How I Discovered Gender Discrimination

[XemaSab]

It was the late ’90s and I was at an interesting phase of my career. For the first time in my life I possessed relevant qualifications, experience and could also show a successful track record in my chosen career path. I had the job seeker’s trifecta. It was also summer and my current employer was pissing me off with their penny-pinching ways, so after three years of ball busting effort I decided a break and a job change was in order. Displaying characteristic overconfidence in myself I quit my job (without burning any bridges) and set about applying for others.

I was experienced in managing technical & trade supply businesses. I also had engineering experience and sales experience and had demonstrably excelled at every sales and profit target I had ever been given. I started applying for roles that would stretch me and lift my career up a notch. There were plenty of opportunities around and I usually had a few applications on the go at any one time. I was an experienced guy in an experienced guy’s world, this wouldn’t be hard.

Then the rejection letters trickled in. I could take rejection, it goes hand in hand with business, but after the first few months I was frankly confused. I hadn’t had a single interview. Instead of aiming high I lowered my sights and started applying for jobs where there was no career advancement. Now I had everything these employers could possibly want, it would be a shoe in. But still not one interview came my way, not even a phone inquiry.

Somewhere after the four month mark my confidence was starting to take a hit. The people rejecting me were business people too, how could my reasoning that I was perfect for these jobs be so different to theirs? Putting on my most serious business head I went back and scoured my CV. It was the only contact any of my potential employers or their recruitment companies had had with me. My CV was THE common denominator and if something was wrong it MUST be there.

http://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how-i-discovered-gender-discrimination

[arcane1]

1. This is worth reading in its entirety.

And to go slightly off-topic: I had to search the internet to learn what "CV" stood for, and it begged a question: Does any English-speaking country have a word that means "a document which, for the purpose of getting a job, details one's work and education history" that isn't from a foreign language?

Here in the USA, I recently updated my "resume" and then proceeded to "resume" my normal activities. But at least "curriculum vitae" doesn't require any symbols that are not on my keyboard.

End of off-topic rant

[Squinch]

28. CV is different from a resume. They use it in my field to

show which areas of practice you are educated in and what professional certifications you have. It's generally longer than a page.

It's usage isn't rare here in the USA.

[ismnotwasm]

2. Excellent

Thank you for posting.

[im1013]

3. Funny, the same thing happened to me..

around the same time (1999-2000). The exception being that I am a female, but I had worked in an all-male field for over 15 years. I never would have believed that I could put out upwards of 400 resume's, and not get a single interview. However, I knew the reason why. So, in exasperation, one day I changed only a single word on my resume (I put my husband's first name instead of mine), and sent out the resume to the same company I had applied to at least 5 times... and BAM... immediate phone call. So, at that point, after discussing "my husband's" great qualifications with the calling party, I told them the truth.. that I would NEVER work for a company like them and they didn't deserve me or my "great qualifications".

[roguevalley]

4. I learned that earlier on

when i graduated high school a woman could be a secretary, home maker, teacher or nurse, not doctor. it was all you could do because if you did anything else, you were taking a job away from a man with a family.

[pnwmom]

5. A friend of mine worked in a bank and, year after year,

when a new manager had to be appointed, she saw men brought in from outside to head the various groups. Meanwhile, her salary had been inching upwards.

Finally, she decided to risk her job by filing a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Commission, and they came in and investigated. In the end, they ordered the bank to advertise all openings within a group before going outside, and they ordered an increase in the women's salaries to bring them to parity with men -- 40% increases. Except that my friend was the only one who didn't get a raise! A year later, a new upper manager came in and almost doubled my friend's salary, so she won out in the end.

You're right -- discrimination is still very real. Even if the EOC hadn't come in, the women would still have realized they weren't getting offered promotions, but they wouldn't have known they were being paid 40% less for the same jobs!

[HipChick]

10. I am having to do that now...I was hired as a manager for a company

but am not been given managerial tasks..

[pnwmom]

11. Good luck! n/t

[HipChick]

15. The other 2 male managers don't even have degrees, and I have more experience than both of them

[pnwmom]

17. What kind of industry? The banking industry is known for this,

but it probably happens everywhere . . . .

[HipChick]

18. Wow!...The industry is IT, but the other two manager background is banking..

they have no IT experience whatsoever....and when I say or suggest something, they have to go get a male to validate

[pnwmom]

19. They have no degrees and no IT experience? They're probably too incompetent

to know you're providing good advice.

How frustrating!

[RainDog]

6. k&r n/t

[SheilaT]

7. It's real. It's been around forever.

Unfortunately, a lot of men just don't get it. Sort of like how white people don't get racial discrimination, especially if they think Affirmative Action solved that problem.

Thanks for posting this.

[progressoid]

8. Yep. Reminds me of Bianca White's resume...

Unemployed Black Woman Pretends to be White, Job Offers Suddenly Skyrocket

For two years, I have been unemployed. In the beginning, I applied to more than three hundred open positions in the insurance industry—an industry that I’ve worked in for the previous ten years. Not one employer responded to my resume. So, I enrolled back into college to finish my degree. After completing school this past May, I resumed my search for employment and was quite shocked that I wasn’t getting a single response. I usually applied for positions advertised on the popular website Monster.com. I’d used it in the past and have been successful in obtaining jobs through it.

