Photographer Captures What Male Entitlement Feels Like to Women Who Experience It

[djean111]

8. Here is what it is like to actually experience male privilege in the workplace -

I resigned from a clerical job at State Farm, after being there for maybe four years, late sixties, to accept
a job as a programmer, at an insurance company. When I inquired about being a programmer at State Farm, I was first condescendingly told to take the logic test. Aced the test, then was told I could not be a programmer because my husband was a programmer, and they did not let husbands and wives work in the same department. So, I applied for a programmer trainee job at this insurance company, aced a different logic test, and during the interview I was asked if I was using birth control, because they sure didn't want me to get all trained and then get pregnant.

When I turned in my resignation at State Farm, the manager three levels up from my supervisor walked up to my desk and told me if I was a real woman, I would stay in my job until I started having babies and stayed home. My supervisor told me that my scores on the aptitude tests I took when I first applied for a job at State Farm were so high that if I were a man, I would have been put right into the management track. Instead, I got what was a very demeaning job as a clerk. I believe that, after I was long gone, a group of women successfully sued State Farm over their treatment of women. Oh, and a (female, of course) clerk in my group had an affair with a married supervisor and was found out - official company policy was that she lost her job.

I accepted this all as normal, but could not help seeing men as patronizing obstacles to be somehow evaded.

New programming job - even after I became Senior Programmer, a couple of the guys would wait until someone else was around to ask advice about a program, because they hated asking a woman. When any of the other programmers - all guys - were taking out a fleet car for a training trip or whatever, I was asked to got up to the third floor and get the keys. After a while I asked why, they said the fleet guys liked to see me walk. I was asked to train to back up the secretary and the tape librarian, found out that up until I was hired, they just backed each other up because it was woman's work.

Funniest thing - after thirteen years of this, and realizing I was never going to get past senior programmer, I answered an ad that was looking for someone to learn HP/3000. Tired of mainframes, I applied and got the job. First week - had a meeting with my boss, the controller, my co-worker, and an outside sales rep. Boss asked the receptionist to get paper and pencils, and asked me to make coffee. I said oh, I don't know how to make coffee. He reddened, then went and made the coffee. He actually APOLOGIZED afterwards, saying he was sorry it looked sexist. I told him the truth - I did not know how to make coffee. Still don't.

Things were a bit better at the giant telecom I ended up working at - got to move around the country, got to work overseas. Got to be one of the first women in purely technical groups, in North Carolina, where sexism is an art and a way of life. Still an atmosphere where, walking into a meeting about sexism in the workplace, a supervisor laughed and said hey, now I will learn to do sexism correctly. In the middle nineties.

I am not a misogynist. I love men. I don't hate them. I do try to never put myself in a position where I have to trust them in the workplace. That's how male privilege has affected me.