Selling Science

What gimmicks do you use to market your science or engineering blog? I'm a fan of adorable fluffy animals or weird machines or sea creatures. Most engineers I know are visual people and a compelling photo with a hopefully interesting headline just might reel 'em in.

Scicurious recently posted Let's talk about sex (in science). This brought up a rehash of the Science Cheerleaders (or the pretty girls can do science, but remember your number one priority is to be pretty in a traditional way, and by pretty we mean fuckable). You see a lot of bloggers posted about how they either get unprofessional comments on their appearance based on a blog profile headshot or how as professors they get unwelcome attention to their gender and body from students or other professors even. But the verdict was using sex or sexy themes might bring more attention to something, but it does not necessarily do a good job at selling said thing.

One of my fav commenters, jc (when you going to get your own blog and put all your great stuff there?) came out and said something perfect:

"Well, how many women WANT to come forward and say "You were called hot, I was called fat and ugly"?"
...
The Disturbance Hypothesis definitely holds up. Women are a disturbance to men, PERIOD. If you are too smart, you're fucked. Too pretty, you're fucked. Ugly, fat, brown, lesbian…fucked fucked fucked fucked. If you don't wipe some moron's ass, fucked. If you overshadow some moron's ass with your brilliant study, fucked. Whatever the goalpost is for whatever whiny douche, you have to exist below it as a woman, or you are fucked.

Ain't that the truth. I feel angry and left out and margianalized no matter how you throw the dice. I love Dr. Isis but every time she shows a picture of some hot woman it is like shoving my body hate right in my face when I least expect it. Believe it or not I think sciencey blogs do a good job at sheltering me from society's ridiculous expectations. And I know she's trying to present who she is without judging anybody else, but those pictures make me feel judged.

When I talk with coworkers about the douchebag mucky mucks who work here and get away with harrassment and skeeviness and mysoginistic behavior I'm angry that some of my female colleagues have to deal with this kind of unwanted attention. I'm angry the guys who do this have enough power to get away with it and that pretty much any young pretty woman can be a target. But then I'm reminded I don't get this kind of attention and nobody is referring to me as "pretty" and that they don't think of me that way. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not "one of the guys" I'm pretty sure that's a myth. It's just that my not-as-standard level of female attractiveness or femininity puts me in the category of other.

An object to be ignored rather than objectified, and I don't like either option. I'm angry that my male colleagues accuse women of bringing it upon themselves by dressing a certain way when I know that that doesn't help but I feel disgusted that my own modest clothing choices are judged or publically applauded like it's some ridiculous fucking contest of what ways we all meet or fail to meet the boys' standards. It shouldn't fucking matter how we all choose to dress, so shove it! This is my personal style not because exposing more or less skin means I think a man has any right to objectify me or any other woman. And I'm not talking about noting attractiveness inside one's head, I'm talking about how there are engineers and there are women and some neanderthal male brains can't allow anyone to fit in both categories, or are unable to just have a single category: engineer.

My senior project group members were talking with our company sponsor about purchasing materials. Most so far have come from Home Depot. My group is 75% female and they and the male sponsors started relating stories about either themselves or people they know walking into a hardware store and suddenly getting a ton of male attention. Or walking into a video game store. I nodded and laughed. But I felt like the quote from jc's comment: to paraphrase, you were given attention but I'm so fat and ugly I wasn't even noticed. And I felt sad. Sad that we stereotype that "pretty" women need extra help in a hardware store. Sad that like jc I get simultaneously sexually objectified but also rejected for unfeminine features or for my weight. Rarely do I walk the middle ground of being noticed and respected for my personality or my skills. Everytime I think I'm having a conversation with a colleague I get a cutting comment that reminds me I am at core a woman. And like all other women, I am an incorrect woman who does not meet their perfect standard.

I shouldn't have to say props to the men in my life or the men in the blogosphere who do not objectify and do encourage and do not verbalize inappropriate comments and are able to see past all that shit. But I will say it because I hope these men can be the drivers of a culture shift as I don't think we women can do it alone. So thanks allies and fuck off everyone else.

