When a female engineer with a typical male name is hired to the project of her dreams and confronts her boss’ shock that he, in fact, hired a woman, she must overcome attitudes of “boys club” sexism in order to maintain her position on the team.

Great logline. I think this has something to do with anything post Me Too. Keep it up, you're great.

Hi YaelEinstein,

I’ll give this a go.

When a female engineer with a typical male name is hired to the project of her dreams and confronts her boss’ shock that he, in fact, hired a woman, she must overcome attitudes of “boys club” sexism in order to maintain her position on the team.

Intention: must overcome attitudes of “boys club” sexism in order to maintain her position on the team.
Obstacle: ? sexism?

Hmm…

When she is mistakenly hired because of her male name, a woman must overcome sexism, in order to keep her dream job. (This is basically the essence. It kind of feels like it needs more, right?)

Let’s give her a more active goal.

When she is mistakenly hired because of her male name, a woman must make it through her month’s probation in a sexism-filled arena, in order to keep her house and her kids.

(I figured we should up the stakes.)

Not too sure what the “arena” is. Make sure it’s difficult. Hopefully something we haven’t seen before.

Okay - good luck.

I think the goal needs to be more visual. Overcoming the attitudes of "boys club" sexism in order to maintain her position is the result of achieving the visual goal of... whatever it is. If she's just got the project of her dreams, could it be something like "pass every inspection while misogynistic saboteurs attempt to get her kicked out". This gives her a series of challenges and also suggests the antagonists.

You've put this under Drama but I see a lot of comedic potential in here.

"A plucky female engineer must pass every inspection while misogynist saboteurs attempt to get her fired after she's accidentally hired to manage the construction of a landmark skyscraper."

I would consider having her boss as someone to whom gender is unimportant. He just wants the job done and doesn't care who by - it's about the bottom line for him. He could have pressure from the Chairman of the company who is a bit more old-school, and the primary antagonists are her subordinates. This makes more sense to me because they could be the least happy about the situation - taking orders from a woman - whereas, if the boss is the protagonist, he'd just fire her if he had a real problem with it. The boss character could become a bit of a mentor figure for her if he was sort of on her side and he could fight her corner a little as long as he doesn't become a "male saviour" character.

Hope this helps.

It's a solid plot. There's an interesting, smart protagonist. There's conflict. There's a lot at stake, although I think you can go farther than just talking about her position. That's not all she's fighting for. It's also a bit wordy. Maybe this?

When a female engineer gets accidentally hired by a misogynistic manager, she must combat the company's rampant sexism for the sake of both her career and her dignity.