“It’s Just This Feeling I Have That This Person Will Be Able to Get Stuff Done Faster Than You” ⇥ latimes.com

Tracey Lien, Los Angeles Times:

[Ana Redmond] had built a prototype for a travel website, she said, a feature to auto-suggest cities and airports based on the first three letters typed into the search field, fixing a long-standing problem.

Her male bosses told her she’d built it without permission. Then they said only architects within the company could pitch features — and all the architects were male. In the end, the project was handed to someone else, and she was assigned to less interesting tasks.

[…]

Tracy Chou, 27, a well-known engineer at Pinterest, said she was once bypassed at a previous start-up because her boss thought a new male hire was more qualified. When Chou pressed for an explanation, she recalled him saying: “It’s just this feeling I have that this person will be able to get stuff done faster than you.”

This weekend, my girlfriend headed to Home Depot to pick up a few pieces of hardware for a work she’s exhibiting later this month; I tagged along because the nearby Williams-Sonoma was having a pretty sweet sale. We couldn’t find a water pump, so she asked an employee, who — in a dismissive and almost condescending tone — told her that they don’t carry them in the winter. I checked online and found one in stock, then asked another associate to point us to it, which he helpfully did.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Each and every time we’ve gone into Home Depot together, I see sales staff treating her differently. Whenever she asks for something, they always look at me as if I need to confirm what she’s asking for, or ask me directly if that’s the case. It’s insulting and it is infuriating. She knows way more about this than pretty much anyone I know, but they don’t trust her because she lacks a penis.

I can’t imagine being subjected to that day in, day out.