[ol]
[li]Under 30 is just an approximation; I won’t object if someone a few years older wants to answer.[/li][li]Professional is meant to exclude social, familial, or online contexts. If your uncle Bernie opines every Thanksgiving that, as a woman and thus the weaker vessel, you have no business being a motorcycyle cop, that is not relevant unless he a police lieutenant trying to keep you from being such a cop or making your life harder. [/li][li]Tell us much or as little of your story as you like. It is irrelevant to me whether the sexist behavior was an actual impediment to your career or simply made your life harder.[/li][/ol]
I don’t fit into the age criteria, but my examples are all well within the past five years–
Worked in warehousing, lots of lifting. Was told by my boss that while I was able to lift now, that further down the road I would pay for it because “women’s bodies are not as strong and resilient as men’s.”
Hopping on a forklift invariably led to comments about “women drivers, hyuk hyuk hyuk!”
At my current job there is a freight elevator with 600lb doors. Most contractors that come through have trouble letting me operate the doors, even though it is part of my job.
I haven’t been deprived of work or anything due to sexism. Just lots of opportunities to roll my eyes.
I’m 35. My boss commented last year that he was concerned that the fact that I was pregnant would result in my turning in a poorer work product (it didn’t).
Also, he explicitly stated that one of our researchers timed her pregnancy so she could avoid “real work” associated with our busiest season. He refused to believe that maybe, just maybe, she got pregnant faster than she expected.
I work in an aviation, an industry where women make up around 5% of the workforce. It’s a very “macho” profession. My father, who was a professional aviator, discouraged me from becoming a pilot, because, in his POV, it wasn’t a place for women. In his day, there were only a few female pilots; the first female airline pilot was not hired until 1973. Today, only about 2-3% of airline captains are female.
I think for most women in the aviation there must be a willingness to let a certain amount of sexism roll off your back. I’ve been the recipient of sarcastic “…Ma’am” replies from ATC. I’ve overheard co-workers describing quite graphic sexual fantasies about their co-pilot. I’ve heard “ha-ha joking!.. not really” comments like “Sigh… there goes another empty kitchen” when a female pilot is heard to make an error on the radio. Some of the older, crustier pilots can be quite condescending until you prove you can handle the airplane well enough. A few I’ve met are just condescending in general. I do often feel that there I have to prove myself before being accepted. Porn is often found in cockpits- there have been a number of lawsuits brought by female pilots regarding this, though I think the result is that many of the guys resent having their fun taken away from them, not improving relations at all. Personally, it doesn’t bother me.
One of the most vitriolic discussions regarding women in the cockpit has to do with the hiring process. There is quite a lot of resentment about female aviators in this regard. Major airlines such as Delta, United, Continental, etc. only hire on an as-needed basis. This means that anywhere between 3-10+ years may pass before the doors are opened for new pilots to apply and interview. Competition is extremely fierce for these positions. Many perfectly qualified candidates apply, few are called for an interview and testing, and even fewer are hired.
Your best bet is to differentiate yourself somehow from the rest of the crowd. Multiple internal letters of recommendation, having held an instructional position at a previous airline, having many thousands more hours than required, or having previously served as a military pilot are all good ways to get your resume noticed. Or… be female. Affirmative action I guess. (Minority resumes receive similar attention) I admit that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth as well, but it’s true that the interview boards go out of their way to select female resumes for interview. I’m not saying that the women selected to interview aren’t qualified- they nearly always meet or exceed posted minimum experience times, it’s just that by the simple act of being female, they may get an opportunity to interview that a male candidate with an identical resume may not. I have heard some utterly hateful and disparaging things said about female co-workers who recently had successful interviews with a major airline.
There are many little things, most of them unintentional, I think, it’s just a function of being one of the tiny percentage of females in what is still, largely, a boys club. I’ve always had a pretty broad sense of humor and don’t mind off color jokes or whatnot. I do my best to try to ‘hang’ with the guys. I don’t think a someone with a prissy and/or uptight personality would fit in well. Unless she’s a hot babe.
A link to an avweb article asking “Why so few women pilots?”
The only thing that I can recall and I don’t even know if this counts as sexism but I work as a temp where I am usually doing clerical/receptionist things and I have noticed a difference in behavior between older white males and the rest of the population. The older men will often refer to me as “hun” which makes me take a step back and think “say what?”. I’m not sure if this is because of our age difference or because of my position on the todem pole combined with my gender.
I’ve encountered a lot of sexism in the workplace, but I’ve always worked low-paying jobs, and the men I work with are mostly cooks, barkeeps and contractors/electricians/plumbers. This is just how it is in those industries. Lots of sexual talk, inappropriate personal comments, sexist humor and nearly everyone who works at a bar/restaurant parties together and fucks each other, so there’s tons of drama and gossip.
