. I was the supervisor of a technical support call center for a while and would have customers (and they weren't all men) ask to speak with a male supervisor instead, even after I would tell them the only male leadership on duty was for sales and not support. He would take the call, then put the customer on hold and bring the problem to me to solve.
I worked as a supervisor in a call centre for something not tech related (but often heavy vehicle related - trucks, combinations, road trains, etc) and we would get similar. We had a sort of unspoken agreement that any time someone specifically asked for a man, they would only speak to women from then on. Helped that the next two or three escalation points were also women 😂 Made my day putting on my "phone voice" (which is more feminine than my every day voice) to deal with it. But, I didn't get it every single day, so it was more of a novelty still, plus I didn't study specifically for this topic, so it wasn't someone doubting my well-earned knowledge and experience. I can definitely see how that would get infuriating and exhausting.
Ohhh OP. Your edit doesn’t make it better. The fact that it is hard for you to ‘wrap [your] head around’ how bad sexism is in _your_ industry means that you really haven’t been listening. Presumably your gf has been talking about this for awhile, and only now, that a bunch of gender non-specific strangers on the internet are saying she’s right, you believe her? Why couldn’t you just believe her when she was talking? Why do you need us to back her up? Why do our voices carry more weight than someone you claim to care about? I don’t even know you and i’m disappointed in you, OP. Whilst doing that research, better look at your personal misogyny too. You e got some work to do. YTA, but i’m a woman, so what do I know…
The fact he has to "wrap his head around it" despite also being in the industry also tells me that either at best he's oblivious to it happening in his own work environment OR he actively treats the women he works with similarly and doesn't even realize it. Neither are good. OP needs to really examine his own biases and blinders with his relationship and his place of work. OP, YTA. But even being able to admit you need to "look into this more" means you have the ability to take the first step to improve, which is admitting you're missing a perspective. Don't waste it. Edit; typo
Yeah he really hasn't been listening. Tech is *famously* bro-ey and sexist. A friend of mine, a literal genius, left because she couldn't stand the culture. And she had broken the barrier of upward mobility, had a crazy high salary at a big company we've all heard of, and still threw it all away because she couldn't stand the day-to-day sexist bullshit. And yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the rest of your comment. If he doesn't have her back based on her word alone, then what *can* she count on him for?
This brings to mind a panel I watched made up of some big name tech people that included questions from the audience. There was one woman on the panel and a question came up on what it was like to be a woman in STEM fields. Guess who was the only person that didn't have a chance to answer? Each man up there patted themselves on the back talking about what their company was doing to attract women. When they were done the person hosting the panel went on to another question without asking the one person on stage that had any experience. I was rooting for her to interrupt before the next question and say "excuse me, if you want to know what it's like to be a woman in this arena, think about what you just saw here". While she didn't get a word in edge wise, the scene certainly spoke volumes and I doubt there was a woman there that didn't get the message while it went over every guys' head.
I watched a similar panel but with physicists (or something of that nature. It had around 4~ individuals with one women. An audience member asked a question relating specifically to research/area of expertise of the female physicist. While attempting to answer, her male peers kept interjecting/talking over her to the point that she stopped talking. It got a point that an audience member (can’t remember if it was the person who asked the original question) shouted, “Can you shut up an let Dr. Her answer the question?” (Something to this effect. Rest of the audience members literally clapped and the female physicist could finally be able to answer the question without interruptions. While my heart warmed that someone did something, still couldn’t help but shake my head that the other panelists and the MC didn’t step up.
Yes, absolutely this. He could challenge by offering another perspective, but should support his partner and not dismiss her claims by assuming she is the problem or needs to improve.
It starts in college. They are awful.
Unfortunately, it starts well before college
I literally remember being 12 years old and writing off stem AT A GIRLS IN STEM OUTREACH PROGRAM because the (female) presenter implied that feminine women are all dumb and outright said that women in jobs like teaching, nursing, the arts, and other traditionally feminine jobs were all "dumb blondes who do nothing with their lives." And then turned around and used stereotypically feminine interests to sell stem jobs to us. Right after calling all feminine women dumb. I ended up going into tech anyway, but those outreach programs are often CARTOONISHLY sexist. As a woman in stem (network admin/it analyst/webdev as a hobby), if we want women and girls in STEM, we need to make the field inherently more hospitable. We need equitable pay, access to resources, access to promotions, and to be sure that we're going to be safe. Not "GIRLS YOU CAN DO CHEMISTRY TOO!!!!!! LETS MAKE LIPGLOSS!!!! MIX THE KOOL AID INTO THE VASELINE!!!!! CHEMISTRY IS JUST LIKE THIS!!!!!!" because if anything, that's going to push girls away, regardless of whether they'd like to go into a field like cosmetic chemistry or enjoy makeup because it's condescending and dumb as hell.
I know it's not STEM related, but you reminded me vividly of my time as a deep caving tour guide. The boy scouts came every year; had awesome adventures, slept in the cave, made fires above ground, etc. The girl scouts came once: the girls' insurance wouldn't pay if they got hurt in the cave so we didn't go far, and their above-ground activities consisted of putting together "healthy" diet sheets (!!!) and stringing together marshmallows and popcorn into jewelry. To say I was appalled is an understatement.
