video, all the female interns and the principal in one office. it won't work unless all women are involved. short of that the offending individual will marginalize you.

Find a good Civil Rights Lawyer. They will walk you down the path in a manner that will resolve the issue. Give them 33 percent plus all there cost and your not out a penny. They will also tell you if you have a case or not by saying I can't take the Case.... sound like something "Saul Alinsky" would have said.

document. if you bring this to the principle then you'll probably need some evidence. likewise, if you do that and then are later terminated (and you believe it's wrongful) then you'll again need evidence.

keep in mind that if this co-worker has been there longer than you, then there is a good chance that you will lose should you either directly or indirectly engage in a power struggle with this person.

however, if simply keeping your job (and not joining the long que of unemployed architects) is most important to you, then maybe consider that you're just not going to like all of your co-workers and live with it.

is it a co-worker or a super? i don't see how filing a complaint with a super/principle about a co-worker would get you fired. in fact, i'm pretty sure that's not legal.

perhaps you could raise it with one of the principals by saying you've just been feeling you get the brush-off when you ask this person for some help, but not suggest that it's sexism at first. it might get to the point where you need to call a spade a spade and make an official complaint, but it might be counterproductive to jump straight to accusations. he may not be doing it deliberately. sexism isn't always a conscious thing.

Maybe women intimidate this guy.

Did you try talk to him about the situation? Call him out on it, even if it is a joking way at first. Ask him if he notices a pattern emerging in the way he treats female interns?

As hard is it may be, I would definitely try talk to him first. At least then he can’t say that these allegations were never brought to his attention.

Maybe you talking to him will be enough to get him to snap out of his chauvinistic habits.

Going over his head, as a first course of action, may come off a bit like taddle taling or immature/ unprofessional.

I don't know they guy, but i think the most professional and most morally appropriate plan would be to talk to him directly about, not your boss. Give the guy a chance to change.

holz's question is important. Are there any females in the office at the co-worker's level or above? Are there other females in the office experiencing what you are experiencing?

Does the co-worker know that you WANT to learn this information? Could this be simply a misunderstanding? It may make sense to start this process simply as a show of concern, not an accusation of intentional wrongdoing. Of course if you are 100% sure that this is intentional gender bias, then you should be more formal in your complaint.

As puddles said, document. If you go to a supervisor, it might be wise to go to TWO supervisors, so they both witness the other hearing your concerns. Write down a number of times/examples of when this problem has occurred so you have a paper trail that you have shared with your supers, and if you have an HR person that person should be included as well.


Good luck.

I agree with the suggestions about trying to address the specific problems (being excluded) without crying "Sexist!" This will let him or his boss draw their own conclusions, and if the boss thinks it's sexism that'll carry more weight anyway.

Further, I would say that if you do end up crying Sexist, never do so half-ass-edly. My mother filed a sexual harassment complaint against a coworker but didn't sue, and ended up being laid off at the first chance they got. Yes it's illegal to do this, but when you don't follow through on a complaint then what sticks in people's heads is that you're whiny or high-maintenance, or that you're a stick in the mud, and those impressions are hard to erase.

First of all, you probably do not have a case. It would be very to prove in any case... Discrimination charges usually have to have concrete evidence of a pattern of pay discrepancies and lack of promotions firmwide. And you have to have that evidence in hand.

I suggest that when you see him explaining something to one of your male co-workers, approach him and ask if you could be included in the lesson. Show that you are interested. Flatter him a bit. Tell him you need to learn all the things he has to teach you. You may have to go through this process several times before he understands that you are sincere.

It could very well be that he is insecure around women or even that he avoids close situations with them so he will not be accused of sexual harassment. Perhaps he reads you wrong and doesn't think you are interested. You seem to have made a judgment about him and he may pick up on that. Maybe he doesn't like you for some reason other than your sex. Maybe he has a jealous wife or girlfriend. Maybe he's sexist.

You would be foolish to make that charge out loud. Are you a racist if you don't go out of your way to explain something to a person of another race?--maybe, maybe not. There are many. many reasons for people's behavior that you have no clue to.

Just FYI, most people in management have a million things to worry about--getting work, meeting deadlines, keeping the firm afloat!-- and dislike having to deal with personal problems. Being labeled as a whiner, complainer, rabble rouser, tattletale, etc. is bad for your career. Use your resources, your education, and your intelligence to try to solve the problem yourself. The office is not school. The rules are different and your bosses want mature, innovative problem solvers. Try very, very hard to solve the problem before you go to a superior with it.

