I'm not a secretary...

Last week, I had the most sexist and insulting experience I’ve ever had in a professional environment. Those of you who don’t know me don’t necessarily know that I’m 22 and graduated from college last May. I graduated with a degree that could take me one of two routes: journalism or PR. My current job is more PR-related; I handle the communications for a company. I realized pretty quickly that PR was the wrong path.

Being 22 and the newest member of the company, there is a certain amount of administrative work that I do. Someone has to do it, and that someone is the newest person. Plus, one of my biggest administrative responsibilities is staffing a few of the company’s many committees — I attend meetings and later put together the minutes. Writing=communication, so it sort of makes sense, even if I weren’t the newest and youngest.

One particular committee, which met last week, is made up of only men, most of whom are old. They’ve always been extremely nice to me, probably because they’re old men and I’m a young woman. Regardless, I’ve never had a problem with them.

Until last week. What they were discussing isn’t important, but at one point one of the men said, in reference to me “She takes good notes, she’s a good secretary.” At that point, I choked on my own spit a little. Then I froze, while the words “Excuse me, I’m not a secretary” ran over and over in my head.

I’m not knocking administrative assistants. My office would die without the smarts of our administrative assistants. But the word secretary is outdated, politically incorrect and sexist. And even worse, I knew exactly why he called me a secretary: I was the only woman in the room.

It was also the way he said it. He might as well have said “Oh, she doesn’t matter, she’s just a secretary.” Well, mister, I don’t think I spent four years in college, two years at internships and five months job hunting to be “just a secretary.”

Maybe it’s naïve of me to forget people can be so sexist. But as the youngest and only female in our weekly management meetings, I’ve been impressed with how much my coworkers go out of their way to treat me with respect. I didn’t realize there are still professionals who would assume that, because someone is a woman, they must be a “secretary.”

It’s probably time for him to retire…

Love always,
S