I don’t believe I have. At least I’ve never left any interview that wasn’t professional and friendly. I may not have gotten the job but I never put it down to me being a woman. I suppose it’s possible it could have been, but that’s one of those you’ll never know things. Luckily for me, I’ve almost always gotten any job I’ve managed to interview for.
One time I was being interviewed for a graphic design job and I distinctly remember them asking if I was ok with it being all men who worked there and if I golf (I don’t). They didn’t hire me.
Not about me but firsthand experience when i was recruiting a junior associate. In my firm, all candidates must meet with the head of department (me in this case) and 2 partners. After the shortlist is made, as procedure, we had a debrief with HR and the partners.
The 2 candidates were young women, both really qualified.
The only male in the conversation, a partner, said “This one is better, it seems she doesn’t have kids”. Everyone around the table agreed, including HR. This asshole has 3 kids.
They were one time most excited about my resume, because they only had men, and ‘a woman would be great with the social interaction and the inter team connections.’
Welll….
They forgot about the other stereotype, about autism and software… That last one is actually true in my case. So yeah I didn’t get the job, not even close xD
Edit since this was removed: I am formally diagnosed with autism.
Absolutely. Sometimes it worked in my favor, but lots of times it didn’t. I’ve been asked about kids, plans for kids many times. I’ve walked into a tech screen and had them hand me a much harder coding test than friends got from the same company. I’ve nailed tech screens and gotten the “culture fit” excuse for no hire. I’ve been offered a lower position until I can prove I can do the job (even though my last job I was literally doing the job.)
With DEI out of favor, I’m half wondering about applying as a man and seeing if responses are different.
Inadvertently. It had more to do with the fact that I was pregnant. The interviewer had a friendly, inviting look on her face until she saw my belly. Then it turned to disdain. She reviewed my resume, told me I was “overqualified” for the job, and sent me on my way without even finishing the interview.
I work with international suppliers and often visit my counterparts in other countries. I’m a second class citizen being female, but I’m also in-charge of the project, so it can get tricky.
In one country (in Eastern Europe), I was the lead in-charge, but was not allowed to sit at the same table as the male employees for lunch. It takes some getting used to.
Not exactly during hiring, but found out about pay gap due to gender.
I worked in sales at a male dominated industry and was the only rep not given commission and had to give male representatives commissions on sales I solely made because they were in their “territory”, while I earned no commissions myself.
When I asked for a deserved raise, I was told the owner “knows I’m a mother with a family (so essentially was stuck there due to obligation) and that my pay was the best I was going to get”
Every concern I brought to a supervisor , I was always accused of just being “emotional”.
I was used as a prop at in person meetings. Essentially told to just sit there, smile ,and be quiet- be seen, but not heard.
The owner laughed in my face at a meeting about marketing, and now used all my ideas on his website.
The owner of my company was essentially one step below royalty in his home country of India. When I finally went over supervisor’s head and complained I was given the justification that he was just “used to treating women differently” and in his country he had many servants in his home and that’s why he treated me poorly… because*he viewed me as a woman servant”
Worst job ever. I was only there one year, and the stress took a massive toll on me. The owner ended up harassing me DAILY , but I refused to quit without a job lined up (this was right after COVID ) so I could at least collect unemployment for myself by making him terminate me.
I did end up suing him for wrongful termination and won a small amount of money, but took great satisfaction at the attention and pressure that was put on him for being a discriminating P.O.S 😊
not only in interviews, sometimes at work I don’t feel heard, my supervisor pays attention to what the guys want to say but he never takes me seriously
I don’t think so. I tend to dress conservatively so I think it helps. I once was hired over another woman because she showed up in a max dress with 6in open toed heeled sandals… to an aerospace metal plating shop 😅. She wasn’t even allowed on site. And I was hired on another lab with the other chemist fully expected to cover for my lack of heavy lifting.
I work in academia (previously as a researcher and now in a support role) and fortunately haven’t experienced bias in hiring. However, even though the lab I previously worked in was mostly female, the boss (male) would make the occasional weird sexist comment. In my current workplace, I’m lucky to not have encountered any bias until now.
I have only worked in women dominated places where a woman is in charge of hiring so it hasn’t been an issue. If anything, I suppose it has worked in my favor.
