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Re: “go home and bake cookies” or So what would be a ‘male’ version of “go bake cookies”? “Go home and mow the lawn or take out the garbage?” Just doesn’t have the same bite to it, probably because a lot of women also do these things. It doesn’t have the same bite because it doesn’t have the same kind of subtext. Telling a woman to go home and bake cookies has nothing to do with cookies. I don’t care how good your cookies are, it’s an insult to say this. He’s telling her to leave the man work to him, that she should leave and return to the home and kitchen where women belong. He’s telling her that she has no place there. … This is such a much larger topic, and whenever someone posts something along these lines, we all jump on it, I think, because we’re all affected by it. The pretty little head and go home and bake statements are the hardest part of my job. They happen. Or what about the topic that came up about a month ago about the company that had invitation-only golf days, and only the men were invited? There are so many things like this. In one place I worked, there were 10 guys in a group of 12. Us girls were expected to hang together while the guys went off in their own groups. On one hand, there was no reason for me to expect to be invited to go to lunch and hang out with this group of 20-something white boys, but because they did hang together and talk shop when they were at lunch and whatnot, they were all pretty much on the same page about work stuff and we two women were not. There was simply no way in. So, I switched jobs. I’ve switched jobs three times in the last seven years, and I run into it everywhere. The women don’t get promoted. There are guys at every company who are arrogant and exclusive. I think the solution is two-pronged. Increase our ranks whenever we can. Encourage girls to get into technology fields so that we’re not so outnumbered. And second, have zero tolerance for the arrogant, exclusive behavior we are the targets of. Zero tolerance. -Nancy |
Look up to the stars, to the horizon of our next human adventure.