I’ve been groped once, by a manager - that’s been the only serious issue. There is the expectation at most of my jobs that I should play up my sexuality to make more money, which I don’t do - I’m naturally unflirty, and I don’t dress to impress. I’ve had plenty of low-level sexual harassment and inappropriate comments directed towards me, those I didn’t consider a very big deal although I don’t like it (and will usually make that clear, I demand respect). General sexist jokes/comments are whatever, it hardly registers anymore. I just roll my eyes. There have been many times where I’ve been the only one to stand up against really egregious behavior. But as long as this stuff stays relatively harmless (ie no women are being intimidated, severely harassed, stalked, assaulted or targeted in a vicious smear campaign) I don’t much mind.
Not only am I female but I am physically small, so many men don’t like to see me doing any sort of lifting, etc and will offer to perform these tasks for me. This I don’t find offensive as most of these guys just mean to be polite, but I do tell them I prefer to do it myself, thank you.
Haven’t we done this recently? I’m not being snide, I just honestly thought a previous thread had been zombied when I saw the title, so I’m assuming it was recent.
My under-30 sister discovered her boss had replaced her when she tried to return after having a baby. She probably could have sued, but she was a bit more concerned with finding a job to support herself and her child.
Well, in case it hasn’t been done recently, I’ll throw out a data point in the opposite direction. I work in a female-dominated office in what appears to me to be very much a female-dominated industry (HOA and community management). In my immediate team are looks around counting silently 9 other women and 1 man, and we oversee about two dozen sub-offices with similar ratios.
Sexism around here is restricted to two main categories:
the one guy, who is shorter than I am, is wholly responsible for replacing the (big, heavy, no-handled-so-excessively-awkward) water jug in the dispenser … seriously, we’d probably all dehydrate to death if he quit or got a new job
and
inappropriately detailed conversations about things like breastfeeding, childbirth, menstrual cycles, one’s own mother’s experience birthing us** and other squicky topics. The equivalent would seem to be if I was the only chick in an office full of men and had to listen to talk about, I dunno, nutsack hair or something.
I’m a bit more than a few years older than 30, but when I was in my twenties in the 1990s I worked in a city park in the Japanese garden, and the head gardener there (who was not Japanese, so it wasn’t a cultural difference) was so sexist that he wouldn’t bother to tell me if I was doing things right or wrong even when I asked him to. He’d just say “It doesn’t matter, if it’s wrong I’ll get so-and-so (male) to fix it later.” Not helpful.
In my thirties I was in the public works department in another city, and it was a big old boy’s club. In spite of the drive to hire more women and be an “equal opportunity workforce,” there was overt sexism and sexual harassment to varying degrees, especially from the older guys who’d been there the longest, and the uniform shirts we all had to wear were ordered in men’s sizes, so there was rarely anything small enough for the increasing number of women in the place to wear, that didn’t fit like a circus tent. When they did get around to ordering some in women’s sizes, they got them from Vietnam and they were way too small, so they let us wear our own shirts that year.
Is “I’m worried that your pregnancy will prevent you from performing as well as you have been” really the same as “Your gender prevents you from performing well”?
This gets perilously close to a lot of minefields, but to me … no. It’s not. A pregnancy is a medical condition that causes a number of changes to a person’s body. In some workplaces, those changes could affect her ability to do her job. (Ex. job requires lifting heavy stuff.)
Impending parenthood involves impending sleep deprivation, regardless of gender, which can also affect performance.
My wife is an under-30 ‘nuke’ in the Navy. She notes that she’s almost constantly facing both sexism and sexual harassment at work. Complaints tend to get her (and other women) called for whining, with the complaint itself ignored.
Since I’m 34, I’m not in the relevant age group, but I did want to point out that I’d find the question almost impossible to answer, since it’s entirely possible to encounter sexism in a professional context without knowing that you’re doing so. (E.g., there’s a fair amount of research that suggests a professor’s sex – and in particular, how much the professor conforms to gendered norms of behavior – influences student evaluations of teaching, but unless a student includes blatantly sexist comments on the written portion of the evals, the professor is unlikely to know whether the student would have rated an instructor of the opposite sex differently. Similarly, job applicants aren’t usually privy to the reasons why they were or weren’t hired.)
Not so much from coworkers or management, but from customers, yes.
Granted, this was about 10 years ago, but still… Managing a Blockbuster Video, it would infuriate me when someone (usually a man, but not always) would come in with a problem and talk literally over my head to one of my staff standing behind me…a male, of course. This would happen probably twice a month; more in the rougher neighborhoods.
I’d try to graciously redirect them to me, the manager, the one who could actually make exceptions to rules and issue credits and generally make their problem go away, and they’d continue talking six inches above my head, to the new boy I’d hired last week, who couldn’t reliably find the bathroom key yet. :rolleyes:
I work in IT in a major manufacturing and distribution facility. Blatant sexism is rather rampant but more in a kidding kind of way and it is rather refreshing. It goes both ways. There are men that love to make sexist comments to female heavy equipment operators and being told right back where they can stuff their own. It isn’t really a place for delicate snowflakes and I enjoy the mostly good natured show from the sidelines.
