I really like hearing that, Pizzagirl. I feel that much of it, is if you act like you are competent, equal, and have confidence, that is what you are. You are powerful, and you make it so. You act as if you are weak, inferior, insecure, easily offended and upset, that is how you are treated. It is a different world out there now. Be bold, be confident, ladies.
Uh, yeah, Pizzagirl #216, I have worn a navy suit with a floppy tie. I also found out some years after I had accepted a faculty position that at the time I was hired, two of the most eminent scientists in the department were opposed to hiring any woman on the grounds that a woman faculty member would just quit when she had a child. There were colleges that were still closed to women when I was in high school. There were fellowships that were closed to women. There were clubs that were closed to women (still are). It is a different world now. But the challenges that young women face are in some ways worse than the challenges I faced. At least, the majority of my challenges were right there in print, in policies, as well as in attitudes. In some ways, it’s easier to change a policy. I’m about a decade older than PG, but no soooo old.
Frankly, I think that’s overly simplistic - and a little condescending to those of us who have expressed having different experiences and have witnessed sexism throughout our careers because it implies the rest of us are being weak and easily offended. I’m quite confident and bold, competent and capable. A lot of us who’ve worked throughout our careers have let quite a bit slide to be successful in our jobs and support our families. I’m as tough as the next person. That doesn’t mean I am blind to what exists in many companies and industries. Good for you if you haven’t witnessed it. But, how do you reconcile what has been expressed here by quite a few people as well as what is included in the Harvard Business Review report I posted in #192?
Whether its sexism, racism, whatever -ism, I don’t think the answer is to just “toughen up”.
“@busdriver11 You also have the luxury of a union and a job where your performance measurement is less subjective. I do think, however, that broaching sexism is required to bring about change. Never addressing it doesn’t lead to improvement. It sounds like you haven’t stood silently by but HAVE commented on things.”
It is definitely a positive being a union worker, and my upgrades are based upon being a number, and purely seniority, however the union doesn’t protect me from sexism in any way. That’s pretty much the last thing they do, and in my several years in the military, there was no union. I do love being purely a number, and have never kept my mouth shut when something actually bothered me. However, I have incredibly thick skin, and it takes a lot to bother me. Well intentioned actions and comments that could be conceived as sexist? No problem, I can choose to take offense, or I can choose not to. I choose not to.
For example, just yesterday I landed at a place that I go to often. There is this guy, a ramp worker, that seems to be there all the time, and he immediately grabs my suitcase and carries it out. He always does this for women. I guess I could be offended at the pure sexism of it all. Does he think I can’t carry my own bag? Am I weak because I’m a woman? He wouldn’t do this for a man! However, though it actually irritates me, every time I thank him and tell him how nice he is. What a fine person to do this.
Yet I’m thinking, “Jaysus! Doesn’t he know this is a roller bag? It’s an ultralight, too, packed lightly. I might even be stronger than him, I can roll my own dang bag.” But what’s the point? He thinks he’s doing a nice thing for a woman, and maybe some of the ladies actually appreciate it. If the intention is kind, I would never put him down for it.
That’s great–and it’s good to be strong and confident!–but it’s not reality. The reality is that positive social change has happened because some people have, at real risk to themselves, stood up, fought back, demonstrated, taught, marched, and demanded change. Nobody has to do those things, of course, and it’s totally fine not to, especially if the status quo is working out reasonably well for you. But it’s dead wrong to imagine that just because things worked out for some particular individuals that they’ve somehow stumbled upon a universal approach or that systemic change can be made by individual action.
Your union doesn’t protect you from sexism but it does protect you when you choose to comment on a sexist remark directed towards you, which you say you have done - handling things yourself. That is a nice protection that many employees don’t have.
Maybe the ramp guy has a crush on you. 
"Frankly, I think that’s overly simplistic - and a little condescending to those of us who have expressed having different experiences and have witnessed sexism throughout our careers because it implies the rest of us are being weak and easily offended. I’m quite confident and bold, competent and capable. A lot of us who’ve worked throughout our careers have let quite a bit slide to be successful in our jobs and support our families. I’m as tough as the next person. That doesn’t mean I am blind to what exists in many companies and industries. Good for you if you haven’t witnessed it. But, how do you reconcile what has been expressed here by quite a few people as well as what is included in the Harvard Business Review report I posted in #192?
Whether its sexism, racism, whatever -ism, I don’t think the answer is to just “toughen up”. "
I’m not sure if you’re referring to my posts, but I personally, would never deign to call you weak and easily offended! 
I know far better than that, and I suspect you dealt with things much the way I have. However, I think for women who act as if they are weak and easily offended are treated as such in the workplace.
I have witnessed the extreme, and I have witnessed the trivial. It doesn’t help the cause to conflate the two.