Try new things

I did some welding for the first time this week. Though that might be an exaggeration of what I actually accomplished, but I did something new and learned something.

I found a new blogger I like, Dr. Kathryn Clancy, and she blogged about a panel they had at Science Online 2011 and specifically about how when women want something they have to hide it. She talks about the moment I have been through many times where you are going along with your life and a colleague suddenly objectifies you and you realize you'll never be just another coworker to them, that your primary function is to be a woman. You can be smart for a woman or skilled for a woman but like Billy Joel sang, you're always a woman.

She also talked about women's tendencies not to promote themselves and a commenter had an insightful comment that despite attending the same conferences as men on "always negotiate" or "always promote yourself" that the message she took home to be aggressive was not nearly the same as what the men took home. She also talked about something I feel strongly about: we need to build an old girls club. I take this seriously here as well as in the workforce (which I'll probably talk about soon on EngineerBlogs). That we need to promote others as well as not be afraid to promote ourselves. So I did it. I joined twitter.

Two new things in one week, the hardware and the software, the yin and the yang.

Powerful Women, Powerful Words

Over at Dr. Isis's there's a discussion on Time's Time's 25 Most Powerful Women of the Century. No Sarah Palin is not on the list. My mind immediately went to Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, which goes to show I read too much about business blogs since she's regularly features on lists such as these, 25 Most Powerful Women in Business.

 

Some of the entries on women in the 20th century I question as truly being "powerful" but I guess it depends on how you define your list. For instance, Mother Theresa is on there. I'm not sure I equate "powerful" with Mother Theresa. I'm also not sure what influence she's had on the world at large. Was she a great person? Sure. Did she do good things that changed that world? I don't know about that. She's no Rosa Parks there. But Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Oprah or some of the makeup/clothing pioneers I can definitely see as being "powerful."

 

But skip over to Time's Q&A with their business women and you find something else. Most have their heads so far up in the biz-ness their answers are predictable. "What's your best decision ever?" "Duh, coming to work for this company and getting promoted." Doesn't matter whether you've been there two months or twenty years, if you don't say something nice about your current place of employment...better not bother saying anything nice at all.

 

One of the other questions they ask is "What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership?" Most answer with some sort of "women aren't confident enough" blame the victim bullshit, or women just don't blah blah blah for themselves, or but it's so hard raising a family and being taken seriously, but that's probably my fault not society's. However, Joanna Maguire, an Executive Vice President at Lockheed Martin has the balls (see? it's always gotta be a pro-male analogy, even on a wanna-be feminist blog) to really nail down where the problem is:

"Cultural stereotypes continue to present significant challenges for women leaders. Stereotypes routinely cause men and women to underestimate and underutilize women's leadership talent. For example, when women leaders act in gender-consistent ways — cooperative and relationship-focused — they "fit in" as women, but are often perceived as soft leaders by both genders. When women act "like men" — authoritative or ambitious — they are often viewed as too tough and overly aggressive. As a result, successful women leaders must learn to effectively thread the needle and call on the leadership attributes of men and women when the time demands."

Now that I've outed her here as a radical feminist who thinks women are damned if they do and damned if they don't she'll probably get moved to Lockheed's Siberia location. But hopefully she'll slip by. I mean, Lockheed probably has thousands of executive VP's but it's nice to know there's one using their brain today.

TechCrunch: Women in KerfuffleTech

Time to play the blame game again. From Workplace Diva I stumbled upon this panel from TechCrunch. It's a "Women in Tech" panel. As Workplace Diva states, it's very cringe worthy. The host of the panel apparently didn't think out of three days and what I count as 60+ panels there should be one devoted to women.

I get it. There was the "I don't support affirmative action" comment from one of them, or a "people should get here on their own merit" comment, or the "only 12% of people graduating with computer science degrees are women." Those are all the same old tried and true arguments. If a woman is truly qualifed, she'll get the job/panel talk based on her merits and doesn't need to be singled out based on her gender. They don't want "token" women. I get that. Only one woman was unafraid to keep spouting an opinion contrary to the panel host. I mean, if you don't agree with the idea of a panel to begin with, why host it? Maybe they can have a panel on social networking next year and I'll host it and tell them all what a waste of time Facebook is and how I think social networking is a bunch of crap and that nobody should be spending any time on the sites to begin with so why bother with new codes. Yeah that would make sense.

