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In the Battle of the Sexes the Men Have the Good Locker Room

When I graduated from university with a four year degree in anthropology (with minors in English and French), I leapt straight into the working world. Not, as you'd suspect, into a sophisticated area of work commensurate with my degree (a career aligned with my degree could only entail the use of the words 'Would you like fries with that?'� or 'Paper or plastic?'�) but I went to a job fair where a number of companies were recruiting. At the fair was a temp agency, and seeing as it was the best bet, I talked with them. Said temp agency signed me and my shiny new degree up and I was sent to interview at a stock-broking agency. I cut my nearly waist-length red hair off, went to JC Penny's to buy the only suit I could afford, and got the job.

I never even went to my graduation, but then again, I never really saw the point in those types of things.

Upon working at the stockbrokers, I delved straight into the ideal that I had fought so hard in college. Being of the crunchy granola type of study, all women's rights, evolution, and study of the cultures of people, I was one of those who thought that a utopia was more than just the name of a fruit drink and that helping your fellow man was what it was all about. I became a capitalist, armed with a salary of 22k and a student loan debt that nearly matched that. I worked very hard under a woman that I didn't really like and definitely didn't trust, and I studied and took some of the stock broking exams in order to move up.

The truth of the matter is I hated it. I could've care less about studying for the 22 or about Blue Sky Laws. It was so mind numbingly boring I would rather spend time memorizing bar codes, and I was simply awful at finance to boot (that said, when I lived in the States I was meticulous about my own personal finances, even managing a spreadsheet for my checking account and knowing, to the penny, what was in my account at all time. Anal retentive bitch.). So I switched jobs and started working in the same company in compliance and quality assurance.

And it was here that I learnt something fundamental about myself.

The truth? I can't work for women. In fact, I can barely work with them, so I guess it's a damn good thing I work in a severely male-dominated industry.

I started working for another woman named Sherie. Sherie was a single Mom, a woman who dressed in pale yellow suits, and she was a Texan through and through. Big hair, big makeup, and she had a self-confessed problem with overeating. I once walked into the office as she was polishing off an entire extra large pizza'�all by herself.

I didn't know it at the time, but Sherie was about to make my life a living hell.

Our department was something straight out of 'The Office'�. There were four women, six men, and very little to do. We were grouped with the statisticians and the ISO 9000 managers, parodies of people that hadn't seen the light of day since perhaps the late 1960's. I was the youngest of the group, along with my colleague Jessica, who was one of the snottiest bitches I had ever met in my life. I introduced Jessica to the small group of four friends I had made in the stock broking department, and within a month I was on the fringe and Jessica was the hottest thing since Baywatch. Just like that, I was out of the loop in a sweeping gesture reminiscent of junior high, albeit without the experimental colored mascara.

Across from me in the cubical nightmare sat Debra-a woman with blond hair springing from dark black roots, enormous breasts that she loved to reveal in candid décolletage, and lips only a carp could love. Debra loved to sit and listen to people's conversations and to idly offer opinions on how to fix things, interspersed with desperate longings to fuck anything that walked upright and find a husband in the meantime.

I hated it.

One day I decided to do something different. I had to stay in my job as the student loans were stunningly high. I simply couldn't afford to leave, but I had to do something for myself to save me from going postal. So I signed up at Parkland Hospital to be a baby holder. Parkland, Dallas' largest county hospital, had more than their fair share of babies born addicted to drugs or with HIV, babies that needed constant attention. I decided to be one of the volunteers that dropped in to hold them. I signed up for the intro session and then went to take a number of inoculations, vaccinations that were needed to ensure that some of the babies' fragile immune systems would never be exposed. One of these shots was to prevent Hepatitis. I called to book this test while at work.

The next day, people in the company avoided me like the plague. I couldn't understand what was happening, it didn't make any sense. Was it my uncool dress sense? Did I offend? Was I wearing white shoes before Labor Day? Then Jessica pulled me aside.

'Are you taking antibiotics? I mean, it freaks me out. I don't want you near me if you aren't'�. she said nastily.