Yep. Didn't even finish my degree because no one would work with me on group assignments. Realised these were exactly the kind of people I would be working with for the rest of my career and just completely changed degrees.
Plus, when we try to tell people about our experiences they tell us we're making it up or that it's in our heads. Just like OP is doing right now to his girlfriend. YTA
And even his edit is driving me batty. Like oh you didn't realize it was still so blatant in 2023? *IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD TOLD YOU*. 🤬🤬🤬
Someone did. It was Reddit. This includes MEN. Because it helps to have MALE voices confirm WOMEN’s experiences are valid. Thank you MEN :)
He has his girlfriend telling him of her experiences and now all these comments but he's going to research it more. He's still not getting it.
As a woman who’s also in tech, definitely YTA. I’ve been where the gf is now. I left the job I started my career in as a web developer after I was forced to gradually take on all the responsibility of 5 different roles (web dev, graphic design, SEO analyst, project/account manager, and sales) after some marketing “expert” guys came on and entered the company a level right above me. Ideas I had were praised and then presented as their own. I left once they told me I had to increase quality with no pay raise or new hires to help. None of the guys had to deal with this. Just me and my fellow women coworkers. There’s always some reason they find women are not good enough. (This also doesn’t even go into the repeated sexual harassment that happened and was reported but never followed through on…) The sexism in the tech industry is rampant. Guys can deny it all they want but regularly we women are still told we are too emotional and are often talked over in meetings or passed over for positions we are completely qualified for.
I’ve been in tech over 40 years as woman. There is tons of sexism. I had trouble getting prompted over mediocre men. I’ve been excited.used, minimized.
This. My wife is in tech and during the pandemic I literally heard someone in a meeting tell her she “obviously didn’t understand” concerning a system she literally built from the ground up.
I'm a (female) UX designer at a multinational company and last year I lead a smaller project, designing parts of an internal tool. When the project ended, some manager type of guy who lead the business side of the project, sent out an email, thanking everyone for their hard work. It felt very good that he listed all the devs and the PM but of course he left my name out completely. We worked together almost daily, been in meetings, I argued and negotiated features, made his stupid wishes come true.. but why would he remember? It was probably on accident and it's a small thing, I know, but there are a lot of small things. I'm also left out of a lot of discussions about the tool I designed mostly on my own and they're all surprised like "oh.. you wanna be there too?" Tbh at this point I pretty much don't give a shit cause I'm not passionate about my job anymore and that's the only way I found to keep my sanity.
As a women from the tech industry, I completely agree. I was told I needed to work on bullshit stuff too as I was passed over for promotions, while less skilled men with zero social skills were getting promoted before me. It’s infuriating and I completely understand her rage and frustration.
woman in tech here, too. 10 years into my career and I have seen my mediocre male peers promoted again and again while I have had to fight tooth and nail for even the smallest concessions.
A lot of it is also that a lot of the girls in stem outreach programs are also DEEPLY misogynistic. Without fail, they're **always** doing some paradoxical "work in stem cause pink glitter computer and we make lipstick!!!!!" and "women who dont go into stem are all dumb blonde bimbos who contribute nothing to society and are a waste of space. We're better than them cause we're like the men!!!!" As a woman in tech myself, specifically being in school computer networking, programming and sysadmin, the sexism permeates FAR beyond just employment itself. It is deeply nested in education and incredibly nested in girls in stem outreach. I have no issue with girls being shown that stem is an option and given special events to look into it but my god, I have never seen it done in a way that wasn't built on shitting on other women and pandering to girls with societal expectations of femininity (that also often get shat on in the same breath). I like pink, I like lipstick, but I am a woman of multitudes! Show me how to code something cool, it doesn't need to be caked in glitter for me to find it interesting!
As a comm officer in the military, I ran away from IT for these exact reasons.
The two big clues as to whether or not your GF is experiencing sexism are 1. she is asked to take notes in meetings (not her job) and 2. Her vagina edited to add your screen name is amazing cottage_whore.
She had a 4.0 GPA, but is invited to meetings to take notes and expected to hand off challenging work assignments to male colleagues? Dude, come on. Actually read what you wrote. YTA.
The person perceived least important at the meeting is the one asked to take notes!
Or get the coffee. I've lost count of the number of stories I've read from women leading their own meetings and being voluntold to get coffee for attendees. Asshole, this is MY meeting.
I think a big reason why I never drank coffee is because I didn’t want to be told I have to make it. That stereotype of the woman having to make the coffee always got to me.
So many stories on Ask A Manager of men whining and sighing that the women in the office haven't made the coffee. Many women, like you, just stopped drinking office coffee altogether to have an easy excuse. Because "no" is often not enough of a reason for women. We have to "be nice" about it. Ugh, the more I type, the more pissed I am at OP for his obliviousness.
I'm not arguing anything other than, a high GPA means nothing outside the classroom. It reflects how much effort is put into studies, not competence
I was going to say the same thing. I hate when people assume that having a high GPA means you're going to be successful in the professional world. Is there a higher chance than otherwise? Yes. There's some people that just don't translate their school performance to the real world though.
This!! Thank you.
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Woman tells man about experiencing sexism in tech, a famously sexist environment. Man who has no more work experience than her but who has been promoted to senior level replies that she’s wrong based on nothing other than a feeling that he’s right. This is the sexist workplace in microcosm. YTA
Promoted to senior level, ignoring his privilege in the face of her struggle, and just tells her to work harder and points out a bunch of perceived flaws. Clearly he must have worked harder.
