No Seat at the Table

• "It's often easier to exclude women from social/networking opportunities (e.g. a golf buddy weekend) as these omissions are typically less overt (than e.g. an established business conference) and thus more difficult to identify."
   
• "Egregious example: Getting taken to Hooters for lunch. "Death by a thousand cuts": male manager orders pitchers of beer but no other drinks at offsite. Offsites are all very physical activities, but I'm pregnant."
   
• "Honestly, in two decades the list is just too long. This is an industry that has Cougar Night practically next door to my office and thinks it's perfectly appropriate to meet there for business conversations. (Why do we put up with that, BTW?)"
   
• "At annual sales conference once, all the men gathered in the suite of the head of sales, drinking late into the night and then all shaved their heads as a bonding exercise. (The boss had a shaven head)."
   
• "I don't know that I have been consciously excluded so much as some of the times that business is taking place on the golf course or late night at the bar just are not places I want to be."
   
• "I was once invited to a networking event, only to have the invite rescinded when I rsvp'd and they realized I was a woman--they told me "this is just for the guys". There is a VC networking group called "alpha" as in male, of which I am the only female member and was "invited" only after specifically asking. VCs have fly-ins, fly-fishing trips etc to which only guys are invited"
   
• "Once I led an offsite for my all male team at a go kart racing place even though I knew I'd get really motion sick to show I was 'one of the boys'"

Please add your anonymous stories to this initiative so that more stories can be heard.