'What are you talking about?'� I replied. 'I'm not ill.'�

'�That's not true. Debra overheard you on the phone and warned us about your illness.'�

Nope. I was still lost. 'Sorry?'� I asked dumbly.

'You have herpes! Don't you know how disgusting that is?'� she said, looking at me as though my home was beneath a comfortable grate with a nice view of the sewers.

I was stunned. 'Well, I do know that herpes isn't a nice bedtime companion. But I don't have herpes. I was booking a vaccination for hepatitis. Totally different thing.'�

'�Yeah, right.'� Jessica sniffed, and walked away (probably to the ladies' room to have a scouring session, as she was standing so close to me and all).

I stormed into Sherie's office. 'Do you know what's being said about me? Do you know what Debra is perpetrating? She's telling everyone I have a sexually transmitted disease!'�

Sherie looked at me, one hand deep in a economy size bag of Lay's. 'Well, as far as I'm concerned, you deserve it. You're young, thin, pretty and smart. You had it coming.'� She chewed slowly, the yellow foil bag reflecting the sheen of overheard fluorescent lighting.

I was dumbstruck. Floored. So it was ok to be mean to me if I was of a certain image (an image I don't agree with, but it's nice to know I am thought of that way)? I marched out of the office and went straight to human resources. I filed a complaint. I went immediately to a headhunter and was out of the office within two weeks, landing myself as a contractor with what became the dreaded Company X in the field I now work in.

I have had one good female boss that I liked a lot, a Swedish woman in Company X. But I've had run-ins with nearly every single female colleague that I ever worked with. I am not sure if it's the industries I have chosen, but almost every woman I work with has come across as petty and conniving. Maybe I come across that way, too, I don't know, but I do seem to be more unconventional than others. I absolutely don't hold anything against women in industry-in fact, I think we should all be on the same side trying to bust through the glass ceiling. What's better, one woman with a hammer chipping away slowly, or a whole team blasting through the ceiling with one mighty splash of splintered glass? It just never works out that way.

The women I have worked with are perhaps like me-mavericks, women in a mens' industry. Maybe it's because we feel we have more to prove-women generally aren't engineers and don't often work in technical design categories. It's as though we are worried of being disregarded by the men-folk-we all sit around a table with our views and points, but how soon before you ignore what I have to say if I fuck up? As such, shouldn't I fight like hell to make sure I never do fuck up? And if another woman is about to fuck up, should I distance myself so she won't bring us both down? We have to fight and battle like mad to get men to listen and respect our opinions, is it so that we only have enough strength to get ourselves out of a burning building, we can't be helping each other, too?

I'm not saying I do think like this, but I do wonder if it's part of the working woman subconscious. I don't automatically discredit a woman who turns up at the meeting, I don't think she's a silly female who can't contribute. I don't ignore her input and I don't cut her out of the loop. But I am careful of how I conduct myself around her, I admit. I relax more and crack more jokes around male engineers than around their female counterparts.

I wish I could say that I have had deep and enriching experiences working with women, only I haven't. This isn't to say all men are princes-I mean, look at my manager Jeff. He's definitely hard to work for. But the men I have worked for are, in general, easier to deal with. They forget about past sins. You can tell them things off the record and said things fly out of their head later on. They'll tell you how the game is played and let you get on with playing it.

All of my working friends are men, with one exception (and we only became friends after we stopped working together, we never got on well while working next door to each other). I'm not sure that this kind of work in this kind of industry is conducive to making longtime female buddies-if we should get together and drink, is there a possibility that we could reveal our weaknesses? That letting our hair down means letting our guard down? That anything we say can and will be used against us in a court of meetings?

To be honest, if I were to interview for a job and find out it would be working for a woman, it would count as a massive con on the list as I debated taking the job. I have been burnt. I am wary.

It's a shame, really. I imagine a group of talented and clever women could rock the house and make incredible things happen. Instead, all we seem to do is waste time and energy tearing each other down.

-H.