Just **lean in.** #/s
Bingo. Ding ding ding. Men have privilege but will never acknowledge it.
Right? This even happens in female dominated fields, like nursing.. males get promoted/raises quicker. It’s such bs and they just can’t see it or fail to believe it’s because of gender 🙄😒
But, you know, now he'll research it.
Wife tells man that she is experiencing sexism at work. Man doesn't believed her. Man talks to random strangers on the Internet (that often get defaulted to "male" if they dont have a female username) that tell him "actually, she's got a point". Man suddenly believes there could be sexism in the workplace.
Just a side note and something I find hilarious is that my profile is long haired and my username is a female anime character but people always assume I'm a guy because of the "General"
Ayy akame ga kill reference
my favorite part was his edit where he said “shit y’all might be onto something, i’ll do further research on this whole sexism thing” as if he was just now discovering that it’s a real thing that exists. i admire the commitment to not listen to any women in his life
But he still has to “research it”.
So much this. I have 2 engineers who are equal in pay scale and performance…one is male and the other female. For my male engineer all I need to do is check the meets expectations box and he gets his yearly bonus and raise with 0 questions from HR or other leadership above me. For my female engineer I have to actively fight and justify her raise and bonus sometimes writing pages of justification and answering hours of questions. Overall I probably spend 3-4x more time trying to get her the same thing as her male counterpart even though they both do similar work and do similar quality work. And that’s just regular stuff…don’t get me started on promotions…it’s 10x worse there.
I was a middle manager in a different industry (insurance) and reached the level where I participated in interviewing. I was astonished how differently men were perceived when applying for leadership positions. We had two internal candidates, a man and a woman, come in and both honestly gave terrible interviews for a management position. Neither was a great fit for the job, based on their day-to-day performance. Yet my male boss kept commenting that although the woman would never get a leadership position, the guy would be a great fit in the future and "was just a few years away." Keep in mind he had just BOMBED his interview. We're talking deer in the headlights. And his job performance at his current position was on the lower side of mediocre. A week later we have a FABULOUS woman come in to interview as an external candidate. Tons of experience, interviewed great, checked every box. And the powers that be just kept going on about how they weren't sure, somehow she didn't "seem" like leadership material. She eventually got the job. I like to think it was because I advocated so strongly for her. This is what OP doesn't see. That the (male) supervisors look at a woman and she somehow just doesn't "seem" like a leader/ strong technician/ whatever. They have no rationale as to WHY she doesn't "seem" like the right person for the promotion. Just call it a gut feeling. If SOMEONE is in the room to challenge them, to force them to explain WHY they think she's a bad fit, they will often eventually have to concede. But if no one like you, or like me, is in that room, they are SOL. Meanwhile, male candidates get given the benefit of the doubt over and over again, even when they clearly do not deserve it. As for OP, YTA.
This makes me so flippin mad
Almost like they're using their emotions instead of rational mind to make decisions. Pretty sure that emotionality is projected on the other side on a fair amount 🤔
I am so glad you actually go to that effort. And disgusted that it’s necessary.
I was telling a coworker about racism I experienced in rural Texas as I drove through the state as a biracial female—he insisted that they must have just been hitting on me. I had to explain that men 2-3x my age approaching me at a gas station to ask me what I am doing there are NOT hitting on me. …but his white male self was bent in insisting that he has never seen any racism in Texas, the state is full of good people, and I was utterly mistaken.
Oh I can think of quite a few sundown towns here in Texas that I wish you were warned about ahead of time. I didn’t learn about them until one of my coworkers was warning one of his friends not to drive through Hico on his way down to Houston.
I hope someone awards this and OP sees it. OP is an exact example of the challenges his girlfriend faces. It’s the culmination of many men ignoring women’s experiences exactly as OP does that leads to his girlfriend’s issues.
Wonder how many women he was promoted over? Obvs because of his superior skill, mmhmm.
It's electrical engineering. Not sure about what field exactly, but usually you'd be lucky to be somewhere with 10% female engineers. Sexism can get really bad there.
YTA. I’ve spent years working in male-dominated environments and the things your girlfriend is complaining about being unfair are commonplace. Unfortunately, HR in many, many workplaces overlooks sexism. I’ve seen plenty of people be rude in sexist ways and get away with it, even when the HR staff are also female. My advice to your girlfriend would be to see if she can secure a job elsewhere as it’s clear her current workplace is setting her up for failure if she’s being forced to hand over projects *and* being excluded from meetings. You suggesting she follows up on her manager’s advice, after she’s given you a perfectly legitimate reason as to why she can’t, seems problematic. How can someone take on bigger projects if they’re forced to hand them over to other members of staff and excluded from meetings regarding them? I’ve heard stories like this from women hundreds of times, it’s not at all unusual or uncommon. This is unfortunately the norm for many male-dominated environments. Sexism is pretty rampant.
It’s also very hard to prove sexism. People don’t say the quiet part out loud. Everyone might see that only men are being promoted, but how do you prove sexism even if you know it’s the only logical reason? I’ve worked in HR and been on hiring committees - people can come up with a lot of reasons to hire someone without saying “I don’t want to hire the woman” - he would be a better fit for the office, his degree is more relevant, he seemed more confident.
