Sue
I currently work in government and bring a lot of experience to my work. I’ve had to fight to get access to the documents I need just to be able to do my work. Because of the ground-in sexism in the agency I work in, it’s still often easier to get access to documents through other agencies than it is to get them directly from male execs in my own agency. I’ve been told that I can’t have access to documents written within my own agency because of resins like ‘I wouldn’t understand’ or because they’re ‘too confidential’ etc. But all of the documents we access (for a particular task) are confidential and they are really never hard to understand. Sourcing the documents from others has added hours to every working week and shortened the time I, and my team, have to look at documents and to provide advice. While I’ve been able to set up processes to ensure my team gets access to most of the documents we need, I still have to ‘kick up a fuss’ to get others. But me kicking up a fuss is seen as the problem, not the male execs gatekeeping information. The working hours that sexism adds in to every working day is just so so tiring.