Only on a panel of "women in tech" would they have a host who thought they didn't need that panel. Then one woman asked that they expand their definition for what a woman in tech is, mentioning entrepreneurs who don't necessarily have a STEM (that's Science Technology Engineering Math) degree. I died a little inside when another brought up the "women they know" really are interested in more to their life, a work life balance.

Well I'm sick of that crap, and while someone tried to make the counterpoint I'll make it here. Most of the dudes I work with have wives and children. Most of them even want to spend time with their families. My boss rushed me out of his office yesterday to take a call from his Grandmother. Family is important. They don't necessarily want to spend 20 hours a day in the office. Yes they like what they do or they wouldn't have been promoted into leadership positions here, but they don't neglect their families or play any harder than I do. Yet the assumption is that I will want lower pay or less responsibility simply because I have a uterus, or because I am married clearly I can't handle the reponsibility at work. If anything I think I'm better able to handle the extra responsibility. My husband works like me versus some of these guys have stay at home wives who are waiting for them to come home for dinner with the family or texting them impatiently when 5:00 rolls around. When both of you are working, and there are no children involved, it's much easier to understand why there will be days working late. But I don't get to benefit from any of my actual circumstances because I have a uterus.

And finally to the host of the panel who thinks women should only be given positions as speakers due to merit I'll assume her ignorance is because she's worked for some hippie social networking bs site. Dudes think women don't go into STEM because...it's women's fault. They assume we'd rather "work with people" because we're good at it, or would rather have babies and raise families. That the low numbers in the field are because choices we made, nothing to do with societal expectations or the men themselves. They think when we don't get promoted it's because we're not as good at that thing as they are.

And it all comes down to visibility which I have talked about again and again. If men don't see women in tech they think we either don't want to do it, or aren't capable of doing it. Showing a few "token" women at these things gives them a few more examples of people who want to do the work and they can make their own internal judgment as to whether the women are capable. But more often than not, the "token" (especially at a large conference like this) will be more than capable of standing amongst her male peers. And every time someone sees a capable woman succeeding in tech some dude at a company thinks "huh, well if that woman is okay, maybe not all women are incompetent uterus-holders, maybe i'll hire one" or "huh, that woman sounds a lot like my employee, Alice, and while I never thought Alice was real bright maybe she's okay and I'll promote her to Peon II next cycle." And maybe some high school student is watching the conference at home and thinking about what she wants to do in college: software engineering or art history? And she sees these women and thinks, well maybe I won't be all alone if I go into that field, maybe it is something women can succeed at. That doesn't mean women need their own panel, just they should be represented there. Someone should be making an effort that if 10% of people working in tech are women (probably higher given not all the men they had on were technical experts) then 10% of the panelists should be women. If you're not accomplishing that it means you're only asking the same people every year, or only asking your friends or friends' friends, and other networks of women and minorities are not even being given the opportunity. And if you had to ask 3x as many men as agreed to show up to the panel, that means you need to ask 3x as many women or minorities who you want to be there. Yes women are busy and they may say no. But men say no too. So if you want women and minorities there, you will have to ask more people than will accept.

Maybe I'm way out of line here but I just can't help thinking if people made slight efforts they'd get huge gains. Everyone on the panel seemed to agree more women working in tech meant a more diverse group and meant a better team and better product. But maybe people only say that and don't actually believe it? Actions speak louder than words.

The more things change

"From the minute I got there, they told me 'You will succeed, you will be a leader,' the Yale slogan-- you could taste it in the air." Two years after graduation she was still hunting fruitlessly for a nonsecretarial job.

No it's not another commentary on this recession's luckless graduates. It's a quote from one of the first women to be admitted to Yale in 1970. It's from the book I've been reading, Games Mother Never Taught You. The author, Betty Lehan Harragan, is using that quote to warn women against accepting the idea that the lack of a degree, a credential, is the only thing barring them from equal success with their male colleagues. Besides a few outdated things lacking mentions of email or calling out corporate switchboards, the nearly 40 year old book is still surprisingly accurate on the pressures of sexism in the workplace. Or more importantly, what women are not, as members of society, taught and therefore how this lack of knowledge prevents them from competing with The Boys at work.