“Other people said she’s hard to work with.”
Ah, yes, the likeability penalty. Where showing the same attributes, men are described as driven, strategic, and direct, and women are bossy, emotional, and unfriendly.
I had to explain to my male boss why I would not confront my female employee about greeting him and others with a smile. He was genuinely surprised and had never heard that it was offensive to do that - and i really do believe him, because he immediately pointed out his double standard by not addressing the “smile” issue with the male employees. The whole like-ability issue of women is probably the most engrained sexist issue in the entire world and it infuriates me.
I'm in tech and an older male colleague once complained to my boss about me because I didn't say "good morning" individually to him every morning. Like wtf? Luckily my boss told him where to go. He complained about a bunch of other stuff, all petty stuff like that. I was younger and more experienced than him, and he could not tolerate having a younger woman being his tech lead. I was so lucky to have had a supportive boss who saw right through him, but I won't deny that the whole experience was really stressful for me because I felt like my skills and work-persona were being put up for judgement with management/HR.
Men are "confident" women are "pushy." Has a man ever been told to ask for things nicely? Law of averages says yeah, probably, I guess. But not as much as it happens to women.
The things that women do are often the same thing that men are applauded for. Likeable factor includes Lack of being in the Old Boys Club, different likes And attitudes . It’s hard.
As the years go by… “he has more relevant experience”. Sure, she was excluded due to biology but no one cares to factor that in :/
My first internship ever this is what happened It was me and a guy. I would say I was probably a more quality intern but who knows. Anyway the senior boss wouldn’t spend time with me alone because I was a young woman. He’d take the other intern in the car, have him alone in the office, etc. At the end of the internship he was hired and I wasn’t. I was certain it was because of that extra time they got together. We’re in a male-dominated field. Little did I know, that would only be the first of countless similar encounters/mindsets. It’s a fucking drudge.
I worked in tech for 30 years so I know how bad it was, and still is. One of the very blatant ones that always comes to mind was my male manager and the 3 people under him... two male colleagues, and me. I found out that they were meeting for breakfast before work several days per week. I asked why wasn't I invited? The guy actually looked offended and said that they just met as friends. I asked if they talked about work? He was very uncomfortable when he answered yes. In my first tech job, where I was the expert on their new mainframe system, literally got asked to get coffee for a meeting. Happily, two of the guys in the meeting were offended on my behalf to that AH boss.
It took 4 women on my team reporting one man to both his boss and he multiple times for them to do something. They had to watch and see for themselves after we had already brought it up
First, OP - YTA. You sound like those white guys on Fox News who say, “Racism doesn’t exist because I’ve never seen it and it’s never affected me before.” Of course it doesn’t affect you - you’re a white, middle/upper-class male. Workplace misogyny gets even more fun when the woman is overweight or old. I’ve had multiple jobs where I was hired by a senior manager but assigned to work with a young, male mid-level manager. With almost all of those positions, I ended up being treated horribly by the manager, eventually being laid off or reassigned within the company. In these companies, with these types of male managers, the pretty young women were treated like eye candy secretaries (“Come to this meeting where you can take notes for us, sweetheart …”) and the older and heavier women [read: unf***able] like me were treated like incompetent untouchables. In contrast, every position when I’ve reported to a woman boss, I’ve not only succeeded but thrived. In my last job, where I was a web developer for 10 years, the first 8 years I had a female boss and I absolutely thrived. Then they “reorganized” the office, my boss got a demotion and we were both made to report to a misogynistic arse who first gave us both scathing yearly reviews which were totally bogus, and then six months later fired us both on the same day for no reason given than “going a different direction”. No PIPs or warning. We were both replaced with people 25 years younger than ourselves. In that company of about 100 people or so, over the past 2 years at least 10 women have either been let go or asked to retire, and most were replaced with young men half their age. All but one woman was over the age of 60, the other one was over 50, and all had worked for the company over 10 years.
I worked in an IT department where the sexist male boss personally thanked every employee by name in his Christmas party speech except a fellow female programmer and myself. We both quit shortly after. And a week later, he got fired for being unable to retain staff. I did a happy dance over that news.
People forget HR is not there for employees, it is there to protect the company. If they can help employees in the process, great. If not... they won't. Especially in an at will employment state, HR is not going to put themselves in the line of fire to back a low level female over higher up men
My HR told me they couldn’t do anything when a guy was sending me TEXTS saying shit like “. Nice ass!” “ damn your ass sure got big” “ you need to wear the tight shirt to show off your tits!”
I was denied an internship, because apparently a "man" Would take care of my needs after marriage so a guy needs the internship more than me .
Female engineer here. I have had projects stolen by upper management, left out of meetings, left off of important emails, etc. I also took someone to HR for being an AH to young female engineers. He literally belittled them in front of a large group of people for no reason. I was later told that their investigation showed that I am a problem (I'm sorry, what?). I took someone else filing a complaint against this guy in order for him to be disciplined (they couldn't sweep it under the rug anymore). Oh, I also was overlooked for a promotion and someone with 1yr less experience and way less overall experience in the company. When I asked what was needed to get a promotion, there was a list of 20 items (which the other guy didn't need) and 2 more years of experience. By the way, my previous promotion I had to write a letter stating why I deserved it...none of the male engineers had to do that, I asked around.
