Discrimination -- it's real

My illustrious employer is holding a recruiting event at Male Dominated U, a local university. Actually, the school itself is not really male-dominated, but the program from which my employer recruits most definitely is. There are exceptions, however; there are at least three women in our local office, two of them in relatively advanced positions, who can call MDU their alma mater. I count myself among them. Nationally, we employ quite a few women from this program.

So when my illustrious employer sent out a request for personnel to serve on an informational panel to answer questions MDU recruits might have, and also asked if any of us had spouses who would like to participate on a spouse panel and answer questions posed by the recruits' spouses, I enthusiastically volunteered Jared. I thought it might shake things up a bit and at a minimum demonstrate a certain degree of enlightenment on the part of my illustrious employer.

I received the following response from our recruiter within moments:

Sarah,
Thanks for your willingness to participate. For the Spouses breakout session we are having it lean more towards being a "Wives Breakout Session" in order to target the majority of the pool. Your husband is still welcome to attend and mingle with the students in the dinner social.
Thanks, Illustrious Recruiter

Now, is it me, or is that darn annoying? I am annoyed. I'm not a big crusader for women's rights or anything and I think I've done fine by myself professionally, especially considering that I didn't set out with much in the way of career aspirations, but it rubs me the wrong way that our recruiter doesn't even want to consider the possibility that a female candidate from MDU might have a spouse with questions about how this career choice will affect him. Equally offensive, if not more so, is the implicit supposition that my husband's viewpoint as a spouse will be irrelevant because he is a man, or that his mere presence will make the wives uncomfortable. Argh.