Poll for women:

In My Humble Opinion
1

Have you been discriminated against because you are a woman?

This seems like it’s nearly impossible in our day and age, and I may be naive in thinking that it’s been eradicated. But I was presented with a situation at school where I was discriminated against because of my gender, and I am wondering how frequently this happens. I signed up for a Cisco 1 class, and on the first day the teacher (male) looked at me and said,
“All the other girls have dropped out of this class, don’t you want to do the same?”
I replied, “No, I want to stay.” And he then commented on the “fact” that girls don’t know much about computers, so don’t be surprised if I didn’t do so well.
Well, this was last year and I ended the class with the highest grade.

So ladies, how many times have you been passed over for a job promotion/ denied a raise/ and otherwise discriminated against because you are female?

-foxy

2

I don’t really feel I’ve encountered that, but it may have been more covert than I realized or not even brought up to my face.

Good on taking the Cisco course… it’s an interesting one. I never finished it though but not because of my teachers… because I realized I enjoyed learning it but didn’t really like it all that much.

3

Can I answer even though I’m not a woman?

I worked at a pretty large ISP here where we had one female tech. There were quite a few situations where we’d be working at the same time and she’d have to transfer callers to me who didn’t believe that a woman would be able to help them. The joke was on them though since she was far better than I was. Also, she invariably answered the phone “Welcome to tech support. Yes, this is tech support.” Funnily enough her biggest problem seemed to be little old ladies.

In my high-school computing class (which had no girls in it) the teacher at the beginning of the year said that if we had any problems we probably all had fathers or older brothers that could help us. I thought that was particulairly funny since my gramma was learning how to use a computer while my grampa wouldn’t touch one and my mum is the top person in her field in Australia (and it’s to do with computers) while my dad fritzes his every day almost.

4

I mainly find that I just get the minor, irritating things at work (I do some field work out in the boonies). E.g. “here, let me lift that for you,” “wow, I’m surprised you maneuvered the van past that mesquite and still made it through the gate,” “I assumed you’d need to go back to the bunkhouse to ‘use the facilities’” etc, etc.

One summer I worked at an aluminum plant as the only female on shift. The most blatant sexism was when one of the other crew members commented that I’d cook the steaks at our steak feed “since I was the woman.” I said I did better operating forklift. :smiley:

It’s usually just a matter of time to earn respect and the comments die off. I know they’re well meaning, but still.

5

I used to work for an auto parts wholesaler. When I answered the phone I would get asked for the parts department. I told them they wouldn’t get any closer than me!

6

In 1992, I went to a dealership to buy a Jeep Wrangler. My husband was with me but I had researched the model that I wanted and knew what was standard and what I would have to pay for and how much each addition should cost.

But I could not get the salesman to talk to me for more than a few seconds. I had to keep reminding the salesman that I was the one making the decisions and paying for the car. When the discrimination became so blatant that we were getting nowhere and the salesman was giving incorrect information, I told him that I could not do business with him.

I returned home and went back to the same dealership another night and talked with another salesman who was terrific. We worked out a deal and I bought the car. The financial manager gave the papers to my husband to sign first. Without thinking, he signed and I signed beneath his signature. (The money WAS coming out of a joint account – but my husband uses one joint account and I use another joint account).

So all information and reminders and specials and recalls having to do with my car were sent to my husband. I tried several times to get that information changed so that the mail for my car was being directed to me. Each time I was assured that it was taken care of and would change. It never did.

When I traded the Jeep in for a red convertible (hey, I’m moody…), the contract was again drawn up with my husband’s name first. The financial manager LIED and said that it had to be that way since his name was first on the Jeep contract. The same thing happened when I traded that car in for a newer model.

I gave up. But a woman called me to check to see how my husband was enjoying his new cars. (He had bought one of the same day.) When I told her of my eight year effort to get my car in my name, she said that she could take care of it in no time at all.

(Sigh) Now information on my husband’s car comes to me and he still gets information on my car!

All of this happened because these jerks still think that the only thing I should have a say about is the color. And they don’t like it when their stereotypical thinking is challenged.

7

Another man reporting his observation of it.

Many years ago, just after college, a friend of mine was looking to buy a new car. She knew the reputation that many dealers have about looking down on women, so she asked me to tag along. Even though we made it clear that she was the one buying and I was just there, several of the salesmen persisted in talking to me, despite the far-away look in my eyes.