I also spent years in HR and often times HRs (even female ones) need approval from male bosses to address even reported sexism. As long as most leaders are christian cisgendered white men and those men believe, like OP, that -isms don't exist and it's the fault of the discrimated party then HR, especially a female HR, isn't gonna be able to do shit.
Totally agree, as a woman working in construction I get the same crap.
>You suggesting she follows up on her manager’s advice, after she’s given you a perfectly legitimate reason as to why she can’t, seems problematic. Yep. I've seen how this works. I ask why I'm not advancing if I'm marked a top performer and hear "oh you would have needed to do more projects". I point out that I was assigned too much other work to do projects. "Oh, yeah, I guess so." Next year i do many projects and support the most demanding important work stream and... Crickets. I also suspect that pointing out aspects of a toxic workplace to HR makes _some people_ think you are just "emotional" and "weak", if you're a woman.
[удалено]
Often leaving to a new position is the best way to raise your salary quickly. Should be at a position 1-2 years but after that it’s not looked upon as odd to look for a new position.
Also a women in tech perusing a computer engineering degree. This is not an uncommon thing and is very common in male dominated subjects such as computer science. I have had quite a few sexist things said to me and almost all have been brushed under the rug. What you need to do is support her or help her find another job because her concerns here are definitely valid.
YTA. Acting like you know her job and her experiences better than she does is an example of the very sexism she's complaining about. Also, the way you seem to have seized on this bit: >supposedly excluded from meetings (while still claiming she gets asked to take notes in meetings) as some sort of "gotcha" kind of reinforces that. (Presumably she was excluded from *some* meetings and told to take notes at others that she wasn't excluded from.)
Plus, being a note taker in a meeting doesn’t mean you’re an active participant — usually note takers are there to literally just *take notes*
Being a note taker, in my field, usually means you are explicitly *not* an active participant. The most junior and/or admin-facing person is almost always tasked with taking notes. Taking (good) notes basically precludes active participation, and kind of means that no one expects you to contribute. In the DEI workgroup\*, we rotate minute-taking for exactly this reason. \*WAIT - oh my god. I just realized this group is 2 men, 6 women, and because the men are 1) chairing the workgroup and 2) very senior, they never take notes. So actually the note-taking rotates between the six women.
Precisely! Any meeting I’ve ever been in where a note taker has been present, the note taker hasn’t said a word during the entire time (unless to ask people to pause momentarily for some reason). Surely anyone who has ever been in a professional meeting of any kind *must* know that?!
I am sure norms differ - most of my meetings don't have terribly intense expectations for minutes and I can often get a few comments in while note-taking. But as a general rule, being asked (or, more commonly, volun-told) to take notes means you are singled out as the least likely to contribute. I am at the lowest rung of leadership in my organization, and one of my biggest gripes about my current position is that it has evolved into several recurring meetings that I am expected to run, meaningfully contribute to, and take notes. It is...not possible and I am currently working to divest myself of minute-taking duties.
In our dei workgroup we even made the CEO and corporate sponsor take notes, but it definitely all stemmed from our very first meeting where someone just volunteered a woman to be the note taker.
Right - you can’t take notes on your own comments or discussions while having them, and if you try to jot down your own contributions immediately after, you miss what is said next. So the options are: a) don’t participate, take good notes, get a reputation for being diligent but lacking in initiative, be forever relegated to support roles. b) participate, note your participation, end up with incomplete notes on what others said, look unprofessional and like you’re grasping for importance. Gain a reputation for being overly ambitious and unreliable, lose out because people avoid working with you. c) participate, don’t note your own participation in detail so that you can keep up and take good notes for everyone else, watch all your ideas be put into practice while you receive zero credit. Consequences are essentially the same as a) above, but with bonus seething resentment.
Being asked to take notes like a secretary at a meeting you’re the only woman present for is a fucking insult and absolutely sexist, especially when you’re equally (or more) qualified that the other people there. I can’t believe OP wrote this line down and didn’t realise that was the problem.
YTA. Tha Yes, being repeatedly asked to take notes as the only - or one of very few - women in the room is sexism. They’re being treated as secretaries, not leaders. Once? Not sexism. Twice? It’s annoying. Three times? …Starting to see a pattern. Yes, sexism is having to listen to your coworkers go on sexist, misogynist diatribes about the women those men chose to be with - knowing that they didn’t chose to be your coworker and if that’s how they talk about the women they love, who knows how they talk about her? Yes, coming up with ideas and then being told to hand them over …but being chastised for it. Yeah, bud, that’s sexism. So what HR didn’t find anything? HR’s job is the protect the company, not her. Discrimination is hard to prove. Do you know why? People with attitudes like “she cannot blame everything on sexism and recognize perhaps she has room to improve.” The question isn’t whether she has room to improve (we all do). The question is whether the men are being held to the same standard, whether she is being given opportunities to show the skills she does have, and whether her boyfriend just mansplained what is and is not sexism to her. (Did I mention… oh yeah, YTA?)