Here's more on how eerily accurate Harragan's suggestions are to current economic realities.

A doctorate has become very nearly minimal to obtain a college teaching post; the BA's and MA's are scholarly rejects or incompletes as far as academic employers are concerned. Business employers have no alterante use for this academic overlow, so neither undergraduate nor postgraduate degrees in liberal arts categories lead to indstury jobs...Competitive companies can't afford to take chances with such noncommercial thinkers, and the proof is strewn over the landscape in the form of unemployed PhD's.

What this boils down to is the reverse of the statement that a college degree is a passport to a well-paying job. For women, a college degree in any of the stereotyped female teaching or teaching preparotry fields is equivalent to no degree. The effort adds up to at least four and probably seven years of wasted time and money so fars upgraded admission into the business world is concerned. Allwomen liberal arts graduates eventually come face to face with the cruel trick that was played on them but, significantly, I have never met one who recalls being told beforehand that her nonspecific college degree will have no marketable value.

Except now it's men and women picking up on this economic reality. I suspect up until recently the well connected middle class white male could still get by on his network alone. But now this is so common the NYTimes doesn't even have to come up with new ideas any more, just publish another whiney diatribe on the woes of wealthy young hipsters turning down $40,000 a year jobs because they thought their BA in Philosophy would get them farther. Of course these articles overlook the countless people for whom this fairlyand middle class lifestyle is a goal not a current reality. But it's intriguing that forty years ago Harragan saw women being fed this myth that all they needed was some education and they could be treated equally and she called it out for what it is. However, she doesn't speak too highly of engineering degrees either warning women can get stuck as specialists rather than move up at work. And here's another bit of advice that could have been written this year;

It is au courant these days to advise women to get undergraduate degrees in special fields where men predominate, such as engineering, chemistry, mathematics, and sciences. The advice is well intentioned and based on a logical principle: that jobs will be awaiting women who have credentials in occupations that were formerly closed but must now legally seek qualified females...Hidden on the underside of the BS advisory coin is a traditional pitfall for unwary women-- the downgrading of once respected professional credentials when women acquire them. I have no wish to see a young crop of women engineers and scientists replacing non-degreed men as drafters or engineering and science technicians rather than full-fledged professionals.

It is interesting that when a woman cooks, it is a hobby. But when a man cooks he is a Chef. Or when a woman sews she is a seamstress, but a man is a tailor. We're very good at separating what a woman might be able to do equally as good as a man as "woman's work" vs a well paying professional occupation. I'm sure some of my colleagues in the sciences have seen this happen to them. Achieve the same educational achievement and there is an effort to push them into technician or support roles. Once women start to achieve any sort of parity in any great number it seems that profession loses some of its societal recognition and certainly its pay and respect. Men who have natural aptitudes in these areas, and being from a generation that like Harragan's was told a degree was a passport to a good job, can now feel conned that they too can't get a decent job or decent pay because teaching or nursing is no longer something we as a society reward. And I've certainly seen my superiors attempt to put me into lower level positions despite having more education and experience than my male colleagues. Their being male automatically qualified them for a profession but my hard work and education readies me only for the non-degreed positions they are leaving behind. Harragan continues to have an uncanny description of how the workplace, and education, still works almost four decades later.

Combatting Inequality Part II

I posted before about strategies the average employee could undertake to help women, minorities, and even the underrepresented male who didn't go to the right school to get a little farther. Today I'll post the more obvious strategies we'd all like to see from people in a position of power.