Best of luck and report back with your success!

Please note that sexual harassment and sexual discrimination are two very different things. Sexual harassment should not be tolerated.

on the note of sexual harassment - in my office for some reason it's always the british men that act in this blokey, locker room sort of manner. far from all of them though, i'd hate to generalize but sometimes it seems to be a bit of a cultural thing. that said, i don't believe that any man in today's society should be excused in this sort of behaviour with "misunderstanding" or "unaware" of chauvinistic ways. in 2009 you should know what the connotation is of "love", "dear", kitten" and the like. merely ignoring women (which i suppose then is sexual discrimination) like in the case of your co-worker is obviously less apparent and much more difficult to deal with. it is def. true that bosses have little patience with what they perceive as whining and also, a boss can be just as immature, biased and subjective as the next person so it's not even certain you'll get somewhere if you approach the "wrong" person with your otherwise just cause (again i base this on present and past superiors, many times as involved in the laddishness as anyone else).

office/sexual politics via The60's

btw - that should be "calling people things like "love, "dear", "kitten" and the like".

I used to work with a woman who would always take the female interns under her wing and give them the more exciting jobs, take them to client meetings, go out of her way to make sure they had a great experience. I was typically ignored when it was time to do more 'out of the ordinary' intern things, producing documents and illustrations and spending most of the time at my desk. One day I spoke up and talked to the principal, not about the discrimination but about taking a more active role. He took my request well and I had a much better learning experience from that point forward.

good post, loremipsum. Favoritism isn't illegal.

: don't know if your firm has a regular annual review process, but if so, then that forum would be a good place to bring up this topic if you don't find it comfortable tackling it elsewhere. you can address this sort of thing as a professional development issue and, if your firm is reasonably sensitive and enlightened, they won't see this as a personal attack on the individual involved but more as a legitimate need on your part to learn what you need to learn as part of your personal growth.

good luck.

Bake the office a cake.

Thank you everyone for your response. I've been battling this issue for about 6 months now, but it's been slow in the office this summer, so I'm trying to find other things to keep active. The females in the office have noticed this preference, but I think we will try an alternative approach before going to the principal. Thanks!

Is it his job to train all of the workers in this office or is he just helping out his buddies? If he has no direct relationship in training every person in the office, what knowledge he wishes to impart and to whom is possibly his own business. Or maybe not.

thats a good question fence

if its not really his job to train interns, accusing him of being sexist for only offering something outside of his actual job description to guys wont really go over well

if it is part of his job, then maybe take some alternate approaches first
make sure you exhaust all other possibilities before getting a principal involved or accusing sexism


maybe next time you would ask him for help, try it in a different way. maybe try it on your own, then bring it to him to ask him if this is the correct way to do it?
he might just respond better to certain types of questions
sometimes architects can be socially awkward, and he might just socially deal better with men than women?

good luck though
thats a tough spot to be in

an irrelevant question, fence (and marmkid). we are in a profession in which mentoring is expected to be part of being a professional. comes with the territory, not the specific job description.

That's what I thought too, Steven. There's not much I can do about favoritism, but when we are asking things to be explain, and told to go look it up ourselves...that's another story in my opinion.

its not irrelevant
i just didnt know the whole story and was asking for some more info about the situation

i am not justifying the person not helping out at all


but if we are going to accuse anyone of being sexist because they dont help someone out, you better be completely sure that is the case otherwise you will be asking for trouble

maybe the person doesnt like the couple girls in the office that he is "sexist" for not helping?
maybe he is just petty and a jerk?

saying someone needs to help out more is one thing
saying they are sexist?
thats a big leap that i am not going to agree with until i hear some more details

here is an example:
is this person anywhere near your level? are you any sort of threat to their position in the firm? would you be competition for them in any way, when perhaps some of these other guys are not?