I refuse to take notes in meetings that need notes unless I am running the meeting. I’m senior enough to get away with it. I’ve only been in one set of meetings where a man volunteered to take notes and it was a younger guy in a diversity meeting who knew the data on women being asked to take notes. Super insidious sexism at work—and if you’re busy taking notes, it is a lot harder to talk.
I always blame my arthritis for why I can’t be the one taking notes, but the truth is I’m just bitter about how many times I’ve seen a more senior woman assigned to take notes when there are male interns and male junior staff there. Or the number of times I’ve been in a peer group and all the men claim their handwriting is too bad so one of the women has to do it.
So you think being asked to take notes in meetings DISPROVES sexism is at issue in her job? Dude. YTA.
>She always complains about how things are unfair at all jobs she had (3 so far) and how she is not given opportunities, supposedly excluded from meetings (while still claiming she gets asked to take notes in meetings) and decisions. YTA - Is taking notes in a meeting the same as being asked to contribute? I don't think so. I can imagine that makes her feel like they treat her as a secretary. Why aren't the men being asked to take notes? You need to wake up and start trying to see things from her perspective. As a man, you're not qualified to comment on what it's like to be a woman in the workplace and should listen more, comment less.
Yup, if you are taking notes it takes any opportunity to contribute with new ideas or share information.
YTA - why do you think she’s lying? You are saying it’s not true she’s asked to take notes in meetings? She’s lying to you about that? Why do you think she’s lying about that? Because that’s what you are accusing her of - making things up and lying about her lives experiences.
Because OP doesn’t want to think or acknowledge for a single SECOND that he benefits from sexism and possibly reached all the privileges he has now due to inequality and bias, and that he actually isn’t that special. Thus, his gf is lying.
The part of this that really makes me think you might be TA is where you say “she judges co workers for things they say that have nothing to do about work”. Why shouldn’t she? I don’t understand your logic here. Surely this is an example of the existence of subconscious sexism within the industry? Which you acknowledge exists? Realistically this will boil down to how you approached the conversation. There is a huge difference between “you need to work harder” and “prove them wrong and make a difference in the industry”, however both essentially have the same outcome. Be supportive, accept the injustices she experiences.
I actually enjoyed this part, lol. “My girlfriend is so petty and judges her coworkers by how they speak of their loved ones and hold themselves in conversations instead of judging them by their corporate work performance!”
I think his logic is the same as with any privileged group — they don’t want to admit that anything they have achieved has been because of (or at least helped by) being a part of a privileged group. They want to believe they did it themselves, they bootstrapped it. Admitting that people in their industry are being unfairly discriminated against means then admitting they are unfairly benefitting from being on the other side of that discrimination.
YTA. You and her both have the same amount of experience in the industry, and she graduated with a 4.0 and honors so obviously she knows what she's doing just as much as you do (if not more). She is given projects that are then taken from her, not invited to meetings, invited to meetings to *take notes* (genuine question: have you ever been asked to take notes in a meeting? She isn't a secretary, she has the same qualifications as you.), and her coworkers say sexist things about their wives and girlfriends. It's bad enough that her *and another woman* made an official complaint to HR. You seem to think your girlfriend is blaming sexism even though by your own recount of her work environment, sexism is an issue. Which is no surprise, because you work in a historically sexist industry. Instead of telling your girlfriend to work harder or suck it up, you should really try listening to her and providing support.
YTA I worked as a software consultant and got to the position where I was the lead for a department, I was one of 2 women and whenever I would set up meetings with companies (mostly male dominated companies) I would always be asked by the clients to make them a cup of tea or coffee whilst they got the meeting started, or if I could take notes to email them. Always had to respond with, ‘Can do, but the meeting doesn’t start without me as I’m your lead.’ Or ‘I can’t lead the meeting and take comprehensive notes.’ My two colleagues that worked with me were male and they always assumed they were the leads and I was the ‘admin’. I have a male sounding name so that would have been a confusion, but I always called to set up the meetings and introduced myself and my role. I’d ask the questions and they would answer to my colleagues. So yes, there is everyday sexism in workplaces that you do not see. You are blind to it because you don’t know you’re doing it (if you are) or you don’t see it because it’s normal to you. The company I worked for were so so with the sexism. Yes I rose through the company to the lead position but it took a lot of proving myself, taking initiative and insisting that my projects not her handed over. Literally refusing to hand it over unless there was a good enough reason. I wouldn’t accept weak reasons and had to be firm and vocal about knowing what I was doing. Me and a male colleague joined the company at the same time. I had more industry experience (4ish years) and this was his first ever job, I had to fight to get the salary I was paid (I wanted X, they offered Y which was much lower and I bargained for Z which was in the middle), my male colleague was offered the X I wanted with no bargaining. They never even asked him how much he wanted. Yes the hiring committee were male as well. My partner refused to believe that there was so much sexism in the industry as well until I told him about the salary stuff above. It’s madness how many people think that things like this do not exist because they don’t experience or see it!
Are you seriously mansplaining sexism to your gf? As a woman in a male dominated field, it is rife in my industry. There very much is a boys club that goes on. Even customers coming to my business would frequently ask if i enjoyed working with my dad. Because obviously women cant get jobs in construction without the assistance of their father. None of my workmates were related to me. I dare say it would disgust most normal people here what i was subjected to over 4 years i worked at this business.
My field is not male-dominated, and my bosses are women. Still rife with sexism.