Besides the occasional AH that thinks he knows better than me (coworker), but thank goodness I haven’t experienced anything that affects me having a job like that.
For context, I have been a nanny, bridal stylist, wedding photographer’s assistant, and now a full time new born photographer operating in a hospital as well as a part time wedding photographer (not as an independent, but for a larger company).
I interviewed for a software engineering role at a company back in 2008. They have their own proprietary programming language, so the interview consists of a normal interview and a programming test in their language. I learned after hiring that it requires a 90 on the programming test to be recommended for placement on a development team. I scored a 92, and was hired as a programmer analyst, because my “friendliness and professionalism” made me a better fit in a client-facing role. Programmer analysts make considerably less than development programmers. By the time I left the company, I had a 3rd percentile salary for my job title in my area.
I made it apart of the interviewing proccess to inform the one interviewing me that I am not nor will I ever be getting married, I do not date and won’t at all in the future, and I do not have or will ever have any children since they are not legally able to ask those questions I just volunteered that information and I love to believe that is what got me quickly into my employment.
Also, I didn’t later start dating, I didn’t later get married, and I didn’t later go on to have children just because I secured employment. I am still blissfully single, with no children, and have less than zero interest in dating, sex, or marriage. I get far more shifts and hours than my counterparts that do all of those things have all of those things and the complain all the time about not getting enough hours even though they requested their dating life and family life be considered when schedules are being made.
Yes. A few times. The most egregious was when I applied to a position in a fishing boat in Alaska. I was told that they “couldn’t guarantee my sexual safety” and so they didn’t hire women for those positions. Funny thing is they had no issue hiring female housekeeping for the same boat.
I don’t take it personally at this point bc I’m good at my job and because I know who I interviewed against and I know that we didn’t hire him a second time a year later when another spot opened up, but I unintentionally saw the goal of “increase gender diversity” on my boss’s computer shortly after being hired and didn’t love it
About a year ago, my direct supervisor offered me a promotion. Which I happily accepted, but his supervisor had to approve it as well. I was denied the promotion because he believed I “wasn’t adult enough.” In all reality, he had men of the same age working higher positions than the promotion. So he hired a guy barely older than me who didn’t even last two weeks before attempting to fight a teenage girl. My direct supervisor immediately told his boss he was going to promote me and that he wasn’t going to do an outside hire again when I was more than capable. I was extremely mad and looking at quitting, but they offered me a substantial raise.
Yes, but much more blatantly in how I was treated by supervisors than in the hiring process. In hiring, I’ve been asked questions where I was thinking “you would never ask/say that to a man.” But in the actual job it’s much more insidious. I had a boss who assumed any small discrepancy he noticed was a mistake I had made (only female employee there), and who told me many times that my clothing wasn’t appropriate when I was wearing jeans and a company sweatshirt just like my male counterparts, and who just 100% expected that I’d handle any cleaning related tasks even though I was hired for sales.
In my last job, my gender worked both for and against me. It helped at first I think, because I was a female in a male dominated space. I was one of only 2 full time female employees at the company, and I was really proud of that. But the other woman and I both left due partly to misogyny. I was constantly passed up for promotions and raises, even when I was exceeding my goals compared to my male colleagues. My ideas were often dismissed. My boss would spend a lot more personal time with my male colleagues and excluded me. I went above and beyond for my company and was never recognized, only criticized. I asked for a raise one final time, and after I was told no, I decided to leave because I knew I was never going to get anywhere with them. I loved my job, and I was so sad to leave. As soon as I left, he promoted the guy that I had hired and trained, and gave him a $12,000 raise. 😔
One prof straight up told me that he didn’t believe that I’d be sticking to one topic long enough to pull it off.. after I singlehandedly did my master project in a working group that had no expert in my field of choice. Also, my master project was a badly butchered work plan for what should have become a whole PhD and I got two publications out of it, which is rare in my branch. But I didn’t say any of that. I was too shocked and sad.
I was in the military and did a 4 week training course with Octel then spent 6 months using the new software, training others, and getting over 3000 customers trained and set up with their voice-mail. We had been allowed early access to this training and were among the first in the country to use it. Because of various issues I didn’t reenlist.
