Anon
I work in the NHS and what I do is important for patients. In a work conversation a male colleague who is highly respected and educated commented about how he had been thinking about and really appreciated my cleavage from a private social event that had happened. Not that I should have to justify myself, but I wasn’t even wearing anything that revealing, it was just a dress that was more fitted than my usual workwear. Then I feel cross with myself because even if I had been wearing something more revealing, nothing would give him the right to comment on that. These are some of the emotions I am feeling tonight. I can’t sleep thinking about it but I really need sleep because I am exhausted and have work deadlines. Angry Pissed off Guilt/shame/self blame Anxious Fed up Scared Responsibility and weight of future women to stand up and say not ok Responsibility to honour the courage of previous women who have stood up and said it’s not ok Shocked he would think this is ok, that they have the right to do this Burden/ I have a lot of stress and going through some significant life events right now and honestly don’t need this extra shit to think about, to think about how to uphold the responsibilities, stand up for myself but also protect myself from potential future consequences of doing it. Internal arguments about whether I should do something, bargaining -maybe they didn’t mean it, maybe they don’t realise (although how someone who is very highly educated doesn’t realise) Honestly this is the tip of the iceburg. It is a surprisingly direct l comment that I am able to explicitly label as sexist. A lot of the behaviour at work is difficult to label sexist because it is insidious and individually you probably can’t label each item as sexist but when you think about it together, you think it is. It is a common feeling amongst the women at work. Senior leadership know it is and yet have not done anything meaningful to tackle it. I’m not sure they know how. How do you tackle something that is so entrenched in people’s behaviours? There is a lot of male power by middle and older me , there are maybe 5-10 men in non-senior positions in a staff of a few hundred. Although I have large experience in an area, I was ignored, undermined and publicly criticised by senior male colleagues on a project team. I have been given excellent appraisals so this leads me to think it must be not be to do with my skill set but bias against my gender and age. Just tired of dealing with this extra emotional burden on top of trying to do a good job. .