Ask a Manager: My office includes me in Administrative Professionals Day just because I’m a woman

[minoanmiss]

Administrative Professionals Day is coming up on Wednesday and I am already dreading it. I am not an administrative professional but I work in the construction industry. In our company, women make up 20% of the office staff. All but four are considered administrative support.

Every year for Administrative Professionals Day, the company pays for lunch (they buy take-out and serve it in a conference room) and gives away some small token of appreciation (a mug or a balloon). Every year, all the women in the office are invited. The first year the invitation was extended to me, I was told, “We know you’re not an admin, but we didn’t want you to feel left out since most of the women in the office will be attending.”
Rather than feel included, the annual invitation makes me feel somewhat insulted. I have a four-year degree and 20+ years of professional experience. I work in creative services, perform various tech and software functions, and wear other hats as needed. I am proud of my work and my accomplishments, but being lumped in just because I’m also a woman makes me feel minimized.

I generally decline the invitation without any fuss (“I’ve got a prior lunch engagement”) but I wonder if I’m being too sensitive? I get that they are trying to do a nice thing but I end up feeling patronized.

Nooo, you are not being too sensitive and this is not a nice thing, regardless of their intentions.

It’s sexist and demeaning that your office is bringing gender into this. You’re not going to feel “left out” if you’re not included in an event for a profession you don’t belong to, simply because you share a gender with the attendees. So this year, when you get invited, say something! You could say, “I know you mean well, but I don’t think we should invite people to this based on gender, especially given the long history of women being assumed to be admins.”

You could also say, “It’s not fair to the admins to include me. It waters down the point of honoring their work if we just make it all the women who work here.”

Frankly, though, it’s time to get rid of this patronizing day entirely. Admins don’t need flowers and lunch; they need better pay and year-round respect.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

I don't know where to begin with this...

[cynthia1960]

I think directing flamethrowers at the decision makers behind this is a good start.

[angelofthenorth]

Well, yes.

[beable]

I was going to go with lawn darts, but flamethrowers work too

[cynthia1960]

The answer is good.

[shirou]

I appreciate Alison's (the columnist's) final sentence. Our admin (yes, a woman) makes our office run. We would be lost without her, but as much as the higher-ups rely on her, they don't promote her because she is "just" an admin. It's disgusting.

As for the LW, she's right that she shouldn't be invited simply because of her gender, and the sexism on display is insulting. However, the LW also makes it clear that she thinks her degree, experience, and creative/tech position make her better than a mere admin—a superior attitude I cannot condone. I wish Alison had addressed this point more directly.

[cynthia1960]

Good point there.

[minoanmiss]

However, the LW also makes it clear that she thinks her degree, experience, and creative/tech position make her better than a mere admin—a superior attitude I cannot condone. I wish Alison had addressed this point more directly.

OMG YES THIS. I totally agree with the LW that her superiors are being ridiculously sexist, but I really dislike the superiority aspect.

It reminds me of discussions about being "not like other girls" where in their efforts to push back against having feminine-coded things thrust upon them many girls and women absorb and echo the idea that feminine-coded things are necessarily to be despised, are necessarily lesser.

[heavenscalyx]

YES UGH.

I mean, in male-run tech companies, I generally struggle with the perception that as an afab technical writer, I am essentially an admin, and therefore I would decline the invitation on the basis that I am not an admin and I need to differentiate myself from the admins for my career advancement because there is definitely a bullshit class distinction there that I have to maintain in order to ever hope to have a raise. But that's a different way of talking about the situation from flouting my degrees and years of experience blah blah blah.

(I love that in my woman-run pharma vendor company, we no longer have any admins. Everyone who does admin-like work has a goddamn title other than administrative assistant to reflect the other work they do in our business development group, and they all work together to spread around the admin duties equitably.)

[jadelennox]

It's a shitty position to be in.

I was once introduced to a new software developer at my job, an older white man, as a software developer. He said, "oh, and you're a product manager?"

I was flummoxed. How to succinctly explain that what he'd just done was stunningly sexist, while not in any way dissing the skills of the (mostly female) product managers? Luckily, the (younger, white, male) programmer who'd introduced me looked startled and said "no, I said she's a software developer," and that was that.

I could come up with another 5 stories like that from my own personal experience -- at least once far worse and more consequential -- without breaking a sweat.