I applied to work for Octel and was immediately and enthusiastically offered a job and told by the first gentleman that interviewed me on the East coast that I was exactly what they were looking for and that they were thrilled with my performance in their school. I got to the location where the job was supposed to be and went in to introduce myself and the gentleman looked at me and told me he couldn’t hire someone with no training or experience in this position. I showed him my documents from his company that I was fully trained on their lastest software.
He looked at me shook his head and said he could do me a favor and see if their sales department needed someone. I’m 100% positive the second guy just couldn’t see a woman in 1996 doing programming, training, and technical work. His brain couldn’t understand how a 21 year old girl could know more about his company’s products than him. I ended up deciding to just be a SAHM because nobody would take me seriously in the telephone industry in the civilian world. I was one of only I think 80 women worldwide trained on the equipment I was trained on at the time so it was just not possible in their minds because they had never witnessed it.
Yes. I was asked multiple times at jobs interviews how I would manage my kid and when I said “with my husband” the response was weird. We also were interviewed at the same company and only I was asked questions about our child and not him.
I had one interviewer first ask me if my boyfriend coached me for the interview, then proceeded to educate me as to why my gender meant that I was completely incapable of doing the job… then my resume somehow found its way to the phone support department just so that they could offer me a position there and make a point that women were only good for answering the phone.
A lot of the jobs near my house are male dominated and I hadn’t thought about it until I was trying to apply: got rejected from a car wash, cart pusher for a grocery store, landscaper which I had experience for but was told they weren’t sure if I could keep up.
Kind of? I’ve had interviews where the male interviewer was purposefully aggressive and he didn’t seem to like that I was more soft spoken and polite. To be clear, this was a bank teller job so there was no reason I needed to be like a domineering person. I could just tell he dismissed me as a candidate purely based on my feminine disposition. Luckily, that’s the only time I’ve faced job discrimination for being a woman. But I have faced plenty of sexism in other ways and places.
Comments
I think I might be a rare case where my gender worked in my favor.
I had a previous boss who got fired after multiple witnessed instances of sexual harassment (including once against me, in front of my entire team.)
Nobody was sad to see him leave. But everybody on my majority-male team banded together to support me moving up to fill that management role.
Happy to get the job and I’m thriving here, but I wish it wouldn’t have happened the way it did.
I don’t believe I have. At least I’ve never left any interview that wasn’t professional and friendly. I may not have gotten the job but I never put it down to me being a woman. I suppose it’s possible it could have been, but that’s one of those you’ll never know things. Luckily for me, I’ve almost always gotten any job I’ve managed to interview for.
Definitely. Men are preferred in my subspecialty and are given higher scores in interviews.
One time I was being interviewed for a graphic design job and I distinctly remember them asking if I was ok with it being all men who worked there and if I golf (I don’t). They didn’t hire me.
Not about me but firsthand experience when i was recruiting a junior associate. In my firm, all candidates must meet with the head of department (me in this case) and 2 partners. After the shortlist is made, as procedure, we had a debrief with HR and the partners.
The 2 candidates were young women, both really qualified.
The only male in the conversation, a partner, said “This one is better, it seems she doesn’t have kids”. Everyone around the table agreed, including HR. This asshole has 3 kids.
They were one time most excited about my resume, because they only had men, and ‘a woman would be great with the social interaction and the inter team connections.’
Welll….
They forgot about the other stereotype, about autism and software… That last one is actually true in my case. So yeah I didn’t get the job, not even close xD
Edit since this was removed: I am formally diagnosed with autism.
Absolutely. Sometimes it worked in my favor, but lots of times it didn’t. I’ve been asked about kids, plans for kids many times. I’ve walked into a tech screen and had them hand me a much harder coding test than friends got from the same company. I’ve nailed tech screens and gotten the “culture fit” excuse for no hire. I’ve been offered a lower position until I can prove I can do the job (even though my last job I was literally doing the job.)
With DEI out of favor, I’m half wondering about applying as a man and seeing if responses are different.
Inadvertently. It had more to do with the fact that I was pregnant. The interviewer had a friendly, inviting look on her face until she saw my belly. Then it turned to disdain. She reviewed my resume, told me I was “overqualified” for the job, and sent me on my way without even finishing the interview.
I work with international suppliers and often visit my counterparts in other countries. I’m a second class citizen being female, but I’m also in-charge of the project, so it can get tricky.
