Tell me how I, as a female in the corporate world, can gain respect from males in my industry.

In My Humble Opinion
41

If someone asks you to make coffee, they’re assuming you can spare the time it takes to do so. Just let them know you can’t (and if you can, for god’s sake, don’t tell people! Find something useful to do, quick!). If it’s your direct supervisor, however, it’s probably best to just do it.

For more involved projects (“Could you make 50 copies of these handouts?”, “Could you type up these meeting notes really quick?”, “Could you put together this mass mailing for me?”), it depends who’s asking:

If it’s someone who’s not in your department and who’s not a superior :
“Sorry, I’m pretty busy right now.”

If it’s someone in your department or a superior who is not your immediate supervisor:
“Sorry, I’m pretty busy right now. You’d have to check with [supervisor] and see if he/she can spare my time.”

If it’s your direct supervisor, and such requests are seriously time-consuming and preventing you from doing your other work:
“I’m happy to, but as you know, I’m also working on Project X right now. I know you needed that completed by Y date - what’s your higher priorty?”

In short, always make your own work your primary concern. If you have time to help others, and it’s something that’s reasonably within your job description, great. But never put aside your own job to help someone else do theirs.

42

As did mine. Perhaps it’s an unavailable option on the smaller models.

43

Well I hope you’re very good at it. A lot of people can smell uncertainty or nervousness from a mile away, even if you’re not exhibiting any obvious signs like quivering or stammering speech.

So I just went to my sent box to look at how I sign e-mails. A few observations:

I had to sift through a lot of crap before I could find professional correspondence. I’m not goofing off, I swear!

Seriously now, getting to the point, I seem to reserve the niceties for the initial contact. If I’m requesting something from someone else, I almost always end with something like “Thank you for your help, and please let me know if you have any questions.” If they need something from me, I say some variation of “Please let me know if you need anything else.” If there’s back-and-forth after that, I just answer the question they ask, or if I need something from them, I just tell them what I need. Sometimes I’ll throw in a “Thanks” at the end. I don’t really go for the fluff, am direct, and throw in some occasional pleasantries just for kicks. The tone I’m getting when I look at these is friendly, but to the point. The tone I get from your correspondence (I’m guessing, of course, never having read them) is just to the point. People like friendliness. Don’t ask me why. I can take it or leave it.

44

Excellent advice here. I love working with men because of this - they’re usually cut-and-dried when it comes to getting the work done, then we can tell fart jokes after that. My advice would be to be careful of the other women - they’re where your real problems will come from.

My husband works in the construction industry in Calgary, too (hey, maybe we all know each other! :slight_smile: ), and from the things he’s told me, the construction industry is about 20 years behind other industries in women’s rights. It actually gets me a little hot under the collar when he talks about how the women at his company are treated. Old boy’s network is very much alive and well, and if you’re seeing it, you’re probably not imagining it.

I don’t think this is just your perception. I usually work in accounting; when a company needs someone to answer phones or make copies or make coffee, they come to accounting and ask the first female they find there to do it - never the men. I agree with everyone else; if you’re not in a coffee-making role, don’t do it. That’s something you’ll have to be vigilant about for a long time, so I’d get comfortable with it.

I think realistically you are probably in a good place and will be treated well overall. I also think that you’ll have a few battles to fight that a man in your position wouldn’t have to, but that’s life. You’ll also get perks that a man wouldn’t get (you can bow out of all the testosterony stuff). It’s up to you to figure out how best to be a woman in a male-dominated field.

45

Don’t be part of the problem; present a better solution.

Example: In the job I referred to in my previous post, the boss made everyone work on Thanksgiving (four double time pay). For lunch that day, he wanted to serve turkey dinner and all the trimmings to the crew, which was a nice gesture. He turned to me and said, “Hey Dogzilla, if I buy the turkey, will you cook the meat?”

:smack: What am I, your mother?

I suggested an alternative without even saying no or addressing the fact that possession of ovaries do not necessarily make me a great cook. I happen to be an awesome cook, but not because I’m a chick. I said, “Well, Duane, you know that the Bi Lo will do that for you, right? Just call up the deli department, tell them how many people you want to feed. They will make the entire meal and you go pick it up, hot and ready. I’ll go with you to pick it up and help you carry stuff in here if you want.”

See how that worked? I presented a positive solution that didn’t shove me down into a subservient position and I was still a team player because I offered to help, but not be the maid, cook, nurse, and mommy. Incidentally, I don’t clean up after men after lunch meetings or anything like that either. I might recruit a couple of guys to help though.

46

How do I get get good at it if I don’t DO it? I’m not a natural, if I have to get better at speaking in front of groups, I have to do more of it, not avoid it because I’m freaking out on the inside. Tough shit for me if these people can smell my fear, I have no other option.

47

Thanks for the response and advice. I fully agree that they are upwards of 20+ years behind, it’s the same in O&G for the most part as well. It’s especially bad if you work in the field.