(Similarly, there was a point about a decade ago where some women programmers were pushing back at there always being gender and technology panels populated with "women near tech" -- women in tech marketing or management or, yes, product management. Some women near tech got very angry at the distinction, and honestly I'd be surprised if there hadn't been some scornful superiority BS from some of the female programmers. And yet, there still needs to be a healthy way to point out how bullshit it is that female tech panelists are so often founders or marketing or design, and so rarely programmers (or system admins, etc). It's garbage to devalue traditionally women's work, but it's also garbage to call a software developer a product manager, or to call a woman in tech sales your representative of "women in tech".

And make no mistake, it's the patriarchy that pits us all against each other. By making sure women's work is poorly paying and disrespected, it guarantees that if LW doesn't push back against being associated with Icky Lady Jobs, she's less likely to get promotions, good assignments, or respect. It puts the onus on LW to police the boundaries of acceptable work.

tl;dr Smash the patriarchy.)

[mirlacca]

Oh, gawd, they're still doing this. Of course they are.

In the mid-1980s, I was the first female exempt employee assigned to a weapons testing facility in Nevada. Every Christmas, as a member of management staff, I was hit up for a contribution for a Christmas present for the (all-female) support staff. And every Christmas, I was invited to the support staff Christmas party and got one of the presents. I went to that party every year too, because frankly it was a lot more fun than the management party and I couldn't do my job without the work of all those women, so why not?

But I'd been there two years when the Range manager came up to me and said, "Ashley! We've got a first at TTR! We've hired a female staff member!"

And I said "Say WHAT now?" I was a Member of Administrative Staff, and he knew it. MASs and MTSs were exempt employees, Masters' degrees required. So for him to say he'd just hired the first female staff member was ... several levels of WTF.

And the Range Manager stopped, and looked at me, and the thoughts going through his tiny mind were glowing in neon. But he stammered, "You--you didn't let me finish! I meant to say, 'Staff Member Technical'!"

(The correct term, which the Range Manager sure as holy hell knew, was "Member of Technical Staff." Never "Staff member technical." In more than 31 years of working with tech staff, I never once heard "staff member technical.")

(And speaking of hierarchy: that company would give the Catholic Church a run for it. In fact, I once wrote up an analysis of why tech staff looked down on admin staff in terms of "holy priesthood" and "acolytes" which apparently got rather more circulation than I intended it to...)

[jadelennox]

Hahaha, this reminds me of a story that happened to a friend of mine some 15 years ago. Word-for-word:

Boy: "So, how'd you get into computers? Because, you know, girls and computers don't mix."

Friend: "Excuse me?"

Boy: *Stammers, sincerely trying to figure out what he said wrong. Then, in an epiphany, he finds it*

"Oh, sorry! I meant women."

[conuly]

Yes, agreed on all points.

[cereta]

Arg! I've seen the other end of this, with my (cis male) spouse being left out of professional things aimed at support staff, almost certainly based on gender. OTOH, he is often not expected to do the kind of "caretaking" tasks (organizing a holiday potluck, for example) that get assigned to support staff. I agree: lose the day, increase the pay and job security and respect.

[raine]

As someone who was an admin assistant for 15 years, it's hard for me to let go of the day, only because in crappy companies, it is the only day anyone in those crappy companies says thank you to the admins. That got me through a lot of the shit I dealt with. But I agree, if you lose the day, up the pay, job security, and respect.

[heavenscalyx]

Yes, I concur. I was a secretary and clerk-typist before "admin" became a common term for a number of years after I was booted from grad school, and I feel like Secretaries' Week was the only time the bosses were in any way kind or thoughtful. But more pay, job security, and respect would go a long way toward replacing that.

[cereta]

I can see that. I will say that if you're going to do it, do it right. One year, my spouse's boss gave him two very nice steaks.* The man was an asshole, but that was a real step-up moment. The steaks were delicious.

*I got steaks for hitting my fifteen year mark at school. We had other options, but that was definitely the most popular.

[raine]

My favorite gift in those 15 years was the year I temped for a day at a company - on what was then Secretaries Day. I got a box of Godiva chocolate, which was the first time I'd ever had fine chocolate. I tried to tell the person giving me that, "No, it's okay, I'm only here for the day." He wouldn't hear of it; said that made it all the more reason I got something, and that the regular admin would still get a gift.