Welcome to the 1950's... I'll be your host.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm a very hard working individual who doesn't mind piling on the projects.

I went to school for design because I love to be creative and to take something and make it usable, beautiful, and inspiring and I'm not half bad at it!

Unfortunately, when I decided to take an internship with a small company near Saint Paul, I found out that my role as a female was not as well accepted in their little design world. Rather, they fancied me an administrative assistant and loved me in that role because I was organized and detail oriented.

That's fine. I can handle that if that's what it takes to get me in the door.

I'm not afraid of the bottom rung of the ladder as long as I get the chance to work my way to the top. Not to say that administration is the bottom of the ladder, but for me to become a designer, this is how it came off. It was the first step. Okay, fine. I'm ready!

When I graduated, I was offered a position in the company due to my hard work and competence... as customer service.

Okay, well, I would like to design. This, again, was not perceived as my "proper" role.

I persuaded them that they would be making a mistake by not using my education and that I would not be able to stay with this company if I were not hired for what I viewed as my intended purpose in life.

They agreed to take me on as a designer, hesitantly, but they did it nonetheless.

I was thrilled and promptly started my new job after graduation only to find out that they had hired a male intern, but he was placed directly in design. I had asked to move to design throughout my three year internship and was repeatedly told, "Maybe next year. We don't have the room for you there right now". And I believed them.

Of course, I didn't want to throw out the sexist card just yet. Maybe I had misinterpreted the signs. Maybe I was wrong.

Throughout my "career" here I have been repeatedly given administrative tasks, pretty much weekly. That's fine. I can handle. But I began to watch as it seemed the other designers (all of which are males) have never been asked to take on anything other than their design role.

That sexism lingered in my mind for the past two years, but I was finally given confirmation that this was indeed their thought process and that they indeed wanted me to go back to answering the phone and proof reading letters and taking notes in meetings so I could type them up and send them out to the attendees.

In a meeting that I was not privy to, a discussion came up about a new program that was being initiated to help boost our potential customer base. Employees are to run around town, surf the internet, and check with city halls to find out about any work going on in the area that we may be able to take on.

In my review, I was asked if I would learn the details and process of researching these leads and then train the rest of the designers to do the same. "Sure" I said, although with a little doubt in my mind that this is what would really happen.

In this meeting, I was part of the discussion because their real intention is that I would do the research and go through all of these leads to see if they were fit to pass out to the salespeople.

The lead designer became suspicious of their motive and asked why they seemed to always pick me for these jobs, was it because I am a woman? The answer from our general manager (well, actually he was demoted to sales manager) was that it was because women tend to be more detail oriented.

I was made aware of this and have been just a little more miserable ever since! I don't mind taking on extra tasks, but I don't appreciate the constant pressure to push me back into the administrative position because the president and the general manager don't understand why a female would want to do anything else!!

Also, the president had made a comment one time in a very important meeting with a potential remodeling company that made everyone's skin crawl and helps me to believe his true feelings about women. (Well, I won't even get into how he treats his wife. Yikes!!)

Upon hearing a statistic about females climbing the compensation ladder and actually hiring contractors with their own money for very large jobs, the president of my company replied out loud, "Well, the divorce rate is up!" as though this could be the only explanation for women having money!

Ugh. Eye roll. Sigh. So typical.