Interesting Observation about my Office

[geminigirl]

My office is in general, often a gender-stereotype and sexism free place. There's a good mix of men and women for a social services agency, there are women in leadership positions (often a challenge for social services agencies) and so on. In fact, during cultural competency training a few weeks ago, it was asked if women had different issue because the men are mostly gay men.

So here's my observation.

We have two conference rooms, the one that my office opens on to and a smaller, but nicer one further down the hall. Our Board of Directors meets in the smaller room. We also don't have enough chairs to have at the table in both rooms at once. So this morning when the chairs had to be moved from one end of the hallway to the other...the only people they asked were men.

Now, I don't mind being exempted from the chair moving situation. The chairs are heavy and awkward to move. It's the not being asked that I wonder about.

Comments

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

Speaking just for myself, my thoughts on something like that are usually, "Who's handy? Who's buffest?" In my office, an ad-hoc chore like that would go to one or two of about seven people, one of whom is female. We do have two designated "heavy movers", who are both big burly guys; helping with major tote-and-carry jobs is in their job description, I believe.

Is my office typical? Dunno. I wouldn't hesitate to ask a woman to help, although I'd probably tailor my request based on just how onerous I thought the job might be. I wouldn't ask our slightly built, middle-aged telecom specialist to help me with heavy lifting, but I've asked her to help me with toting party supplies.

[geminigirl]

See, I've moved these chairs before. The part that was weird was that the person in charge said hi to me and walked past me to ask my officemate to help him. What lcohen said about being sick would make sense but none of the other women who were here were involved with the chair moving project. And it's not the first time either....

[lcohen]

i can't speak for why or whether the other women in your office were asked, but you've been quite ill. i wouldn't ask you to help me tote around a feather pillow, at the moment. might that have factored in?

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

I once worked in an office where a woman who needed to get a bunch of equipment moved made the rather impressive faux pas of sending out an e-mail which basically phrased the request as "would any of you big strong guys out there be able to help a damsel in distress?" (that wasn't the exact wording, but it was close) Even my not-always-so-clueful male co-workers saw the problem with this.

In general, the situation you described strikes me as "not necessarily sexist" meaning that the same behavior (asking guys to move the chairs) could have come out of sexist or non-sexist approaches to the situation.

Having said that, if other people were asked to move chairs and I was just standing around (and not feeling sick) then I would probably grab a few chairs and help out. If the person doing the asking had a problem with that, then we'd have to talk about sexism.

[geminigirl]

Yeah...I've moved the chairs before. This was a case of the person who was asked to be in charge of the chair moving process walking into my office saying hi to me and asking my officemate to help him move the chairs...not a general call for assistance with the chair moving.

There's a limit on the damsel in distress thing. I've sent out an e-mail asking for assistance moving things that were too big or heavy for me to move...but is that the damsel thing, or is that just simple anatomy-I am x strong, you are x+y strong, and what needs to be moved takes more than x force to move it.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

The woman who sent the damsel in distress e-mail sent it to the 300 or so people working in our Cambridge office. A more gender-neutral phrasing like "I need some volunteers to help move boxes" wouldn't have raised any eyebrows.

[geminigirl]

Yes. Even if a point was made about the weight of the boxes, which I would have done simply to save people who wouldn't be capable of helping from wasting their time.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ah, hmmm... "guys" is a gender-neutral term for me. When I'm trying to motivate a group of my friends to do something it's always "come on guys, let's do [fitb]". Is this unusual? I even say "guys" when it's an all-female group (admittedly rare in my company), as not everyone likes being called "girls" or "ladies" (eww! that's the name of the toilet, in my book) or "women".

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

I use "guys" as a gender-neutral term all the time. I think in the story I was telling it was more like "I need some strong men..." but I forget the exact phrasing.

The thing I hate most is when I'm the only woman in the room and a well-meaning man addresses the group as "guys...and lady". Usually, men who say something like that don't mean to make anyone uncomfortable, but it has that effect and I'd prefer that they just say "guys."