I have no idea because i dont know those involved, but if any of those answers are yes, i would not be surprised at all to hear someone not helping someone else out. is it petty? absolutely. but it is not necessarily sexist


someone can be "not professional" while also not being a sexist

you mention favortism, CA
are you sure it is sexism, and not just favortism?
that is all i am asking, i dont see why opinions and questions need to be called irrelevant if we want to actually discuss something


from the short post to begin this thread, it seems that the person in question is not at a principal level. perhaps this person thinks you should already know the answer or you will be better served by researching it yourself? it sounds like they could be a bad mentor, but you could put yourself at risk by leaping to sexism (at least based on the info i have heard here)

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call it irrelevant. Marmkid, you are right to question tho. He's an experienced architect, the interns are not a threat to his job, and he (and others) have been told in office meeting, workload meetings, that they need to provide us with stuff to do, and make sure to explain when we don't know how to do things. or else it's double the work if we do it wrong.

how many interns are there? like how many male and female? to claim sexism, there needs to be a good amount of evidence, otherwise it is just favortism.
which isnt really any better, but i dont know if you can claim it really illegal

he sounds like an idiot who is not a good project manager, if he cant figure out that he is just either making his project worse, or making more work for himself if those under him dont have the necessary info or experience to do their work


it would probably be a lot easier and in the long run more effective to question his mentoring methods rather than claiming sexism. is there another architect at a similar level you could ask to work under?

Steven Ward,

"an irrelevant question, fence (and marmkid). we are in a profession in which mentoring is expected to be part of being a professional. comes with the territory, not the specific job description. "

You must live in some socialist/communist country in order to hold this view.

Mentoring is in fact a part of our profession but that does not mean if I am not in the role of mentorship that I have to part with any knowledge I have. If the person was put out into that role then YES he has to as prescribed by his position in the company. Just because you are a hired employee does not make you responsible for other employees future.

Personally I think of it as tricks a magician has. He certainly holds onto some of his secrets but passes a little bit of it directly to his intern/successor, although he may never part with all his hard fought for secrets. But the magician does not go around to everyone explaining how his tricks work. For to do that would make him obsolete.

But feel free to make yourself part of that dime a dozen crowd.

socialist? what kind of crap is that?

as a principal in my firm - someone with a vested interest in our success - i feel that if i don't share my knowledge with our employees i'm making the firm less competitive. everyone in our office is working toward the same goal, right? and we have very low employee turnover.

by the same token, project managers, job captains, anyone else with some authority in the firm is expected to share the benefits of their experience and knowledge in order to make the projects as good as they can be. if they withold that knowledge, it means the projects will be less efficient because the project leaders will be bottlenecks of information. that's not a good way for a business to work.

if you hold on to the attitude you have, on the fence, i hope you're working on your own. i certainly wouldn't want you in our office.

Well, thanks everyone for posting. Steven Ward, are you hiring???? That seems like the kind of firm any intern would be lucky to work for!!

sorry, no, clearly. we've fended off layoffs well (none so far!), but still aren't in a position to commit to new employees.

but that's how you keep your job - withhold information so that everyone is completely dependent on you to get things done (and as a bonus, you won't have to develop your skills, learn new skills, or do actual hard work anymore). and since the people you work with are idiots, it won't matter if you let them know what is going on because they wouldn't be able to teach you anything or help make the project better.

don't you know anything?

"if they withold that knowledge, it means the projects will be less efficient because the project leaders will be bottlenecks of information. that's not a good way for a business to work. "

exactly, but that doesnt make the guy a sexist
he could just be bad at his job

thats why i asked the question
because otherwise clearlyambiguous might accuse someone of being sexist when they are actually just a jerk who is not good at their job
rather than doing that, its best to make sure what we are dealing with so she can handle it appropriately

i haven't really weighed in on the sexist or not angle, just on the subsequent pronouncements about it being ok to choose to mentor or not. my responses were primarily to on the fence, only to you tangentially, marmkid, because it sounded like you supported.

sharing of experience is the way to success, in my book, just like open source is a more meaningful way to create knowledge than protectionism.

Steve,

Again I say that in certain positions, YES, you should be teaching those below you. If you are not in that position and do not feel the need to pass on knowledge, you are not REQUIRED to and if you choose to, then you have the right to also choose who you pass on that knowledge to. If you think that it is everyones duty to be a mentor for the next guy, I lable that socialistic in its appearance.

So may I assume that as a principle in your firm, you share all of your knowledge directly with the newly hired, fresh out of college, intern so he knows exactly what is heading his way? I'd bet you probably share some of your knowledge with the next level of employees directly below you and then different knowledge with others below them. He/she/they in turn pass their knowledge on down in bits and pieces to others, so on and so forth. Sort of a pick and choose scenario, right?