If there is so little sexism in the airline industry, why are there so few women pilot captains on major airlines? I pay close attention to the captains’ voices and I’d say it is 1/20 in my experience (women/ men). It is SHOCKING. And don’t tell me it is a pipeline issue; the pipeline issues have been addressed for more than 30 years.
PS The 1/20 guess is just my rough guess out of my experience. I’m sure someone could dig up the actual numbers.
Here is a real life incident that happened at my former workplace probably 15-20 years ago. Guy A (who reported to me), Guy B and Woman C - all in different departments but roughly equals - went on a sales trip. Guy B was driving, Woman C in the front seat navigating (this is all pre GPS), Guy A (who probably drank too much at dinner) is in the back seat. They get lost. Guy A pipes up “Women can’t navigate for shoot” (substitute a different word for the last).
When they get back to the home office, Woman C tells her boss (another woman, who is my equal), who tells me, and we are at a level where we have no choice but to go to HR, HRgets involved and it’s all one big mess. Privately both Woman C’s boss and I thought Womsn C was overreacting to a stupid, sloshed comment. We both would have said some version of “to heck with you” (in stronger language), and laughed it off
You give away your power when you are offended by every last little thing. Take your power back.
He wasn’t slamming her up against a wall for a quick feel. He was a good employee, had zero problem reporting to me, nothing in his job performance indicates he had trouble working with women or thought less of them. It was a stupid offhand comment and deserved an appropriate size reaction.
The plus side is that now my H has a catch phrase if I navigate us wrong - he will say “I’ve always heard women can’t navigate for shoot.” And we laugh. Because humor.
" That’s great–and it’s good to be strong and confident!–but it’s not reality. The reality is that positive social change has happened because some people have, at real risk to themselves, stood up, fought back, demonstrated, taught, marched, and demanded change. Nobody has to do those things, of course, and it’s totally fine not to, especially if the status quo is working out reasonably well for you. But it’s dead wrong to imagine that just because things worked out for some particular individuals that they’ve somehow stumbled upon a universal approach or that systemic change can be made by individual action."
No, it is reality. You will be treated better, as a woman, if you are strong and confident. How can you really think otherwise? Act weak and lack confidence, you think that will get you somewhere? Of course the things that women have fought for in the past have helped us get where we are today. And us women appreciate that, and the younger generations take it for granted. Thank you, ladies who went before us!
And I didn’t just stumble upon a universal approach. That cracks me up, actually. I was one of the earlier female pilots in the military, and it wasn’t easy. I worked with 99% men (many of whom did not want us there), and I still work with about 95% men. But I have found that being thick skinned, confident, happy, comfortable and not making a big deal about trivia has worked great. Apparently that doesn’t work in other workplace environments?
Same thing in large law firms. My former law firm had 15% women equity partners in 1979 (WAY before my time); 15% women equity partners in 1994 when I started; 15-18% women equity partners in 2004; and still less than 20% in 2014. And that’s just the public face. If you look at actual compensation, the ratio of female to male compensation is MUCH, MUCH lower than that. Can I stress MUCH, MUCH lower? You can try to explain it away by any number of theories but there is still a big problem there.
And this is an environment where OVERT sexism doesn’t really exist. No one is dropping m & m’s down your shirt or anything (that was ANOTHER law firm). People were too smart for that. In such an environment, you start to pay attention to more subtle signs as POSSIBLY being clues to more unconscious biases.
And this is not unique to my former firm. I’ve spent many many hours at women’s leadership conferences throughout the country and the issues are the same.
And I DO NOT buy that the issues are better in business. We’ve worked with consultants from the Harvard Business School who report issues starting in the professional schools. Silicon Valley is notoriously difficult for women despite the succeses of Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Meg Whitman etc.
Saying that sexism is a relic of the '70’s is an extremely parochial view that reflects a lack of sophistication, frankly.
"If there is so little sexism in the airline industry, why are there so few women pilot captains on major airlines? I pay close attention to the captains’ voices and I’d say it is 1/20 in my experience (women/ men). It is SHOCKING. And don’t tell me it is a pipeline issue; the pipeline issues have been addressed for more than 30 years.
PS The 1/20 guess is just my rough guess out of my experience. I’m sure someone could dig up the actual numbers"
I think your numbers are right. Female pilots are about 5%, and many of them are not yet captains. No, of course it’s not a “pipeline issue”. Here’s what I think it is. Women, for the most part, are just not interested. Maybe they think it’s too difficult, too male, too technical, too scary, too much testosterone, too intimidating, too dirty, I don’t know. I have spent time talking to teenage girls about aviation, and they are SO not interested. The only time I was even able to get a little bit of interest is when I’ve mentioned that it is a virtually all male profession, and if you are female, you could be a plain Jane and you’re a goddess. Now, they’re a little bit interested. I give up. I suppose I wasn’t scared off because my parents were Boeing engineers, and I was raised in a way that it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t do whatever I wanted to. I didn’t realize that we were basically freaks The vast majority of women that I fly with have fathers who are pilots, and that is how they were exposed to flying. . Most of them are absolutely great, but a few still have a chip on their shoulders, and I totally hate flying with them. I can only imagine how the guys feel.
