This is not about pay inequality exactly, but definitely felt like sexism.
Please welcome the newest team meeting minute taker - the only female on the 10 male strong team.
This request followed swiftly by 40 more minutes of only men talking, just to be “Tiffany, I know everything I need to know about you already we’re done now”-ed at the end.
Ouch. Reminds me of the Beach Day office episode where Pam doesn’t get to be considered for management and just has to take notes the whole time.
Around 5-10 years ago I was in a department with the same demographics, and the only female sat right outside the manager’s office. He would often ask her to go make copies of things, or print stuff for him. She requested a different cubicle, and the requests stopped luckily.
That sucks, would really piss me off too.
I talked to my faux-boss - the guy on the team who is not my manager but may as well be functionally - he made me feel a bit better about things because he has also been delegated secretary of a different meeting. He mentioned that my real boss probably meant well by the delegation, in that he likes to use the minute taker as more of a meeting PM, i.e., is the person to organize and get shit done. Given how impatient my boss is with people who cannot translate his requests immediately (I am one of the rare people who can), I can see faux-boss’s point.
That said, when you pair said event with the rude meeting cutoff and having 50% of the credit of your quote “brilliant” white paper directed towards your male counterpart who did not contribute more than 5%, it is a yikes from me dawg.
I’m lucky (or perhaps more accurately privileged) to have not had to deal with that “thanks Bob for all this work Susan did” BS, but I think I’d struggle to not relentlessly be putting the other guy on the spot like “yeah how did you manage to get all that done so quickly!?”
Great, make someone else be in that hot seat. Just because you have that skill doesn’t mean others shouldn’t be figuring it out. In this instance, it should definitely be the male counterpart who contributed less than 5%.
So I made a bit of a point, in my sending out of the paper, to not directly throw 5% under the bus. He had a bit of blip, overpromised, underdelivered, and I get that (my boss and faux boss definitely noticed as the second half was delivered 3+ weeks late and it wasn’t complete). Faux boss was going to make an attempt at finishing it, but I made a faster attempt (incorporating more of faux boss’s work than 5%) and it became “my” paper of at least 75-80% my content, but 100% my story.
5% DID correct real boss and told him/the team directly that it was 95% my work. It was just hard to hear in that order, then be delegated secretary, then be cut off abruptly without having had a chance to speak.
Oh and also be paid less. Full circle!
This is a problem, to be sure.
Is there a problem in that actuarial profession seems to be vastly weighted towards those who find out about actuarial work during undergraduate college? I.e. could we advance diversity initiatives by recruiting more career changers? If so, we could probably be faster at increasing higher level representation than in waiting 10-15 years for those students to graduate and then qualify.