Being passed over in favour of a male colleague to work on Artificial Intelligence topics despite him having zero qualifications and experience in the topic. Me – Oxbridge PhD in it, 5 years working directly in the field including a stint advising a G7 leader on it. Seemingly a penis is the more important qualification!
I got a promotion a few years ago to a high level leadership position in my company. About two weeks later I had an anonymous note left on my desk stating that I had only gotten the position because I was sleeping with my boss (which, of course, I was not). I had encountered sexism before of c but it wasn’t until I reached this level that I realized just how much women in leadership positions are a challenge to our patriarchal belief system and how strong of reaction it will provoke.
I coached on a ski racing team for a couple years after quitting the sport. I was in charge of the younger children and overseen by another male coach in his 40’s that had briefly known me during my time as an athlete on the team. At the beginning of COVID I received a drunk call from him mid-day explaining all of the things he wanted to do with me. Horrified, I immediately reported it to my boss, who told me something would be done. After being continually harassed by texts and calls from my supervisor and nothing being done, I told my boss I didn’t want to work with him anymore and didn’t think he should be around children. After I was fired for that request, a lawyer got involved and an agreement was reached that included me having to sign an NDA. After all of this, they rehired that same coach back the next year and with the agreement and NDA, there is nothing I can do besides write a strongly worded letter to the team administration.
I have a male coworker who calls himself my “superior” despite us having the same level position. He repeatedly makes this comment and undermines my decisions at work in front of our clients. This behavior makes me feel frustrated and honestly makes me question myself at some moments because it occurs so frequently.
my female boss thinks that the women that we work with create more drama and less efficiency based on the drama.
(Sweden) Sexist comments and jokes at work. Once I was asked if I was single at work. When I was younger around 14 – 15, the boys in school touched me and other girls and even and some beat us.
Working through transferring my pension to move from work scheme to an external one. I am female and always have been. Every single letter I receive confirming status starts with Dear Sirs whether addressed to me or the processing company I know it appears petty but it indicates the attitudes that persist across the business at all levels that this does not matter. Unbelievable in 2023.
I once hired a celebrity chef (not GR) much loved by the UK public to front a campaign in the UK. I was a huge fan. He acted odd from the start – he sat on his phone (old Nokia) in the corner and didn’t communicate with us. I was leaning against the kitchen counter, and he got up and walked past me, facing my back and rubbing his penis against my bum… I couldn’t believe it. It was the only communication we had.. He didn’t say excuse me… It was so startling and confusing that I didn’t say anything then. I had projected all these nice attributes onto him, so I doubted whether it was intentional. But clearly, it was as there was plenty of room to pass by. To this day, I can’t believe this man portrays himself as beloved of the nation, but I tell everyone I know that this isn’t the case, and unfortunately, he is a bad one.
One workplace was really toxic. I gave my boss (the CEO) a presentation about my job on his very first day in the office. Afterwards, he stared at my breasts and said, “I’ll remember you” – no comment about my work at all. In another incident, he called me at 7:30 am and said, “I was hoping to catch you as you stepped out of the shower.” He was utterly incompetent, racist and homophobic, as well as sexist. I occasionally stood up to him. On one occasion, he brought us into his office to share a video of his niece marrying a black man where he mocked the marriage and the black man – I was the only board member who called him out and said he was racist. I was horrified that everyone else remained quiet. After turning the organisation around and winning awards, he came after me and denied me the pay rise I deserved. HR had to step in. However, HR also told me she was batting off daily complaints about him, e.g. smacking his assistant’s bottom after he got them to go under tables to plug in stuff. On my last day, we had a run-in, and he refused to write a reference. I wrote it myself, and then he made personal remarks about me, and I ran out of the room in tears, tripped over a large doorstop and broke my wrist. His response was to get that doorstop painted over quickly. At the same time as this, I had another director saying things to me like, “I’m going to have to smack your bottom” and “If you come to me with your knickers around your ankles”,… he also drunkenly raged at me at an event about something he did wrong… projecting. I complained to HR, and HR told him he made my life worse – coming into my office, picking up The Sun and flicking to page 3. The same director threw a chair at another female director for refusing to give him a budget…. None of these men were punished. For a long time, I thought it was me and that I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to them… but for four years before these men came into the office… I was fine, happy and doing a great job – my work did not suffer during their two-year tenure, but my mental health did. And if I knew then what I know now, I would have left within six months instead of sticking it out.
I work in tech research and I was doing an internship at a very big tech company. There were only men in my team, and most of them would undervalue and dismiss any ideas I had (even if I was an intern, I was a the last year of my PhD and I had year of previous working experience). But I am a woman who didn’t have computer science as her first career, and I’m also latina. In one meeting in which I made a criticism to next year’s planning, one them of them told me that “once I had worked for a start up I would understand better how planning worked”. I had worked for 3 start ups already before that internship.