Two years ago, I noticed that Monster.com had added a “diversity questionnaire” to the site. This gives an applicant the opportunity to identify their sex and race to potential employers. Monster.com guarantees that this “option” will not jeopardize your chances of gaining employment. You must answer this questionnaire in order to apply to a posted position—it cannot be skipped. At times, I would mark off that I was a Black female, but then I thought, this might be hurting my chances of getting employed, so I started selecting the “decline to identify” option instead. That still had no effect on my getting a job. So I decided to try an experiment: I created a fake job applicant and called her Bianca White.

...

That very same day, I received a phone call. The next day, my phone line and Bianca’s email address, were packed with potential employers calling for an interview. I was stunned. More shocking was that some employers, mostly Caucasian-sounding women, were calling Bianca more than once, desperate to get an interview with her. All along, my real Monster.com account was open and active; but, despite having the same background as Bianca, I received no phone calls. Two jobs actually did email me and Bianca at the same time. But they were commission only sales positions. Potential positions offering a competitive salary and benefits all went to Bianca.

At the end of my little experiment, (which lasted a week), Bianca White had received nine phone calls—I received none. Bianca had received a total of seven emails, while I’d only received two, which again happen to have been the same emails Bianca received. Let me also point out that one of the emails that contacted Bianca for a job wanted her to relocate to a different state, all expenses paid, should she be willing to make that commitment. In the end, a total of twenty-four employers looked at Bianca’s resume while only ten looked at mine.

... www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woman-pretends-to-be-white-job-offers-suddenly-skyrocket/

[Triana]

9. Try being a "girl" in InfoTech.

Messing with servers, data, networks, routers, linux. That is MEN'S work. And the way women are treated in that field is little short of having the proverbial acid flung at her for DARING to even consider it. Go to a meeting: you're the only woman there. Go to a seminar, trade show or class: only woman or one of very very few. Post anything online or ask a technical question or make a technical comment: get overtly sexually insulted and berated seven ways from Sunday. Get called a bitch, a slut, and a dike. Get ignored and / or talked over top of in meetings, even when YOU are the Sr. person there.

Yep. The men hate you because you're a woman in THEIR field. The women hate you because you're competition. Mentors? Fucking forget that. No MAN is going to mentor a woman in InfoTech - never happened that I've seen in 35 years. And there are NO women in the field much to speak of. So...you're on your own. Good luck with that. Most women leave the field after a few years.

[im1013]

12. Yep, that's what I did for 15 years.

Even worse, I was in field service - GASP!! Always had to be twice as good as everyone else just to be seen as equal. Oh, and I actually did have a great mentor that was a man. At least until his wife saw me when I flew to company headquarters for a Christmas party. Then I had my life threatened repeatedly.

[Triana]

13. Wow. Besides the attitude that women don't "do tech", jealous wives are probably...

....another reason women have no mentors. I've had female bosses who were as sexist as the men, too ie: TOLD ME outright that they felt women weren't as technical, and were insecure and jealous of their female reports - thwarting them at every turn, humiliating them in meetings, etc. It's sad all around. Be happy you're out of that racket. This is why few women are in it. It's Hell on Wheels.

[MadrasT]

14. Oh God I got so sick of the jealous wives thing

I was in IT for 20 years and finally said "fuck this shit" and transferred to a different job in the same company as my last tech job

Now I laugh at them for being on call 24/7/365 when I get to turn off my phone and sleep nights and have real weekends again

Fucking snakepit of misogyny

I was the boss so I did not get it from within the company as bad as I did from vendors and customers

Oh the stories I could tell

[Triana]

16. Yea the 24 x 7 shit is unnerving. NO WAY can anyone pay me enough to put up with that shit.

Try being a SINGLE woman in the field. Oh boy. The "Well, what do you do when you're not at work?" question is so intereSTINK. What they really want to know is: "do you have a life, because if you say you do little or nothing outside work (that you want to talk to your boss about), then we assume all your time is OURS!" and "are you kink, a lesbian, or a liberal?"

[HipChick]

21. I was asked for a full length body shot this week

The request was supposed to be for sending org charts out to clients...

I polled around the team, no one else was asked - just me...and I still haven't seen the org chart that was sent out...

[Triana]

22. Totally inappropriate request!

[HipChick]

23. I am also going to put that in my complaint or at least demand to see if

an email was ever sent out...because I have never seen it

[im1013]

25. The first response I got

every time someone from the company office would fly to a site to work on a project with me, was "Gee, your not at all what I expected".
Got really old, so one time I asked the guy "What did you expect?" & he actually said "I expected some big, fat, hairy dike bitch".
Seriously!

[Triana]

27. Egh. There you go.

[im1013]

24. I actually miss it, though.

It was always interesting. I was pretty strictly hardware & data communications, but I worked with firmware & software people on site. I was lucky enough to work for a great company owned by a woman. She was VERY supportive of me, as I was the first & only female that ever worked in their field service dept. After about 8 years, I moved to another state that the company had little to no contracts in, and I was sadly mistaken when I assumed that most companies would be that supportive. So, after a few years of hell, I told them to drop dead & went into business for myself. Still regret leaving that company, though.

[Triana]

26. You were lucky with that!

At least for a while but yea as you experienced, most companies are not supportive of women in IT. Hope your business is doing well. I tried consulting for a while but am no salesperson and one has to not only be able to do the tech work, but also sell their services!

Tech writing a la Carla Schroder was another avenue for women in IT. Some outlets pay well for articles.

[HipChick]

20. This has been my whole life

and this is why I am getting ready to file a EEOC complaint...I know its going to be tough, but I have everything documented...