conversation

Anita

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Sad but true, myself and another female work colleague came up with the idea of naming our printers in our office after football managers – as we are both football fans. Another member of the centre asked why the printer was now being called Klopp. As a Liverpool FC uber fan, I was about to explain about the current Liverpool manager and how Liverpool have recently won the Champions league, when I was interrupted by a male work colleague, saying yes Nic (my male line manager) can tell you about that. I started to explain again – and was stopped again in mid-sentence. “No no – Nic can tell you about that, he knows more about football than I can.” Needless to say I am fuming. And I find that incident more frustrating and infuriating than any other technical workplace issue I’ve ever had in my life!

Suzie

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When I told my friend who is a man about an everyday sexism incident and he said “it wasn’t sexism” and I had to tell him that as a woman I think I can recognise sexism when I see it…

Sarah

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I keep telling myself this isn’t a big deal, that he’s just trying to be nice, that he’s making an effort to understand. But, I don’t know if that’s true. I have a coworker that can’t seem to have an appropriate conversation with me. It’s just little differences between how he talks to me and how he talks to our male coworkers. Instead of asking me how my day is going, he asks me how my son is doing. One day I came to work with a wrist brace. He asked me if my husband is irritated about having to “help” with chores (because of the brace). I try to explain that my husband and I are partners in everything, but I shouldn’t have to. Every casual conversation shouldn’t start with an assumption based on my gender. I get the feeling if any future promotions were up to him, I would be out of the running. Not because he doesn’t like my work, but because in his eyes my place is at home.

Anon

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During a dinner that hosted the company I work for and many other partner companies. I spent time chatting to many different people, as you would expect from a function of this type. On a whole, everybody was friendly however, one male colleague, the director of a company that we work with on a daily basis, kept looking at my body more that at my face when we were chatting. We spoke about my plans to peruse postgraduate education and my ambitions the future. The following day he offered the services of the company to me, should I need them, when I relocate later in the year. Do I take him up on the offer and hope that the intention was purely to provide help for someone trying to better themselves. Or do I decline, due to the thought that if I had worn a loose fit top and trousers, the offer may not have come my way.