How many rejections have you had?
How many mentioned your PhD in the terms you describe above?

I think there is a growing number who do a PhD because they either cant secure a job or they cant decide what job to do and therefore see the PhD as a way of delaying a decision.
I know of quite a few who have done that.

rewt, there are three immediate reasons I can think of as to why she is engaging in such obvious avoidance techniques.
She is either not interested in your work, unable to understand your work and unwilling to admit it or she doesn't want to get involved because she sees that as your responsibility to figure it out.
Either way, this passive aggressive approach is extremely unhelpful. I would not allow her to indulge in that. Dont let her witter on for 25 minutes on her own stuff. Learn some assertiveness techniques to force her hand. Personally. I would flush her out by making my questions progressively more focussed and then if needed I would directly ask her if she was following my line of reason. That would at least help you rule out one of the three. I would then ask her directly if she thought I should be resolving these problems myself. Then I would have my answer as to the reason for her behaviour. The difficulty then starts when you have to resolve the problem but you need to know what her problem is first.

There is no reason for you to target entry level technician roles.
Of course, you may end up having to accept such a role but you shouldnt accept that unless you have to.
Industry does look for experience but yor PhD and postdoc will definitely count as that.
Be brave, appreciate your value and dont undersell yourself.
By the way, you should ignore the expected skills and experience list. People who write job specs rarely know what they are looking for other than a CV which excites them. A CV from a Doctor will excite.
Simply tailor your CV to the job and send your application in if the job is for you.
Be prepared to send a LOT of CVs. Finding a job is a full time job.

Drhannahb, you ask an interesting question about equality and how women treat other women.
The reality is that women are simply no different to men. They will work together when it suits and will be cutthroat at other times. I see no evidence whatsoever to support the view that women care about other women any more than men care about other men. There is no brotherhood and there is no real sisterhood. You simply cant afford to be naive about this when you are competing for scarce resources such as academic jobs. This is an enormous shock to young people when they reach adulthood and it seems to particularly shock women to find this out. It really shouldnt though. Women have been shafting other women for generations. For example, the pressure to conform over body size, make up and clothes comes from glossy magazines which have been largely run by women. The net result of that is a population of women paralytic with fear over leaving the house without layering their makeup on with a trowel, obsessing over their hair and constantly worrying about their weight. The vast majority of men just get up, chuck something on and leave the house. All caused and perpetuated by other women. It's a real shame. Of course it's not all women who obsess over their looks like this but just a walk down the street tells me that it is a majority. The "breast is best" zealots endlessly pressurising other mothers who want to bottle feed is another classic example of women making life needlessly miserable for other women.

There is no real equality and there cannot be real equality because everyone is different. Internal bias prevents it and you cannot get rid of internal bias. Instinct is there for a reason. Ignore it at your peril.

Sorry for going off topic but you raised an interesting point and people dont discuss this stuff enough.

CannonKing, I absolutely agree you don't want to go through that without knowing whether it's worth it. As TQ says above, you really need to focus on gaining knowledge of exactly what the job will entail if successful.
I went through the same process and came to the conclusion that I would rather lick the pavement for a month than spend a single day as an academic as I described above; on the other hand, others will happily and willingly spend a decade or more trying to gain a full time position doing exactly this job. I personally know of someone who haunted a university for 17 years before getting his first permanent job and I have several former colleagues who were around 40 years of age before finding their first permanent gig. You might be in for a long ride. It's as well to know the risk of that up front.

You are already venting so I wonder whether you really are in this for the long run. Also, you mentioned you were at a RG uni. Is that relevant to your struggle? Did you expect that to make a difference to your career prospects?

Things will only "look good on your CV" if you actually want a job which will require you to do more of the same.
If you want to be seen as an organiser then I would certainly put this on your CV.
If you don't want to be asked to perform these types of role then I would avoid any mention of it.

I would recommend passing on the following advice to your PhD office. It is not healthy to think of a CV as a way to get jobs. Obviously that is the desired outcome but focussing on that seriously risks leading to crap careers. You start "CV filling" - putting all manner of rubbish on there because you think it will look good to a prospective employer. A better mindset is to realise that a CV is a marketing tool designed to describe the dream jobs you want to do, full of evidence regarding how you have demonstrated your suitability for those roles. When I took that advice on board over 20 years ago it was a career defining change for me.

I dont understand why you are not writing your own papers but it seems that this is a depressingly common theme these days.
It is possible to pass a viva without papers but it might be more difficult to prove you have done sonething worthwhile. It leaves you a bit more vulnerable on that score.

CannonKing,
Do you know what an academic career entails?
You will only know whether it worth it if you know what it involves.
From what I have seen and discussed with full time academics, they usualyy perform almost no research personally. Postdocs and postgrads are hired for that. A bit of teaching and exam setting/marking etc. A ton of administrative stuff to keep the department operational and constant funding seeking and applying and paper writing, reviewing.

It's a glorified admin job.
Industry is full of these types of job with no PhD required.
Is this really what you are after? If so, go for it.

A PhD is all consuming.
Having a baby is all consuming too.
If you do both at the same time something will have to give regardless of how much support you have behind you.
It is likely you will have to compromise on both although there are people out there who will wrongly attempt to convince you that you can have it all.
One of these will be have to take priority for you and the other will suffer as a consequence compared to the situation where you do one at a time.
You have a big decision to make.

How many papers do you have?

Firstly, there is no such thing as a "star" in academia.
Period.
People need to stop white knighting other people because it leads to more problems than I have time to write about.

Secondly, were you sent an information pack and/or a written contract by the university? All of your obligations should have been detailed in there.

Leaving aside the difficulty you will face having a baby to look after whilst also doing a PhD, you actually have nothing to tell your potential supervisor because you are not pregnant. Nor can you put any credible timetable on when you will do so. Nature has a tendency not to work like that. All of my kids (now fully grown up) took different times to be conceived.
She is certainly not entitled by law or any other measure to know that you are attempting to get pregnant.

If you fall pregnant during the PhD, if UK based, you will be entitled to maternity pay.