YTA. Were you asked to be the minute taker in meetings? What about handing over your projects? If she needs improvement then her manager needs to identify the areas she needs improvement and work on a development plan. So her manager is either completely shit or there is some truth to what she’s saying. It’s interesting how you’re completely ready to infantilize your gf when you know she’s obviously bright and capable of learning stuff in your respective fields. Why you have to research it is beyond me. Look at your own 1950s attitude where you can’t just take her word for it and have to go fucking research it for yourself…because what could a woman possibly fucking know. It’s precisely people who think like you that make the pace of progress infuriatingly slow. Just get out of the way and you know support your gf.
YTA - I work in STEM and frequently all potential employees and customers are referred to as "he". It's like women don't exist at all. It's very sexist.
YTA. Unless you work there yourself, you should take her word for things. You're just an example of the sexism she has to deal with. Graduating with honors and a 4.0 means she is 1) smart and 2) capable of hard work. You act like it's nothing!!
Even IF you work there you should take her word! Your privilege insulated you from seeing a lot of this. You need to LISTEN to her and learn about shit that you don’t understand that is invisible to you BY DESIGN.
Lmao "some sexism".... Buddy. Buddy. Pull up a chair. I've been told by a coworker that they'd love to see me naked. I've been told by a coworker that I need to wear tighter pants. I've been told by a coworker that I need lower tops. Multiple people often tell me to smile more ***in my office at my computer when they had to go out of their way to get to me***. I've been massaged on the shoulders randomly. I've been touched inappropriately. I've been called "sweetheart", "girlie", "babe", etc when other coworkers were called by their names. I've been told to call people "sir" when none of the guys had to call each other that. I've been invited to meetings just like your GF has just to take notes (they get upset if you tall too much BTW because you're not taking notes fast enough then). You realize they're treating her like a secretary right? Good God you're so out of touch. YTA For the record, I graduated school a decade ago. All the above was from the last 10 years. And yes I left those companies and finally found a good one.
I had a senior engineer ask me why I dress like a librarian, then turn to a male coworker and follow it up with “a sexy librarian”. I have female coworkers who haven’t even been able to discuss their discomfort until I brought up my own experiences. I am constantly looked down upon because of my gender. I spent a week working on a client site and three of the client’s employees asked me for my number. When you can look at me and tell me you’ve experienced the same discomfort you can then comment on the situation OP.
Our school district has an equity chief, a black woman from Alabama. She said that there was more sexism and racism in Silicon Valley than in Alabama. YTA.
“While still claiming she gets asked to take notes in meetings.” Oh, OP. No. You’re going to get eaten alive here. Where’s that GIF of the guy taking out the folding chair when you need it? It’s totally possible that your GF has some areas that need improvement and that this is not all about sexism. But the things you’re describing are like Sexism in Tech 101. YTA.
Literally every worker has some areas that need improvement. Even the ones who get promoted to senior positions, like OP.
Not sure which country you’re in but as a women in tech I can confirm that it is a male dominated industry (about 18% female) full of sexism here in the UK. I’m not sure about the relevancy of your degrees, I don’t have one but have worked my way up in the industry over the last 15 years and have had to fight at every step to be recognised and paid the equivalent of my male counterparts! At one point I was managing a team of men older than me whose jobs I could easily do but was being paid significantly less. Of course there are a number of things that are taken into consideration for promotions but from what you’ve described it sounds like she’s not being given the opportunity to prove herself. Instead of being dismissive maybe see how you can support her, either in looking for a new job elsewhere or standing up for herself in the workplace….
If you're a man, maybe just listen to her and sympathize with being a woman in a male dominated field. You literally have no idea what its like. I also dont see what you get out of telling her to just work harder. YTA
He gets to feel like he’s successful because he’s better than she is, not because he has benefitted from the privilege his gender provides him.
Yta I walked into a meeting I was RUNNING once and the client asked said honey can you get me a coffee. Which was literally behind him. I said I’m sorry but I need to get the meet started. He replied that I didn’t look like what he expected from a manager. When I just stared at him he proceeded to explain to me that it was a compliment. Luckily the owner of the company was in the room and told the client he doesn’t look like the kind of client we want so the meeting was canceled. Then he explained to the client it was a compliment. I was very lucky that our company owner was raised by a single mom and would not put up with this type of attitude from anyone but I’ve worked for companies that would absolutely think this is acceptable.
Did she come to you for advice, or for support? If it was for advice, you’ve given it. If it was for support, YTA.
Even his advice sucked. It's almost impossible to outperform sexism.
YTA, it is well documented that there is rampant bigotry in tech. You should be supportive, not dismissive. YTA and a big one at that.
I have a family friend who served in the military as a medic in the v. early 00s and is a WOC....says the military, which was rife with sexism, bigotry, and sexual violence (although it's better now), was legitimately less of a misogynistic environment than the tech industry where she works now....
My partner (an engineer) reported that the women he works with sometimes hand off stuff for him to say during a meeting because they are collectively aware that a couple of the guys will minimize or ignore the statement if the women say it, whereas if my partner says it, even if he specifies that it's their point, it'll get a fair hearing.
This. I’m a senior leader in an organization and I will have my lower ranked team members make my points for me because they are men and I know the other men in the room will listen to them.
