The “old boys network” is still alive and well, though its “membership” criteria are usually on things other than gender specifically: for example in the UK “membership” is often having gone to the right exclusive private schools and as those are often gender-segregated (i.e. “all boys schools” and “all girls schools”), you end up with discrimination in both the gender and social class one was born in axes.

Personally I find the whole “being buddies with the boss” type career progression extremelly unprofessional and any manager who is taking decisions in a professional capacity based on who his or her mates are, is working against the best interests of the company and needs to be replaced.

Then again, my professional training during my core professional learning years was mostly done in The Netherlands so I’m very strict on such things in the context of the management cultures in other countries I worked in such as the UK and Portugal were cronyism is rife in management, often linked to the kind of pre-existing relationships formed in non-gender-neutral situations.

PS: And the place were I saw “token” women openly had quotas and the incompetent but somehow working here thing only affected permanent employees in management positions. The interesting part is that of the 3 female low level managers in my department one was clearly very competent, one was clearly very incompetent and one was unclear. Further, this was the single most sexist (as in, very machist) place I ever worked (and my career now spans two and a half decades and 4 countries).

I get the feeling that the very competent manager there who happenned to be a woman lost from there being quotas for female managers rather than gained from it (she constantly had to prove her competence and was often not take seriously), whilst clearly the incompetent one was only there because of quotas and in meetings acted as an “attractive female provider of adoration” for her manager.

None of this justifies the unjust treatment you suffered, by the way.