In one country (in Eastern Europe), I was the lead in-charge, but was not allowed to sit at the same table as the male employees for lunch. It takes some getting used to.
Not exactly during hiring, but found out about pay gap due to gender.
I worked in sales at a male dominated industry and was the only rep not given commission and had to give male representatives commissions on sales I solely made because they were in their “territory”, while I earned no commissions myself.
When I asked for a deserved raise, I was told the owner “knows I’m a mother with a family (so essentially was stuck there due to obligation) and that my pay was the best I was going to get”
Every concern I brought to a supervisor , I was always accused of just being “emotional”.
I was used as a prop at in person meetings. Essentially told to just sit there, smile ,and be quiet- be seen, but not heard.
The owner laughed in my face at a meeting about marketing, and now used all my ideas on his website.
The owner of my company was essentially one step below royalty in his home country of India. When I finally went over supervisor’s head and complained I was given the justification that he was just “used to treating women differently” and in his country he had many servants in his home and that’s why he treated me poorly… because*he viewed me as a woman servant”
Worst job ever. I was only there one year, and the stress took a massive toll on me. The owner ended up harassing me DAILY , but I refused to quit without a job lined up (this was right after COVID ) so I could at least collect unemployment for myself by making him terminate me.
I did end up suing him for wrongful termination and won a small amount of money, but took great satisfaction at the attention and pressure that was put on him for being a discriminating P.O.S 😊
not only in interviews, sometimes at work I don’t feel heard, my supervisor pays attention to what the guys want to say but he never takes me seriously
I don’t think so. I tend to dress conservatively so I think it helps. I once was hired over another woman because she showed up in a max dress with 6in open toed heeled sandals… to an aerospace metal plating shop 😅. She wasn’t even allowed on site. And I was hired on another lab with the other chemist fully expected to cover for my lack of heavy lifting.
I work in academia (previously as a researcher and now in a support role) and fortunately haven’t experienced bias in hiring. However, even though the lab I previously worked in was mostly female, the boss (male) would make the occasional weird sexist comment. In my current workplace, I’m lucky to not have encountered any bias until now.
I have only worked in women dominated places where a woman is in charge of hiring so it hasn’t been an issue. If anything, I suppose it has worked in my favor.
Besides the occasional AH that thinks he knows better than me (coworker), but thank goodness I haven’t experienced anything that affects me having a job like that.
For context, I have been a nanny, bridal stylist, wedding photographer’s assistant, and now a full time new born photographer operating in a hospital as well as a part time wedding photographer (not as an independent, but for a larger company).
I interviewed for a software engineering role at a company back in 2008. They have their own proprietary programming language, so the interview consists of a normal interview and a programming test in their language. I learned after hiring that it requires a 90 on the programming test to be recommended for placement on a development team. I scored a 92, and was hired as a programmer analyst, because my “friendliness and professionalism” made me a better fit in a client-facing role. Programmer analysts make considerably less than development programmers. By the time I left the company, I had a 3rd percentile salary for my job title in my area.
Gender, no. Race, yes
I made it apart of the interviewing proccess to inform the one interviewing me that I am not nor will I ever be getting married, I do not date and won’t at all in the future, and I do not have or will ever have any children since they are not legally able to ask those questions I just volunteered that information and I love to believe that is what got me quickly into my employment.
Also, I didn’t later start dating, I didn’t later get married, and I didn’t later go on to have children just because I secured employment. I am still blissfully single, with no children, and have less than zero interest in dating, sex, or marriage. I get far more shifts and hours than my counterparts that do all of those things have all of those things and the complain all the time about not getting enough hours even though they requested their dating life and family life be considered when schedules are being made.
Yes. A few times. The most egregious was when I applied to a position in a fishing boat in Alaska. I was told that they “couldn’t guarantee my sexual safety” and so they didn’t hire women for those positions. Funny thing is they had no issue hiring female housekeeping for the same boat.
I don’t take it personally at this point bc I’m good at my job and because I know who I interviewed against and I know that we didn’t hire him a second time a year later when another spot opened up, but I unintentionally saw the goal of “increase gender diversity” on my boss’s computer shortly after being hired and didn’t love it
About a year ago, my direct supervisor offered me a promotion. Which I happily accepted, but his supervisor had to approve it as well. I was denied the promotion because he believed I “wasn’t adult enough.” In all reality, he had men of the same age working higher positions than the promotion. So he hired a guy barely older than me who didn’t even last two weeks before attempting to fight a teenage girl. My direct supervisor immediately told his boss he was going to promote me and that he wasn’t going to do an outside hire again when I was more than capable. I was extremely mad and looking at quitting, but they offered me a substantial raise.
