[cthalupa]

The problem is, it exists. I've seen it plenty of times. It's particularly bad for women in male dominated fields. They have to be aware of it and on the look out for it so they can deal with it. If you continually assume the good in people, when sexism is a common occurrence, you get fucked over. Repeatedly.

There's a female engineer on my team. She started at roughly the same time as a male engineer. Similar levels of experience in the past. Both are quite good. But she's better, especially in several specialties. They sit near each other - and you have to walk past her to get to him. I see people day in and day out walk right past her to ask him about the things that she is a subject matter expert on, that he is not. People that don't have a real background with either of them, where it is widely know that she specializes in this specific thing. It's constant. I'm the most tenured engineer on the team, so people come to me frequently for things - I know it's because of my tenure. But she knows more than I do in these areas, so I refer people to her on the more in depth things. And a good portion of them then walk right past her, and instead ask the male engineer. She also constantly gets dinged by people for giving short and to the point answers - something that he and I do not have a problem with, despite having the same general style of answering questions.

Should she chalk this up to something else? Assume that all of these repeat occurrences are due to some other root cause? Her technical chops are not in question by anyone that actually works with the tech involved - she's undisputedly talented there and has been vital in cracking several major problems. Yet this keeps happening.

Should she ignore it? Should the rest of the team? Or should it be acknowledged and talked about, so people that are (almost certainly) doing this unconsciously can reflect on it and try to modify their behavior to be less biased?

And this is just one of many examples I've witnessed over the past decade+. Sexism colored glasses for women are a basic necessity if you have any interest in trying to get what you deserve.