Backstory: I am a professional designer and for the last 3 years I've been working as a full-stack UX/UI/graphic/you-name-it designer at a software development company. The company itself has a good culture overall. It's a small-ish team (60 people) and almost everyone is in their 20s or 30s. I think it's something like 30% of the company are women which is quite an achievement for the software industry.

Anyway, in late 2019 an incident occurred at the office which I often go back and re-evaluate on. I see a lot of stories on FDS about women having to take back their dignity in the public sphere and this is my experience with it.

At my company we use an Agile/Scrum methodology where we work in smaller teams called pods. Each morning, the pod will have a meeting and each person must say what they are currently working on an if they need any help. Now, in late 2019 I had been sort of pulled into another team because they needed some design help (usually, this team is only focused on coding, no design, no client-facing work etc etc). I joined their huddle and only vaguely registered that the team was all-male. Like I said, the company is pretty progressive and everyone is very even keel, polite and respectful. I think it's a combination of our youth and the country we are in (Australia).

So each team member is addressing their tasks for the day and James (lets call him that), the team lead, is facilitating the huddle. I know what I am working on and fully ready to be called on. James gets to me - and completely skips over me when it is my turn and asks instead the guy who should have come after me to talk. I was a bit shocked but I figured maybe they had just forgotten about me. Instead, everyone ends up speaking about their tasks - except me.

Now, this whole time, my heart was just pounding in my chest. I was so embarrassed at being asked to attend a morning huddle (a standard ceremony for our methodology) and not even being given the opportunity to speak like everyone else. I began to feel so angry, completely indignant - I had at that point been working as a designer for more than 5 years total. I was older than many of the men at the huddle. JUst because I am a designer, my work is not important? But I was asked to attend the meeting - was that just so I could learn about what the men were doing, because their work is oh-so important?

As a UX designer, I am actually the one responsible for making sure client projects go through brief and scope stages into development. If I don't do my job, then the reality is these developers would have no work. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. It got to the end of the meeting and James says to everyone, "So, does anyone else have anything to add before we get on with the day?"

Cue me. "Yeah - I have something to say." Everyone turns to me. "You asked me to attend your morning huddle but you completely ignored me, skipped me over. If my work is not important enough for the people here to acknowledge then I am more than happy not to attend any more huddles with this pod. I have lots of work I am doing that I can just get on with autonomously."

Now James was looking a bit shocked. "Oh, I'm sorry PlummyJellyfish, I just didn't think what you were doing would impact anyone, so that's why I didn't ask you to speak."

"But you asked me to come to this meeting? None of these developers are working on tasks which affect MY work, are they? But I have had to listen to them for the past 20 minutes, and I did so respectfully. But on the other hand, no one has the respect to listen to me. I am not going to attend a single other huddle with this team because it's a complete waste of my time and you obviously don't think I am important enough to acknowledge in any way."

And with that, I turned and fucking walked out of that meeting. When they dispersed, James came hurrying over to apologise and I just blanked him and walked out of the goddamn office! And went for a long walk. After that, I came back to the office and got on with my fucking day. Never did attend another meeting with that group.

It's been two years since then and although I know part of why I boiled over is because I am a naturally prideful person, I also feel kind of giddy whenever I think back on it. I am not the type of person to take a swipe laying down, I know my work and skill have value and I push back when I think I'm being swept under the rug. And ever since then, of course, I find the devs are much more careful with me than with the other designers. I think maybe some of them think I am scary but I really don't give a damn.