She ranted all the way home every time that happened. I’ve seen more recent incidents, but that was the most humourous.

8

We had a careers fair here last week (which my supervisor insisted I go to!), and I was attempting to talk to a representative from one of the companies (I shan’t name names!). Anyway, he talked to my (male) friend, and completely ignored anything and everything I tried to say. :mad:

An equally irritating one a couple of years back - I’d gone back to a friend’s place, with a couple of male upper class snobs (to put it bluntly) after an event at the Union Society (Cambridge debating society). Anyway, this isn’t my house or anything like that, but one of them actually insisted that I go and make the coffee, and leave the ‘men’ to talk in peace. Grrr… Luckily, my friend defended me, and told these two that he’d make the coffee, and if they didn’t want to talk in front of me, then they could just get out of his house. :smiley:

9

Back in 1992 when I was pregnant with my first child and still working on my B.A, I had a professor tell me that I should just stay home and take care of my pregnancy. I asked him if he felt that Dr. xxx (a woman and chair of his department) would share his view. I got an A in the class–which I’m pretty sure I earned and wasn’t just to keep me from filing a complaint about him.

The only other time I’ve ever noticed anything really blatant was at my SO’s recent grad school reunion. He has an M.A. in software engineering and the class was predominantly male. I was the only woman sitting around a table with his former classmates and we’re all chatting when one of them leans over to me to apologize that the conversation is probably way over my cute little head. I just giggled and said if he talks real slow at the big words I may just be able to keep up. Needless to say, he was very embarassed and the other guys just lauged at him for being such an ass.

10

Just like SilentGoldFish, OK if I chime in?

I had a very similar experience. My boss (a woman) took a tech support call from a customer. She gave him a solution, at which he said “can I talk to somebody else, please?”
She put me on the phone, I asked him the problem, and answered almost word for word the same as what she told him.
He thanked me and hung up.

11

I am a guy, but this is still sorta on topic. I haven’t flown with both my kids (5 and 2 1/2) yet, but occasionally flew alone with my oldest before the youngest was around, or was very young. People were incredibly helpful, offering to help carry something, entertain the child, etc. It was very easy to kick the flight attendants out of the galley to change her poopy pants on the plane. When I had to change her diapers, I was getting all these strange approving looks.

I sometimes offer to help a harried mother travelling singly, but I don’t think they get as much assistance as a man. I guess its just not as common.

12

Plenty of times…including a case of quid pro quo sexual harrasment, followed by putting me in a job where I made less money - nice. Then later, at the same company, discovered that all six men who had held the position were paid better than any of the four women who had held the position. Also at that company we had a diversity meeting where a Vice President came right out and said he would promote a man over a woman because women “just go have babies and quit their jobs.”

But I really chimed in for the pregnancy story. I was the boss and I took one of the consultants who worked for me out to lunch. I was about six months pregnant and we were chatting about training opportunities. I said that it was likely that they would send me to a conference in the Spring - and that the previous year I had declined to attend and sent one of his peers instead - and I thought I’d probably go every other year, and let the opportunity fall to one of the staff in the years I didn’t go. So he decides now is a good time to lecture HIS BOSS on the benefits of breastfeeding and how I couldn’t possibly leave the baby when she was eight months old for a week because I’d still be breastfeeding. And perhaps it would be best anyways if I’d be a stay at home mom. (By the way, he wasn’t fishing for conference attendence, the conference was not in his technical field).

Way to impress the boss! Make her baby feeding choices for her, and then decide its appropriate to tell her she should stay home with the baby! Not discrimination, since he had no power over me, more a testament to the cluelessness of some people.

13

I work in technical theatre. I know my way around a harware store and I can use and often fix most power tools. Many men seem to find this incompatible with the fact that I come equipped with breasts and long hair.
Everytime I walk into a hardware store, I get the “Oh, can I help you find something?”, followed by the explanation of why I don’t want the thing I’m looking for, I want something else instead. This includes the places I go at least five or six times a month. You would think that after a couple of visits they would realize I’d learned my way around, but no. This is especially irritating in light of the fact that most of my male friends really want this sort of help, but can never find it.
Also, my days are filled with “Let me help you carry that” and then someone picks up part of my carefully balanced load, nearly tipping me over.
So, yes. I’ve experienced sexual discrimination.
Sorry for the long rant. I’m in a bad mood. Just got back from Home Depot.