 

I'm a lead/supervisor/manager

• Hire more minorities. Duh, right? If you are in a position to hire people, make sure you get a really broad pool of applicants. If HR won't give it to you, do the recruiting yourself. Ask former colleagues for resumes, specifically request the recruiters target minority schools or minority group events at the local college campuses. If it works anything like where I'm at, if you bring good people in more supervisors than just you will interview these people. Help get them in the door.
• Examine your biases. A lot of managers go by "gut instinct" to hire people. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But when you feel that in a bad way about somebody, make sure you can tie it in to something concrete. Just because someone is a different "color" or "gender" does not mean they won't fit in. Make sure you're not excluding them because they are different from the current staff.
• Back up good minority candidates. Maybe you aren't in a position to directly hire people. If interviews are happening and there was a good candidate that is a minority, don't be afraid to say something nice about them. Don't assume everyone else will see their good qualities automatically. If they say things like "Well I'm just not sure that person would be a good fit here" make them explain themselves. Make them come up with something concrete rather than resorting to feelings or covering up biases they may not realize they have with words like "company culture".
• Don't advertise. As soon as somebody thinks you're making an effort to bring in women/minorities they will shut you down faster than you can cover your tracks. They'll assume you're some affirmative action whackaloon, will ignore you, sideline you, and any semblance of authority you had to help good people will be gone.
• Be a good mentor. No it's not your responsibility to mentor people who are like you, nor is it your obligation. But don't you wish you had had more mentors in your life? If you see a good person that could be successful if they knew how to better navigate the territory step in and try to guide them. They may not always listen to you. They may not want your advice and may think they don't need it, that the world is fair and perfect now. You don't have to tell them they'll have it tougher because they are different from the boss, but you can be there to give them tips on how to act or what to do.
• Be somebody's sponsor. Sponsorship is more powerful than mentorship. Advocate for this person when they are not there. Give them good assignments. Work to get them promoted if they deserve it. You may not think you have any authority but often if you are at a mid-level position just your word or opinion can go a long way. I'm not suggesting to waste it on every single minority employee that comes along but if you feel there is someone you trust and respect who's not getting a fair shake behind the scenes while the boss is thinking only of his protoge, don't be afraid to throw your mentee's name out there.
• Don't tolerate sexism/racism. When your subordinates make cracks let them know that will not be tolerated. You may not have the authority to get people fired over things, but don't allow even seemingly innocuous comments to slip by. You have the opportunity to control your team's environment to some extent. Use it to make sure that environment is one that is welcoming to all colors and creeds.

I've probably missed some good stuff. So if anyone's reading this and has some ideas they'd like to add, either on my previous post for things us ordinary citizens can do or things you wish your boss would do, pipe up!

Combatting Inequality

So I was reading MsPhD the other day and thinking about what's not often talked about: methods to improve equality for men, women and minorities. I've written on here often about women in the workplace or feminism or women in science and engineering. Usually pointing out new studies or commenting on articles or providing my own flavored anecdotal evidence. But I thought I'd try a different strategy today, what can be done.

 

I am peon, have no power or authority, what can I possibly do?

