I currently work for a small mom-and-pop company of only 11 employees, including the owners. The owners are husband and wife, 65 and 75 years old. There are two full-time female employees and one part-time female employee, and the rest are male.
The co-owner (husband) keeps having “boys only” events, such as weekly happy hours and trips on his boats; women are not invited. I have had several heated conversations with him about this, and nothing has changed.
They are now planning another “fun-packed, boys-only” boat trip. This trip is posted on the company’s Outlook calendar with invites to men only stating, “Gents, get ready for a fun-filled day.” I’m fuming! This company has no HR, so I don’t have anyone to go to. What do I do?
To read my answer, click here: Can My Boss Hold ‘Boys Only’ Work Events?
I am guessing the point of the person who sent in this request to EvilHRlady was that they are so into the “equity” resolution, that they are not seeing the reality of their work situation–which is a small business setting of a total of 11 people. They know the ratio of how many of each, too. Not mentioned is how long this person has been working at this workplace. Still, I don’t understand with such a small business setting, asking why only “the boys go fishing” would have seemed out of place, especially since it is a mom-pop business because for all we know the wife who is the co-owner agreed to this setup to get the husband out. Hence, they have a “boys-free” timeout. We are not given the ages of anyone else at the business other than the business owners and by the complaint mentioned we can only assume the complainer is the part-time female, who wants to go fishing with the “boys” using equity as the reason to complain about the unfairness of this occurrence. All I can say is that someone must really want to go “hang out” with the crew to make an issue out of this.
If this such a big deal to this person, they should make the effort to talk about this to the owners and ask if they could be included in these “events”.
His company is his sandbox. This is one of the reasons one should stay away from family owned businesses.
@MariaRose has an interesting perspective which helps illustrate why inequality continues to exist. When an example of inequality is clearly laid out and individuals still think it’s obscure, well, that’s why inequality exists.
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