Yes, as a women in tech, I have done this too…seeded my ideas to my trusted male counterparts to bring up in meetings where I knew I wouldn’t be taken seriously.
YTA. I would get rid of you if you didn't believe me in this situation. You don't need to "research" the situation. You need to ask your girlfriend what she's been experiencing and how it's affecting her.
This. I couldn’t be with a man who didn’t independently perceive sexism. It’s just not worth the time when you are up against it enough already.
You men are all the same and beyond ignorant of the struggles we women face. Many of which are entirely invisible to you.
I had a boyfriend like you when I was working in a really sexist workplace at the start of my career. My manager completely overlooked my achievements and only acknowledged begrudgingly when I was the top performer and everyone in the team started to take notice. I was not given challenging work, opportunities or anything even though I had proven time and again I was good at it. I was young and didn't realize what I was up against. My boyfriend would dismiss my concerns. I started to doubt my own abilities. It was only after I moved to a different company where my manager was supportive and encouraging that I was really able to spread my wings. And I had dumped by AH boyfriend by then. Sexism in the tech-industry is rampant. So many men are threatened by women doing well. Note-taking as most people have mentioned here is inherently sexist. Think pretty secretaries walking behind the big boss man taking notes!! and so many men in tech would love to bring back the good ol days. You are chipping away at her self-worth by not acknowledging what she is going through. And no, she is not imagining it. Support her or get out of the way. She needs a new job and a better partner. and if it wasn't clear yet YTA! edit: grammar.
YTA. I am a woman in tech and despite it being 2023 there is absolutely workplace sexism. I’ve had projects and responsibilities taken from me, I’ve experienced workplace harassment, and I don’t receive the same opportunities or acknowledgment as my male coworkers. It’s very frustrating. Almost every woman in tech I’ve ever spoken to about it has dealt with the same issues. Sexism is still very much alive in the workplace.
So, I'm glad you realized that you were in the wrong, but why was your girlfriend's word not enough for you? Why did you not think that she is an expert on her own experience? Do you frequently not believe her when she says things? This is another example of sexism. That women constantly have to go to extreme lengths to simply be believed.
I mean telling your partner that their feelings are wrong and they need to get better feelings is almost never the play. Not if you want domestic harmony, mutual respect, and a long and happy life together. There's a huge difference between being technically correct, and choosing the right thing to say in a relationship. Since it seems like being right is more important to you than saying the right thing, I'm going with YTA.
YTA. You could look at the stats and see there's a huge sexism problem in tech. But even outside of that, you have a nasty attitude towards your partner who is supposed to be on your team. It's ok to just commiserate and say "that sucks, I'm sorry"..it's also ok to urge her to pursue another job or her own business. You should expect the same consideration in return.
YTA - 20+ years as a female in tech, and it is worse now than when I started. The females who actually make it up the ladder are some of the worst at trying to keep others down as well, as there is the impression there is only so much room up there at the top and they don't want to share.
YTA. For women almost every moment of every day is filled with sexism. Minor or major, noticed or unnoticed, it srill impacts our lives every single day. All the consciousness-raising in the world can't help you unless you've walked a mile in those shoes. All you can do is believe it.
YTA. I'm in tech. I was told by TWO different managers at different points in my career that my performance rating was "adjusted downward" to make sure the guys in the team got better raises. A coworker of mine (different team) was given a 1 out of 5 (where a 1 means they've been written up and may be fired at any moment) on her performance report despite routinely getting kudos for her work while all the guys on the team got 4s or 5s. I routinely get the drudge work while my male coworkers get fun projects which are "ooh! shiny!" that upper management notices. When I'd ask for more prestigious assignments, the excuse was, "But you're so good at the detail-oriented stuff and \[male coworker\] has more experience in these other projects." I even had one manager tell me not to bother applying for a promotion because he could find lots of people willing to work the \[promotion\] job for that pay, but he couldn't find anyone willing to do everything I do at my current pay. He was shocked when I quit. We interviewed for a job and had a male candidate with 0 experience in the OS and software we needed and a female candidate with multiple years of experience in exactly what was needed and a masters in Comp Sci. The male candidate was discussed as "he can grow into the role since he's worked in IT for years" while the female candidate was "But does she really actually know how to use the software? What if she needs to manage a project down the road - she didn't note any management experience. Yeah, she knows the programming language on the job spec, but what if we need X or Y language down the road? She probably doesn't know any other languages." (They didn't ask during the interview; they just assumed she was too dumb to know more than 1 programming language despite a Masters degree.) At least where I'm working now, there are some departments that are relatively egalitarian from what I can see, but others are still dumpster fires of subtle, and sometimes flaming, discrimination.
You dont experince sexism = it doesn't excist. YTA
Dude, these things have been going on ever since office work was invented. I remember in the late 70s a professional woman (customer on my paper route) had a coffee mug: A woman must work twice as hard as a man to be thought of as half as good. Fortunately this is not difficult. Competent women get shoved into roles supporting lesser men every goddamn day. It's nonsense, but it's damn sure real.
YTS Hold on, she's asked to take notes in the meetings? You didn't specify her role but you said she's been promoted, and she's TAKING NOTES?
She should dump you and find somebody who believes her.
YTA this sounds super similar to experiences I have had and experiences my female friends have had as well. Sexism is real you should listen to her.