Yes, but much more blatantly in how I was treated by supervisors than in the hiring process. In hiring, I’ve been asked questions where I was thinking “you would never ask/say that to a man.” But in the actual job it’s much more insidious. I had a boss who assumed any small discrepancy he noticed was a mistake I had made (only female employee there), and who told me many times that my clothing wasn’t appropriate when I was wearing jeans and a company sweatshirt just like my male counterparts, and who just 100% expected that I’d handle any cleaning related tasks even though I was hired for sales.
In my last job, my gender worked both for and against me. It helped at first I think, because I was a female in a male dominated space. I was one of only 2 full time female employees at the company, and I was really proud of that. But the other woman and I both left due partly to misogyny. I was constantly passed up for promotions and raises, even when I was exceeding my goals compared to my male colleagues. My ideas were often dismissed. My boss would spend a lot more personal time with my male colleagues and excluded me. I went above and beyond for my company and was never recognized, only criticized. I asked for a raise one final time, and after I was told no, I decided to leave because I knew I was never going to get anywhere with them. I loved my job, and I was so sad to leave. As soon as I left, he promoted the guy that I had hired and trained, and gave him a $12,000 raise. 😔
One prof straight up told me that he didn’t believe that I’d be sticking to one topic long enough to pull it off.. after I singlehandedly did my master project in a working group that had no expert in my field of choice. Also, my master project was a badly butchered work plan for what should have become a whole PhD and I got two publications out of it, which is rare in my branch. But I didn’t say any of that. I was too shocked and sad.
I was in the military and did a 4 week training course with Octel then spent 6 months using the new software, training others, and getting over 3000 customers trained and set up with their voice-mail. We had been allowed early access to this training and were among the first in the country to use it. Because of various issues I didn’t reenlist.
I applied to work for Octel and was immediately and enthusiastically offered a job and told by the first gentleman that interviewed me on the East coast that I was exactly what they were looking for and that they were thrilled with my performance in their school. I got to the location where the job was supposed to be and went in to introduce myself and the gentleman looked at me and told me he couldn’t hire someone with no training or experience in this position. I showed him my documents from his company that I was fully trained on their lastest software.
He looked at me shook his head and said he could do me a favor and see if their sales department needed someone. I’m 100% positive the second guy just couldn’t see a woman in 1996 doing programming, training, and technical work. His brain couldn’t understand how a 21 year old girl could know more about his company’s products than him. I ended up deciding to just be a SAHM because nobody would take me seriously in the telephone industry in the civilian world. I was one of only I think 80 women worldwide trained on the equipment I was trained on at the time so it was just not possible in their minds because they had never witnessed it.
Yes. I was asked multiple times at jobs interviews how I would manage my kid and when I said “with my husband” the response was weird. We also were interviewed at the same company and only I was asked questions about our child and not him.
I had one interviewer first ask me if my boyfriend coached me for the interview, then proceeded to educate me as to why my gender meant that I was completely incapable of doing the job… then my resume somehow found its way to the phone support department just so that they could offer me a position there and make a point that women were only good for answering the phone.
I dont think so.
Ive been sexually harassed at work before but my workplaces always took it very seriously.
I was once given a job offer because they had to meet a diversity quota and were one woman short.. does that count?
[removed]
A lot of the jobs near my house are male dominated and I hadn’t thought about it until I was trying to apply: got rejected from a car wash, cart pusher for a grocery store, landscaper which I had experience for but was told they weren’t sure if I could keep up.
I work childcare, so it’s definitely worked in my favor. You don’t see many men in this field.
Kind of? I’ve had interviews where the male interviewer was purposefully aggressive and he didn’t seem to like that I was more soft spoken and polite. To be clear, this was a bank teller job so there was no reason I needed to be like a domineering person. I could just tell he dismissed me as a candidate purely based on my feminine disposition. Luckily, that’s the only time I’ve faced job discrimination for being a woman. But I have faced plenty of sexism in other ways and places.