Jealous Females

So much for the sisterhood! No matter how well I do in life I try not to brag. I just humble myself, try and help out others and continue doing me. But there’s always got to be one chick who has to try and dig at you simply because she’s not you.

I grew up on a council estate, raised by two immigrant parents, got a brother who became a father at barely 19 and was told I’d be pushing a pram by the time I was 16 by my local MP. Yet here I stand with two degrees and a mortgage; and did it all by myself. Still talk like I’m chilling on the wall wid da men dem doe.

I was nominated to feature in a newsletter (that I work on) for women in tech as the nominator thought the story of my career transition could be inspiring. I was shocked as it came from nowhere and replied with an “erm…”. Sometimes you need a humble brag and I’ve now realised it is a story that can inspire others. The so-called editor replied with a laughing emoji. I know better than to react to that so I sat back and waited to see what happened next. The nominator then further explained why she nominated
me and the so-called editor responded with “actually I want to feature person X because of amazing blog post about us”.

Ok I had to Google person X’s ‘amazing blog post’ it could be some good stuff. I read the post and yes it was good, but it wasn’t about us, we were mentioned at the tail end of a sentence. I then began reflecting on all the times she was rude to me or tried to micro manage me and it hit me, she’s jealous and doesn’t want me to get more attention to her. Pathetic I know, but true.

I’m also in charge of the social media marketing for this women in tech organisation. Later that afternoon one of the other ladies asked me to tweet a photo they took from the official account. The so-called editor then took it upon herself to try and micro manage me one more time and tell me to tweet it with certain conditions. I shook my head and ignored her, she has nothing to do with the social media, she just wanted to throw her weight.

I work in an industry with an issue with diversity, not only a gender issue but a race issue too. Unfortunately (or I’d like to think fortunately) I tick two of those boxes, I’m a black female and so is the so-called editor. You’d think that when we are truly the minorities (black women only occupy roughly 3% of the job roles in tech in the US, would love to know the stats for the UK) we’d try to uplift one another instead of trying to bring each other down. It’s a shame because I’ve now decided to stop working on the newsletter and concentrate on my other projects. I don’t need to spend my spare time looking over my shoulder waiting for her to eventually stab me in the back.

What do you think? Am I over reacting?