48

Oh, no, wrong answer. You know that this company is going to do something very underhanded and just plain wrong to get rid of a woman while she’s on her legally-mandated maternity leave, and you think they deserve an honest answer about your childbearing status (which I don’t believe they have a right to ask in the first place)? You need to cover your ass on this right frickin’ now. Document everything you can remember about that conversation. Don’t answer questions like that at all in the future - simply say, “Sorry, that’s between me and my husband” with a big smile on your face. Your boss might have been asking just to shoot the breeze, but it’s setting my warning bells off, when paired with what they’re planning to do to the other woman.

49

Or just plain lie - “Nope, no kids, not now, not ever.” This company has proven they don’t deserve a truth that they will use against you.

50

My dad was in the construction industry for over 30 years, and near as I can tell there are 2 things necessary to earn the respect of construction folks. 1) KNOW YOUR SHIT. 2) Be willing to bend your back, shuck your buns, and get your hands dirty to get the damn job done. For these people, time truly is money, so they have little use for people who cost them time through stupidity, ignorance, or laziness, but they adore people who save time by getting something done on or ahead of schedule with no screw-ups.

That time is money thing is why they’re not typically chatty people–chat doesn’t get the project done better or faster or cheaper, so that time can be much better spent actually, you know, working.

51

Missed edit window: So with the coffee thing, I might say something like, “Sorry, I’m super busy right now. I think [Guy’s name] is about to take his break – could you ask him to run out and pick up Starbuck’s for all of us? Here’s my $5. I’ll have a venti mocha latte.”

Corrollary: when you send a man out to get something (from a store, lunch, whatever) and he screws it up (men are notorious for making poorly thought through substitutions if women’s directions aren’t specific enough), do not complain. Verbally pat him on the head for trying and thank him for the effort.

In business, and in general (IME), men hate complaining. Actually, everyone hates complaining. Don’t complain unless you have the solution to the problem.

52

No cite. But some years ago I did extensive research on this very subject. I was hell-bent to prove that as soon as women entered a profession, such as law, in large numbers, they brought down the pay scale of the entire profession. (As in, telephone operators, in the early part of the 20th century.)

What I found, through lots of numbers provided by people who track those things and lots of personal interviews, was that women in three fields, those being law, medicine, and veterinary medicine, would make as much money as the men in those fields, except that they tended to (1) be younger, (2) put in fewer hours, i.e., working part-time in a law office instead of full-time, in order to deal with households and children, and (3) not negotiate their salaries as aggressively as the men.

I also interviewed a couple of men, of whom one was the husband of a lawyer, and they decided that he was the one who would not pursue partnership, so that he could pick their kids up after school, etc. His wife made almost twice as much. So, essentially, it’s pretty equal.

In fact, at the time, women in the firle of construction actually made MORE than men. Female plumbers (there weren’t many) made MORE than male plumbers. I had those two pieces of data, even though I didn’t focus on those jobs.

My article was such a turnaround that the publication I originally wrote it for killed it (didn’t fit their idea–I did receive a kill fee). I rewrote it and sold it elsewhere, but it’s not online.

53

Don’t be a sex kitten - but also don’t turn red and sputter at any tiny off-color commment. I am in the military and have often been the only woman in the room/field/whatever.

Pull your weight, know your stuff, be confident but not cocky and be prepared to roll with the punches.

54

Or turn it back on him. If it’s an appropriate question for you, then it’s an appropriate question for him.

“I don’t know, are you and your wife having more kids?”

Evade and obfuscate. Anytime someone says something to you that you question the appropriateness of, ask yourself, would this be okay if a female boss asked that guy the same question? And then ask it!

If you let them treat you like a woman, they will. If you teach them to treat you like a person, they will. We teach people how to treat us.

55

I thought of another good one - “Why are you asking?”

56

Why don’t you try being a tad less confrontational and unpleasant?

57

I was working with this big, burly, biker type guy, and he was making some comment about how everybody seemed to be avoiding him today. I asked him if he had had beans for supper last night, and after he finished laughing his ass off, I had made a friend for life. :slight_smile:

ETA: See what I mean about the testosterony stuff? ^^^

58

Grumman has it right. I didn’t mean ‘act like a giant swinging dick’, I meant act like an equal. Another poster here said to remember you’re a manager first, woman second. Act like you know what you’re doing, approach things with the authority you know you have. If you need something done, tell someone to do it - don’t ask.

Basically, don’t approach workplace interaction from the perspective of ‘but I’m a female in the corporate world’.

59

So she will be let go while she is on maternity leave? Your company may want to rethink that.

Not long ago, I was dealing with pretty much the same basic fact situation for a client, and what I learned from speaking with the Alberta Human Rights Commission is that there is no legal way to terminate the employment of a woman on maternity leave. Being pregnant and giving birth falls under the protected ground of “gender” in the Alberta Human Rights Code; and companies who terminate women on maternity leave face tough penalties under the Code. After learning the results of my research, my client chose not to terminate the woman while she was pregnant, and while she was on maternity leave.

I am not your company’s lawyer and this is not legal advice, but you may wish to let your company know that if this is in their plans, they should either check with their lawyer and/or the AHRC before making any moves to terminate this woman.

60

My boss is a woman in an industry dominated by men. She’s proven her worth by being a great producer for over twenty years, and is now one of the most respected managers in the company.