To be pretty blunt about it, from my personal experience - those who deny sexism exists are the ones guilty of doing it. Same for homophobia in the workplace.

Belittling, demeaning, condescending... take your pick.

You definitely do not do what is perceived as “secretarial work,” I have zero doubt. ‘Be part of the team!’ when told to women means ‘do all the work the men won’t do.” Tale as old as time. 

I’m not sure what line of work you’re in, but I treat being asked to do bullshit tasks as what that are: an intrusion of my actual workload, and I ask where they’d like me to prioritize it.

>My problem is a lack of candidates.

I APPRECIATE YOU! You get my paycheck out on time and make sure I have calc pads and coffee for the coffee maker. My office would literally fall into Lord of the Flies without our admins.

I put my foot down a long time ago about making coffee for people. I don’t drink coffee and I really could not give less of a shit if people are so caffeine-deprived that they can’t make their own beverages. I had some male coworkers at the time that were totally bewildered and pissy that they came into the office…

My boss once asked me to make coffee, which wasn’t anywhere near by job description. I told him he really didn’t want me to do that (I’m not a coffee drinker), but he was insistent. Why he couldn’t make his own coffee I’ll never know. Anyway, like I said, I don’t know how to make coffee, particularly in our ridiculous…

I basically had the same thing happen. I worked in a newsroom, and my schedule included a Sunday shift that was often a little slow. I noticed during one of my lunch breaks that the fridge was nasty. It was a brutally boring day, so I took 20 minutes and cleaned it out. A few weeks later it was nasty again. No…

Can I make a polite suggestion:

(admin @ engineering firm) Your mentor was right. As someone whose actual job is to do menial office drudgery no one will ever appreciate it and if anything it’ll encourage people to not take you seriously. 

In response to the flood of burners and, let’s face it, men moaning about how this advice is either: 1. sexist or 2. pointless because everyone recognizes these volunteer tasks and gives credit for it, allow me to present a small sample of the ways that I, a professional woman, have been asked to volunteer to do…

Yep. This is exactly why I don’t volunteer. I won’t even make coffee anymore because people would wait for me to come in instead of just tossing a pot on themselves. 

(Woman in Engineering) I agree with your professor! Here’s why:

Advising women how to navigate our sexist work culture is not being a “bigot.” Because let me guess--you believe sexism doesn’t exist?

(Woman in engineering) For better or worse, one of my mentors in college strongly impressed on us (female engineering students) that we should never EVER volunteer to do admin/office management tasks once we started working as it would blur the lines on our actual job duties and reinforce the idea that women do office…

“And all those men were born to straight parents. How come you aren’t embarrassed to say ridiculous things on the internet?”

You really couldn’t tell he was joking? Seriously?

Xanthan gum: What people in Piers Anthony’s long-running series of fantasy novels chew.

I have to say something about HR. HR doesn't exist for the employee/s it exists to protect the company. Sure they may be able to mediate or correct some issue but that's a side effect of their existence. Be very careful and tread lightly when dealing with HR or it may backfire.