14

I’m not sure I consider it “discrimination” if I’m not materially disadvantaged by the attitudes other people express, but here are my stories…

When I was in college, I was hired by an environmental consulting firm to take groundwater samples. This required me to drive around a very large Midwestern state to various gas stations, where I opened up monitoring wells and collected the samples. This was dirty and sometimes difficult work. Oftentimes, the wells would be rusted shut and I would have to bash on the lid with a hammer until it shattered to open the well, or occasionally a well was buried (one time, under a foot of hard-packed dirt and gravel!) and I’d have to dig it out. I’d make my own schedule and sometimes take trips that required me to be out overnight.

The firm I worked for was extremely cool; the engineers and geologists never once treated me differently because I was a woman. But the attitudes I encountered at the job sites were sometimes quite amusing…particularly since I’m a rather tall and sturdy-looking female.

Once, I was trying to cut a Master lock off a monitoring well with bolt cutters (no easy task) because we didn’t have the key. A feeble old man tottered over and asked me if I’d like for him to try to cut it off. Ridiculous! I was an able-bodied twenty-year-old; he looked like he was pushing 90 and probably couldn’t have snapped a twig in half. But he assumed because he was a man, that he was stronger than I was.

Once, I arrived at a gas station to find it was under construction. The foreman of the crew came over to ask me who I was and what I was doing. When I told him, he snatched the map of the monitoring wells out of my hand and sent his men off to go locate and open the wells for me. Because they didn’t offer to collect the samples for me, I assume that the reason was that they didn’t think a “little girl” like me would be any good with maps or digging or stuff like that (as opposed to them having concerns about me being on the job site while they worked).

And I guess I find it extremely stupid that the male lawyers at my firm are always letting me on the elevator first and offering to escort me to the parking garage at night, though I understand why they do this. It does make me want to laugh, though, when fragile, tiny, effete little men half a head shorter than me offer to serve as my escort.

But I’ve never been in a situation where I knew that I wasn’t getting paid as much as a man for the same job, or where I was passed over for good assignments, or anything like that.

15

Some men have made assumptions/implications in regard to what I as a woman might be capable of. One in a furniture store implied that I’d never be able to assemble the thing I was buying without help. (FTR, I have assembled task chairs and computer work stations, as well as programmed TVs, VCRs and universal remotes.) I am also quite “Techie.”

16

I once applied for a job which I was absolutely perfectly qualified for - I’d just spent two years doing exactly the same thing for a different company. After I applied I was told by several people who either worked, had worked or knew someone who worked for that company that the person who I would be working for had flat-out said he wouldn’t hire women for positions on that level. Sure enough, I didn’t even get an interview, although a guy I know with less experience than me did and the job eventually went to a guy with a lot less experience than me.

Obviously I can’t prove it was discrimination, but I think I’ve some grounds for suspicion :mad:

17

Too many times to mention! I could write a book. I graduated HS in 1973 and that was also the year the Equal Rights Ammendment failed to pass and the right to legal abortion did. Guess we couldn’t have both.

18

I make several thousands less than a man with the same job title, less time at the company, less width and depth of knowledge and less current knowledge.

When I was first in my current job, I was approached by one of the secretaries telling me that I had to take my turn at the switchboard, that all of the girls took turns relieving the receptionist during brakes and lunch. I flatly refused and she promised to get me in deep trouble. I went to my boss (a man who has never treated me less because I am a woman but unfortunately did not set my salary or have final say on my raises) and he said that I was to refuse to do anything like that and to use as my guide whether or not he would be expected to do the task in a similar situation. He had a discussion with that secretary’s boss. I was approached for similar things a few times after that but refused to do them of course.

19

A white friend of mine went to buy a car with his white parents and his Chinese (genetically, anyway) wife. He said the salesman shook his hand and his parents’, and never did shake his wife’s. He ignored her the entire time. The simple rudeness of people sometimes amazes me.

They dumped the place and went over to another dealership. They told the broad outlines of the story to the salesman there, and he said, “Yeah, they give us a lot of customers.”
(I think in this case it was a combination of “just the little woman” and “not WASP” attitudes.)

20

I’ve been teased about being a “dumb girl,” but this was by a teacher who thought I was brilliant and still considers me one of his star students several years later, so I’m fairly sure he was joking. I was the only female in the physics class at the time, though, and wasn’t quite sure how to take it. Threatened to bash him over the head with my calculator or textbook, but I’m not sure he heard me. :slight_smile: That’s pretty much it, though. I guess I’ve been lucky.