• Mention your minority colleagues favorably. When someone is discussing a shortage of labor and trying to figure out how to get a project done, don't be afraid to talk positively about somebody who you know does a good job and doesn't always get a fair shake. Attribute positive qualities to them that they have, but are counterinuitive to how their minority is generally perceived, "oh Elizabeth? She's really an excellent leader and has great technical skills in the x-program. Nobody knows that hardware like she does."
• Make people think. When you hear them bring up TheUsualSuspect for a job (you know, the guy who went to the same college as the boss) ask why he's being suggested and again point out some minority candidate you know isn't being favorably mentioned. You'll probably accomplish nothing, but those positive words will build with whatever good work that person is doing and that can't hurt.
• Work with your minority colleagues. Your bosses will often try to keep them out of the loop on projects. They may task you with something and suggest you work with TheUsualSuspect. Ask if you can work with so-and-so instead, stating their strengths. Also just keeping people in the loop on things can give them an advantage. If they know what projects are coming up, or more about the political climate, they'll have an easier time navigating the game. And maybe they'll give you information you don't have. Knowledge is power.
• Don't be afraid to be your stereotype. Of course we all know women like shoes and Asians are good at math. That doesn't mean you can't show an interest in the things that you enjoy, even if it matches up with a stereotype. It's not your responsibility to be a counter example to everything.
• Talk up your strengths. Most women and minorities are not good self promoters. Don't be afraid to stress the things you are good at, especially if you know those things matter to your boss. By merely saying "yes I have experience in that software, I'm pretty comfortable with it" you'll plant an idea in people's heads that you are good at something. You likely don't have to prove it on the spot. This is The Good Ol' Boys have been doing things for years. Take their cue. Don't be modest. Sell yourself to everybody, your boss, your colleagues, and people you don't even know. If you're an expert in something tell them. This isn't being arrogant if it's something you're very good at and you're not claiming to be perfect in everything.
• Don't dwell on failures. When bad stuff happens, take responsibility in a quick, non-specific way. Don't say "yeah I let that thing blow up because I didn't know the hardware very well and should have better known what I was doing." Say "I reconigze the mistakes that were made when it blew up and I feel like I've learned from that to not only prevent future incidents but also lessons that will help us develop this project better." TheUsualSuspect doesn't whine and cry every time he screws up. Don't deny, but frame it in a way that takes blame off you and moves quickly to what you and the team will do next time. You'll look like a problem solver with experience rather than a failure.
• Don't complain. Bosses don't like complainers. Especially don't mention if you think you've been treated fairly based on your gender or minority status or perception. You will become a pariah. But even when TheUsualSuspect complains he is fairly ignored as well. You can still mention problems, but make sure not to frame it in a personal way.
• Shame your colleagues, tease your boss. If your colleagues say something hateful, stay calm. Ask them what they really meant by something. If you can, ask loudly. People don't like to appear prejudiced in front of others. If they use a racially offensive saying and try to cover that it's just a saying, or they don't mean it that way be patient and ask them why they would say it if they don't mean it that way. Or what kind of impression someone just listening would get. Don't get mean, but feel free to use the public atmosphere to shame them from repeating or to at least think twice about what they said. If it's your boss, don't shame him. Pretend he was making a joke, "I'm sure you didn't mean that, as that's a pretty racist sentiment, let's talk about these budget numbers" or "you know that's not true, what is this, Nazi Germany? I'm sure you're joking so let's get back to this schedule." Don't let him get away with it, but let him know you have his back and will not shame him or report him. If you call him out he'll turn against you, but staying quiet isn't always comfortable for those of us with a conscience.
• Refer minority candidates. I've heard supervisors complain they never hired a woman because they never saw a resume from a woman. Your referral might mean nothing to get the candidate an interview, or even in the door. But just exposing the interviewers to a more diverse pool can't hurt. Then they can't claim they've never had applicants of x-background before.
• Be kind to superstars who are underappreciated. In the workplace you often end up helping new hires or new team members. They don't know the ropes and maybe you do, you know who in HR they can call and who in IT will get them the program they need. Minority candidates are often further behind from people who are used to having a network in place. Not every minority candidate is a competent one, but this is where if you see these underappreciated people you have the opportunity to reach out to them.

So that's it for your line workers, you infantry in the front. I'll post again if you're lucky enough to be in a more powerful position.

More on Men/Women and the pay gap...

So the WSJ had some redonkulous article I'm not even going to link to about "young women earn more than men". Of course that wasn't similarly qualified men. Slate kicked some ass with this piece in response, citing how women with the same major, same grades, and same experience earn 5% less than their equally qualified male counterparts. That gap grows over time, and substantially after having children.

 

Of course the comments are a bunch of men complaining about the disparity in more women getting college degrees. Asking what this means for them, why feminists aren't concerned with the low numbers of men graduating from college. Then they go on to tell women that the pay gap is their fault, that by choosing to take time off for kids or by choosing to not act aggressively and get labelled a bitch they are responsible for the lower wages. I guess when men don't go to college, it's society's fault. But when women stay home to raise kids or don't ask for a raise it's a personal decision. Just wanted to clear that up for ya'll.

You won't like me when I'm angry

That's right I'm about to bring out the b-word. You know the one. It's the one male colleagues call me when I'm not being sympathetic enough to their little problems that day. When I say "I'm sorry I'm really busy and have to work on this" or "yeah that's a shame but there's nothing I can say or do that will help." They know the guys will tell them to grow a pair and suck it up. But they expect me to nod my head, tell them they're totally victimized, and be their mommy/sister/grandmother substitute for the day.

