Since lockdowns began over a year ago, I have attended many online events. I work in engineering where there aren’t many women still. I am getting very fed up of manels when I know there are enough women out there to be asked to chair or present. I am one of them, and I’ve not been asked once. I have three decades of experience. It’s like we don’t exist at all.
As a woman engineer with over thirty years experience, I thought I’d seen it all until a new boss exhibited characteristics of mansplaining, manterrupting and manologuing… all at the same time, regularly, in every meeting. A sympathetic male colleague suggested a couple of good techniques to try to stop it happening, but when I tried them I was accused of poor behaviour. Sod this for a lark etc.
I’m in my 50s and a highly qualified, very experienced professional engineer. A few years ago I was job hunting and one company was initially very interested, I had two or three interviews with them, it was looking good etc. Then a few weeks later I was informed they had found someone more suitable. Well, these things happen. I didn’t think any more of it until recently, when I came across that “more suitable” person on a project. It’s a man, who retired nearly a decade ago (on a gold plated final salary pension), who although is an experienced engineer, it is only in one niche area, and he only has a few years background in my field I.e. at the time of the interview he would have had none, and hence it’s like dealing with a much more junior engineer. Needless to say, this makes me very angry, plus the situation reeks of boys club. Men like that who don’t properly retire when they can easily afford to also perpetuate the status quo and effectively bed-block my generation getting further up the ladder – including women like me who have now been fighting for decades to make even a bit of headway towards the top slots in various patriarchal companies… and they wonder why there’s few women engineers in managerial/board positions. To all those companies who block progress, just for once, try to understand how heartbreaking scenarios like this are.
I’m in my 50s and was in a meeting with a male colleague and a client. We’d be working with them a month or so. The client’s representative, a one-man-band contractor, not only did not realise I was the engineering director, but was stunned to silence when repeatedly told by my colleague that I was. One of the most insulting moments in my long career. The sooner the old boys club retires, the better.
At one point during a meeting, I said, to a male client about 10 years older than me but with 25 years less experience in a subject area where I am an international expert in my field, “you know, I’ve been working with these (technical item) for 30 years. I know what I am doing. Please listen to me”. And he still continued to mansplain at me. The most annoying thing is that the older and wiser and more experienced I get, the more I experience this mansplaining phenomenon…
While I was at University, a colleague from my sponsor company, in a superior postion to me, tried to rape me while on a work trip. I said no, he didn’t hear me, I said this is a bad idea, he told me he couldn’t have kids, that it was fine, I said about his wife, he said it’s fine. I couldn’t get away but fortunately for me, my fight response kicked in, I punched him and swore and kicked and yelled and felt so angry and violated and how dare this person try to take something from me without my permission, I wanted to kill. I was very lucky, someone heard me yelling which meant the person had to leave and couldn’t do anything else. I had a fight response out of fight, flight, or freeze (you don’t get a choice it just happens). Both of us had been drinking when this happened, that doesn’t make it okay and it does not stop it from being attempted rape. I said no, they heard and didn’t care, continued acting for what they wanted anyway. When I talked to my friends about it, most of them told me to go to the police to get the bastard. Enough of my male engineering friends/ colleagues that I talked to said, what was I playing at, I could hurt this guy’s career; he could lose his job just because I couldn’t make my mind up; that I needed to get my act together; no one will believe you anyway; it’s your fault, stop being such a little bitch. Now, I know they were wrong. At the time having been immersed in the sexist, derogatory, backwards culture I believed at least some of what they said. I didn’t report it, I told very few people after that and I essentially had a year of battling between trying not to feel anything and trying not to kill myself because the anti-depressants I started taking damn near made me do it. I pulled my shit together, what the nice counsellor I saw several years after, as the mental health support in the UK is wank, told me is called post traumatic growth and have my docotorate and a successful career in STEM. My attempted rape was less than 5 years ago, I still experience sexist shit most days. Engineering is one of the worst sectors for it and if you’re not willing to keep your head down and let the toxic culture be, then prepare for it to be all the worse. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting! I probably did experience sexism and microaggressions when I was at school, I seem to remember being called a dyke and fat and remarks about my large boobs, but it didn’t really bother me, because I was very lucky that my parents had raised me to believe that I was amazing and it was my body, my rules – no one else got to make me feel bad about it. Unfortunately, when I moved to University and then into work I had a very different experience. I was in a far less liberal part of the UK and most of the compliments I received were along the lines of: that’s a good set of tits to get you in here; lucky you’re not like us, cis white men are the new underprivileged; ah, you’re just like one of the lads really; to name a few. With this culture change I began to slip into habits that I would now say threw my own gender under the bus for the sake of belonging. I thought I really felt I belonged that I could be myself completely, until university or work socials happened and I experienced sexual harrassment multiple times, mainly in the form of bum pinching and groping, colleagues would try and get me to have sex with them and when I didn’t want to they’d try to persuade me and keep touching me, cornering me instead of letting me walk off. Through all of these experiences I began to believe what was spouted back by the group of male colleagues that I talked to, ah you had one too many; ah they had one too many; no harm done; nah it’s not weird, just blowing off steam; god, you’re slutty; lads lads lads. It just became part of the status quo. When at university the gropers included staff, at least one of whom had a wife and children. When I outline it like this it sounds obvious, in your face, but it wasn’t. It was insidious, subtle and daily and it was the culture that likely made that attemped rape possible, it definitely made me so unconfident in the system that I couldn’t report it until almost 2 years later. When I did, no one wanted to know.
On site with customer Customer: “I guess you get anything you want being a woman in this job” I was rather gobsmacked as its normally the polar opposite
Arrive on site to fix something the on site maintainer can’t fix On site Maintainer: “Please don’t fix it, I will never live it down that a girl came to fix my kit when I couldn’t” Me *Feels sorry for him and invents complex defect that only a OEM will find*
Despite working on the project for over 8 months one of the design engineers thought I was a cleaner and contested every design fault I raised. He only started taking the issues seriously when the customer started complaining about the same issues I had raised by this time of course it was too late.
Despite working for a huge global engineering company. My request for a ladies fit Hi-Vis jacket was declined due to the fact that no Ladies fit Items were on the list of approved PPE items.