If it’s “trivial” to you, then why would you need a “thick skin” to deal with it? Saying other people are overreacting and the things that hurt them are “trivial” is not thick-skinned; it’s oversensitive. Why are you upset that someone else’s feelings are hurt? Why can’t you believe them when they say they are? Why do you insist on blaming women for systemic, institutionalized sexism? Why do you think “just grin and bear it” is a useful approach for anyone other than yourself? Why do other approaches upset you so?
But more importantly, your anecdata doesn’t extrapolate, and what’s best for an individual isn’t what’s best for a system. Systemic change doesn’t happen because some people had thick skin (interestingly, I read something similar recently from a woman in the 1840s criticizing Elizabeth Cady Stanton and saying she was overreacting by organizing the Seneca Falls Convention!)
(This conversation would be better if you could learn how to make quote tags. It’s easy. Just use square brackets “[” and “]” and type quote=username inside them. Then at the end of the quote, use the square brackets again and type /quote. Like so:
When you’ve appointed yourself the arbiter of what’s sexist or derogatory, it’s close enough.
I’m beginning to think we’ll always disagree on this, marvin.
Get back to the situation that started this discussion, I have no doubt the law school dean is very confident and strong. I still have no issue with her telling the male law student that his choice of adjective could have been better, something I still think was beneficial for the student to hear. No one, still, has been able to provide any detail that she reamed the guy. She had one line sharing a personal anecdote in a scholarly article about gender. She did not make the harassing phone calls.
@busdriver11 may know better than me but I would think that a lack of women pilots is partial due to the fact that many, many pilots still come from military training. The USNA and USAFA are still 78-79% male. The academies are not very hospitable places for women to be. Get rid of some of the issues women face as cadets and my guess is female enrollment would rise and the number of female pilots would increase, too.
And @Pizzagirl --sounds like a pretty hostile work environment, if men are encouraged to get “sloshed” and say sexist things to their colleagues. Yikes. You’re lucky that didn’t escalate–serious lawsuits result from interactions like that with some regularity.
"Your union doesn’t protect you from sexism but it does protect you when you choose to comment on a sexist remark directed towards you, which you say you have done - handling things yourself. That is a nice protection that many employees don’t have.
Maybe the ramp guy has a crush on you"
I guess they would protect me. I’ve never asked for anything from the union, though I’ve paid them a pretty penny in dues over the years. I also suspect the company would protect me in a New York minute. And of course, any guy would be crazy to report me for responding to a sexist comment that he made! Very bad judgment. But I believe in people. I don’t think that people intend harm, for the most part, and just need a comic reminder here and there. I cannot put in words how much better things have gotten over the years. Okay, maybe I can. SO much better!
Nah, the ramp guy has no crush on me, I’m a good 30 years older than him. I think it’s a reflexive response. Oh my God, a woman, need to help her! I’m sure some of the ladies like it, but my copilot’s are always entertained by my after the fact response (that he doesn’t hear). “Dude, it’s a roller bag!”
Really glad to hear how much better things have gotten. Are you unwilling to believe, though, that some of that improvement is a result of women standing up and demanding better treatment and that if every woman just went with the flow things may not have improved so much?
Wait, do you think it’s an overstep for an individual to consider something sexist or derogatory? If I think something someone says is sexist or derogatory, am I “[appointing myself] the arbiter”? If I say “this is a disgusting taco,” have I “appointed [myself] the arbiter” of tacos? Of disgustingness? You’ve lost me.
We’ll see!
“@busdriver11 may know better than me but I would think that a lack of women pilots is partial due to the fact that many, many pilots still come from military training. The USNA and USAFA are still 78-79% male. The academies are not very hospitable places for women to be. Get rid of some of the issues women face as cadets and my guess is female enrollment would rise and the number of female pilots would increase, too”
The percentage of female pilots in the military are far lower than that. I do believe it is purely that women just are not interested in it. Many military pilots do not even come from the academies, but from ROTC and OTS instead.
I don’t really think that it is making academies most hospital to the women at all, it’s making the job more attractive to women. Maybe Hollywood movies could help, seriously. Instead of making movies like Top Gun with male pilots, make it with female pilots. Almost all movies have male pilots, except for the recent Star Wars (where the female pilot ran into almost everything possible with the Millennium Falcon). :((