Women’s thoughts?
Dear Women using this forum: Please share your stories and anecdotes about your workplace. Do you feel you’re treated equally, better, worse than men? How do you perceive the discussions here from the viewpoint of gender?
Management pretends to treat women equally but doesn’t for real. There is a strong bias.
Blind can a pretty toxic place for women. The relationships topic makes me especially sad. There are so many threads where women are treated like sexual objects to be conquered, rather than human beings worthy of consideration and respect. This isn’t the only place this happens, and not everyone does this, but it’s enough to be fucking exhausting. Why am I still around? I think having an anonymous forum can actually be a valuable source of support on sensitive topics, instead of a cesspool of shitposting by people who can’t rise above the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. I like to think think that I can help make this place just a little more welcoming to people genuinely looking for advice rather than trolling. Who knows though, will probably just end up ragequitting and deleting the app eventually.
I feel I am treated equally. 😋
Girls, I can recommend you "A Good Time to be a Girl" by Helena Morrissey. No, it's not a pro feminist book written by a crazy one who hates men. It's a very nice book written by a wise and experienced person and may give you a new perspective on some things :)
Bet you guys anything this comment was written by a dude
I wish I could say that I see no bias. I wish I could say I am treated well, and not subtly insulted. I am all for equality, in every sense, and would have been the happiest if gender was so consideration in professional interactions. However, reality is different and bitter. Especially in a developing nation, when most of my colleagues are married to lesser educated, house wives, and are not used to the idea of a woman as a colleague. Many a times, conversations become condescending, as if I do not have the permission to be "assertive" and then labeled bossy. There might just be a minor percentage of guys who are openly insulting in their interactions, but my problem with the others is that they are silent spectators to ill treatment. Infact, when they are in their group, they endorse the aggressor, as it's free entertainment in their otherwise boring life. Taking the risk of offending people here, I think the recent Gillette ad carries a very good message. Instead of using safety in numbers, men being in majority should ensure that a conducive environment is created, where the bad fish thinks twice before showing his true colors, for fear of reprochmemt, and in general being looked down open for his bad behavior. I do not support diversity hiring, or lowering bars for hiring women, but those who deserved and got in should atleast be treated fair? In my team for example, four women left recently, out of an already low number, and I can see how they were treated, cornered, not given an opportunity. Some were fired, and some resigned out of self respect. How does this situation give any confidence to me - that if I keep my head low and just work, I wouldn't be given the short end of the stick! < /woke >
You don’t have bias against people from developing nation? Not all men from “developing nations” are married to less educated women who are housewives. That’s a pretty broad and insulting generalization that I strongly disagree. It’s amusing that you make biased statements while expecting others around you to not have bias? Maybe the women that left your team did so for greener pastures they were after all working for Oracle. How hard is it to find greener pastures?
This is not a generalisation, rather an observation from the specific sample space around me. I know that all men from "developing" nations do not do so, as I am myself in a developing nation. However, at times a team reflects the managers broad perspective and thinking, birds of feather flock together. I know for a fact that none of the women left for greener pastures. I do hope they find greener pastures though! Please don't take things personally, as my experience and sample space might be different from yours. I just spoke of my experiences :)
There were a few times I got offended by men’s behavior in the workplace. I was in my 20’s. I was sensitive and didn’t know how to respond. Now that I’m the boss, I have employees who complain to me about seemingly benign comments. Following up on (what I consider minor) harassment complaints is incredibly costly and distracting to the org. while the guy is corrected in his behavior, it just tears down trust and respect among employees. People are left to wonder, can I even talk about my weekend or compliment a colleague on her hairstyle? Our private lives are about relationships, motherhood, girls days out, and man caves. We can’t expect that the moment we walk into the workplace suddenly our genders disappear. Certainly the work men and women do should be viewed equally I think women are often more productive than men in the same roles, and men do seem to get away with it more. I think it’s a confidence gap. If a guy pulls you into an elevator or an office, or asks you out multiple times- by all means report it. If a guy tells an off color joke or says “I like your shoes”, shake your head, or say thank you, or walk away. Just please don’t go running to HR.
I honestly rarely (would say never, but my memory is not that good to prove that) think of me in terms of me being a woman and some other people - men, whenever some situation comes up it's more like some kind of people vs another. Like if someone was treated badly, my mind looks for some outside factors or something that we have impact on. Biological factors like gender, race, age (assuming we're not talking about toddlers) are usually an excuse people use to prove they had little to no impact in the given situation. Of course there are exceptions, but I'm just talking about an average case from my life experience. I once attended a tech talk, where I was the only girl among 200+ people. The speaker first joked that he finally picked the right topic, so that the diversity score for his talk beats all records, and I thought it was funny. But then later he wrote me a huge email apologising for being so blunt and rude, and that he'll try to be more diplomatic in future 🙂
Thank you for your valuable perspective. I really like that gender does not play a role for you. Out of curiosity, why do you refer to yourself as a “girl”?
Haha, gender does play role for me, not so much at workplace though. As for the girl, that's just one of the ways to identify gender, I didn't think long on the wording choice.