Hey antiwork. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but I'm really in need of advice for someone.
I was talking with a female family member recently, and she was venting about the sexism she's been dealing with in her workplace. I'm going to try to be vague, because I don't want to accidentally give away any personal info that might give her in trouble, but the most I'll say is she works with clients and engineers as a project coordinator in manufacturing, even though her background and degree is in writing.
Lately, her boss has been giving away all her clients to the new guy, and told her he was doing so because he was convinced she was going to start having babies in the next couple of years, and said they need someone who will actually be there to do the work (Yeah….I KNOW. Jesus Fucking Christ….)
She flipped out at him, and he apologized, but apparently completely missed the point of why she was upset during the apology.
Apparently, this is not the first time something like this happened. They did this to her and her female coworker months ago, with the same new guy, who had only been there a few months at that point, and started giving all of their projects to him. Her female coworker DID have a child recently, and her boss said much the same thing, they had to train the new guy to take on all of this work because the both of them are going to be too busy having kids.
It got so bad that the other woman quit.
My advice was to complain to HR, I'm positive that counts as discrimination and I'm pretty sure what her boss did was illegal. But she feels she can't do anything, because the HR person is best friends with the VP of the company, and it's a small, very conservative, boys club type of environment. She also says she feels trapped. She's been putting in applications everywhere, but can't seem to find any job that will take a chance on her that would even be a lateral move. And she says she can't afford to take a pay cut (not that its a super well paying job, she makes about 23 an hour).
I really want to help her out, but I don't know what can be done.
I would really appreciate any advice you guys can give.
(EDIT: I'll probably delete this post after a while, just so it can't accidentally blow back and cause her any issues.)