People Who Talk And Don't Listen Or Watch What They Say Or Do

Not long ago I sat in on a conversation where I seemed to be the only woman taking part, and there were moments when I felt completely invisible. Nobody saw me, and when I spoke, nobody heard me either. I keep wondering whether other women run into this too. Didn't women's liberation sort this out? Or did it only pretend to?

In groups like that I tend to be outnumbered, and getting brushed aside is both discouraging and, frankly, bad manners. Whatever became of ladies first? Plenty of times a woman will finally start to contribute and half the men are already pushing back their chairs and heading for the door, as if to announce that whatever she has to say isn't worth sticking around for.

Say I lift my hand to signal I want to go next because I have something to add. A man jumps in without raising his hand at all, and the fact that my hand was up first simply doesn't register. And if I do manage to grab the floor, I'm met with visible impatience from a few of the men, and often I can't finish a thought before someone, usually a man, cuts in to argue against me.

A while back I came across a post on Facebook about something people were calling manspeak, and it hit me that I wasn't imagining this or going through it on my own. The men involved are typically clueless about any of it, at least where the women in the room are concerned. After the service one Sunday I offered to lead the closing prayer, and the minister remarked that he didn't think a woman had ever done it before. I had to stop and blink at that. My first time joining a women's rights group on campus was back in the late sixties, and here we are well into the twenty-first century.

Here's something else I've been chewing on: look at how differently men and women are expected to dress in broadcasting. Men are wrapped up from wrist to neck down to their shoes. The outfit is forgiving, hides a few extra pounds easily enough, and men seem to grow older on camera without much fuss. Neat and clean covers most of what's asked of them. They also tend to sprawl a bit, legs apart, perfectly at ease.

Women get a different script. Hairstyles that demand a lot of upkeep, dresses that aren't always especially modest, so they're forever adjusting to keep from showing too much, particularly sitting there with their legs crossed. On top of that comes pressure to stay thin, sometimes to the point of surgery, all in the name of looking younger.

None of this takes much effort to notice, yet almost nobody comments on it out loud. Pantsuits cut like a man's are frowned on and occasionally mocked, though I've seen plenty of women in elected office wear trousers without being ridiculed for it, Hillary Clinton being the obvious exception. What I do catch are remarks about a woman's hair being unflattering or unattractive, framed somehow as if it reflects on whether she can do her job.

So are we women still being put in our place by men this way?

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