management

Sue

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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.

Lisa

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The (female) director of my team in work was at a work conference last week. Pat Mitchell (and incredibly accomplished American journalist who has been a lifelong advocate for women and girls) held a talk there. The director’s only comment on the talk was that she could barely focus on what was said “because Pat has had so much work done on her face”. This director is also a leadership member of the work’s diversity & inclusion council. Ladies, lets be kinder to each other – Don’t discount a lifetime of amazing work based on their appearance.

PJ

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I used to work backstage in theatre. I remember a male technician telling new crew at the start of a “get in” (set up and building of a set) that we should all work together, that sometimes due to time pressure (there is always time pressure) that he might be brusque but it’s just to get things done and that it meant no disrespect. I remember the crew under him accepting it, being cool with it and one even thanked him for saying what he did as usually that behaviour happened all the time as part of the culture, but no-one acknowledged the people on the end of it. It seemed to work so well, that I decided to use the same approach. It went down like an insult. I had complaints (from men) made against me. But get this, all I had done at that point was made the same intro that I’d heard a man use successfully. I hadn’t been brusque with anyone, I hadn’t said I would be brusque with anyone – all I had done was acknowledged in advance that sometimes time pressures meant that niceties went out the door. It came with the job. I was forced to apologise to these stagehands and it undermined me. It put me back in my place. As the only woman on the crew not involved in dressing, I was treated completely differently. Apparently a woman acting like a man was intolerable to them.

PJ

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Last year a more senior manager took over a project I had been leading on and totally sidelined me so she could force her agenda on it. She tried to sabotage what I was doing but keep me doing the organising. I appealed to my m ore senior manager reiterating why I was the lead, what the benefits were that he had agreed to. He failed to support me saying that he had spoken to her.When I pointed out that this no longer met the aims for the work I was doing that he was Champion for, he said “I don’t want to deal with any hissy fits”. I was so shocked, it had the desired effect of shutting me down. I did email him later pointing out that the use of the phrase was unacceptable and unfair (I was being professional and calm). He apologised, but the fact remains, if I had been a man, he would never have used that phrase. It was so humiliating as it was done on an open office floor.