As for not wanting me in your office, you can choose to turn your back on me. But you do not know me and sadly it would be your loss (as well as that company you work for and "have a vested interest" in), not mine. Of course your hiring practices are left up to you and your company to determine the best policy.

Good luck though.

Now, I remember what this reminds me of. The Borg collective from Star Trek. (Oh jeeze here we go)

At any rate, just to show my point, if you spend 2 hours every night on your own time after work taking a class at a local college on "X" and after 5 months you pass the course and go to work the following day, wouldn't you feel a bit put off if your boss said to make some sort of "cliffs" notes so that the rest of the people in the office could garner that knowledge not only for free but in 1/10th the time it took you to improve yourself?

Maybe you just don't value yourself or your time and effort in the same manner others do.

Also, as I have said it is up to the individual and/or the company to decide if you should be mentoring others. As for me, I like the exchange of information between collegues, I just do not mandate it.

i dont know if that is really the issue here fence

The original poster seemed to be referring more to specific project work that she was a part of the team and this guy was the team leader. It wasnt necessarily a general "mentorship"

It was specific project-related details where she was being blown off when others were given more hands-on guidance.



mentoring for general knowledge about architecture and the field is one thing
being a project manager and working/ guiding those on your team under you is something different

I agree the first thing is not necessarily required if the person doesnt want to be involved.
The second though, is all about being a good project manager or team leader, and i would say is most definitely part of a job description.

Maybe it shouldn't be mandated, maybe it should. Nothing wrong about being clever with how you share your knowledge but in my view offices where people are too hermetic about stuff tend to become tense and inefficient, even hostile.

Also, there's a huge difference between understanding the first principles of something as to be able to apply it generically (similar to what might be the case after a college course or so and so many years of work experience) versus simply being told how to apply them in a specific case, which is usually the most common form of mentoring in an architectural office. Very unlikely that a senior figure would risk bringing interns or juniors up to their own level by simply explaining something to them. If that were indeed the case then maybe the depth of knowledge of that senior could be questioned, now that I can see why it would be a worry..

marmkid,

I agree with you and the OP at this point and she should be brought into the conversations. The project manager is in the position where he is required to guide his entire team and it should be done equally but also at the same time to each individuals strengths and weaknesses/deficiences. Ignoring any individual within your team is not productive and in the end the resultant will be poor product either the actual building or the projects team.

IMO - in terms of mentoring, you don't have to spend your time developing lessons for interns, but if they express an interest in learning and ask legitimate questions on how to do something, denying them information/experience is not only being a jerk, but also bad for the team and office (in that you are preventing this person from being able to contribute more to the firm), and you will definitely lose this person - and very quickly if they are talented.

I left two offices because they refused to give me CA experience - I needed CA for IDP, and I wasn't about to fudge my timesheets because I recognized that in order to effectively manage/design a project, I needed field experience. Personally, I'm not going to stick around a place for very long once I realize that it's not beneficial to my career - but if there are people who are willing to mentor and allow me to grow professionally, I can be pretty loyal - and I know there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way.

for this specific case, I would try to figure what you need in order to better contribute to the project, and actively seek out ways to improve your work... don't wait for this guy to hold your hand (which is what he seems to be doing with the male employees) - but if you discover - through advocating for your own professional development - that he is preventing you from doing your job better, only then you have a legitimate concern. I'd frame it that way if you end up talking to him or management (if at all).

IMO - If you take control of your own career I think you'll end up being stronger than your male counterparts... and you'll probably learn more than them too...

Talk to your female coworkers. If they all have the same issue with this man, bring this matter as a group to the partner-in-charge (office).

If you go alone, I guarantee the management will ignore you and they think your are the trouble maker.

nope, I would feel like my employer valued the knowledge I had gained and wanted the rest of the firm to head in the direction that I was going. Ergo, I would be the de-facto leader of this new strategy or policy or whatever it was, and would actually advance further by sharing my knowledge. This isn't just supposition, it's based on experience. Not just my boss but my whole team values and respects me more when I help them all learn new things, and when an environment of shared knowledge is fostered my coworkers are more likely to share outside knowledge with me, so that we all become better. People who hoard knowledge are short-sited and definitely less valuable to the team.

On the original topic, I agree that it may just be favoritism or social awkwardness, and that addressing it as "I want to learn more" will get the OP further than "That guy's sexist!"

word to that rationalist.