I read Evil HR Lady a lot. People write to her about corporate conundrums and she answers them as best she can. I'm not a fan of HR as most people have reduced its effectiveness to nil. However, her advice is usually so in keeping with what I see in the working world it's like it could have sprang out of my head the way Athena sprang out of Zeus's skull (and you thought a c-section was rough). Until today. She writes over on BNET, women who complain about sexism are just pansy whiners and have only themselves to blame. Okay, I'm paraphrasing a little (ok a lot). She's saying, effectively, women are responsible for their own choices and that often women choose family over career and can't complain when they're discriminated against at work. When discussing one conference's failure to get more women speakers EHRL says this:

It’s not that they are discriminating against women. It’s that women are choosing not to enter into the field in the first place, and those that do choose to enter in are so busy they can’t speak at every conference.

EHRL criticizes women who complain about being discriminated against in the workplace, saying most of them made their own choices and are responsible for the outcomes. Well I haven't met any of these women. You know who complains where I work? Old white guys. They like to talk loudly about how hard they have it. How easy it is to be a woman or a minority these days. How everything out there is to help minorities or women. There's women's centers, minority organization, where's their organization for poor, discriminated against middle class christian white men? I mean what with the war on christmas and all, you just really got to feel for these guys. Positions just get handed to women and minorities, we don't even have to work for it.

The real life me is a lot less chatty and honest than I am here. The real life me nods sympathetically and doesn't point out there's still a gender wage gap. That after a mere THREE YEARS of working experience, women engineers make less than male engineers. I can't say that crap out loud. You even hint that you have it a little tough as a minority or a woman at my work they treat like you some monster that's tearing apart life as they know it.

When minorities complain where I work they do it in careful whispers. I've talked about it before. And I dare not say anything. When someone higher up told me to organize and take minutes because "girls are good at that" I couldn't say anything. Because he is a superior. And correcting a superior gets you fired, male or female. When another higher up rejected a candidate for a promotion because "she is pregant and we are about to lose her soon" I could only watch helplessly. She came back to work after the baby, and will never know she wasn't considered due to her pregnancy. I waited over a year to get into a technical role, was told I needed to "be patient" and not get "so uppity" that they had to make sure I was "qualified" first. Only to watch several other men get transferred into the same position shortly after with way less education, and significantly less experience. Perhaps qualified was a euphemism for penis. However, if I ever verbalized a complaint I would be gone faster than you can say "at will state".

I know the choices we make contribute to how we are treated at work. Like when I wear the magnets on my boobs that perpetually attract my boss's eyeballs. Definitely my choice sorry. Or maybe my choice I have boobs at all. Perhaps I should lop them off if I don't want people staring at them. Or when my boss just started rearranging his balls in front of me I made the choice not to say out loud "what the f!#^& are you doing? did you really just grab your balls right in front of me? since when did that become ok office ettiquette?"

As for EHRL thinking it a trivial matter that we worry about women speaking at conferences I ask her to think again. The engineers I work with are very visual people. And when managers make a decision about whether to hire you, promote you, etc they do it almost instantaneously. They have an immediate judgment as to who you are, how good you are, and what you're all about. When they're thinking about whether to hire you or promote you they flash back to "what makes a good engineer" and inevitably start thinking about good engineers they have known. If all those good engineers are white dudes they might think you as a woman or as a minority male are not "qualified." They'll think that white guy they just interviewed "has what it takes" without even realizing it's because he matches up with all their previous experience. They're not actively trying to discriminate, probably don't even realize they're doing it. I don't wring my hands and call it illegal. Sometimes I write about it here, to blow off some steam and try to remind myself I'm not alone in this world.

Then some woman comes along and says "i'm not a feminist" or "i think women are just whining". And I think she's either completely ignorant, or is trying to fit in with the boys club. She knows men don't like "feminists" and pictures them with hairy legs and bad attitudes. Not people who stand up for a woman's right to get paid equally or that no woman deserves to be raped no matter how she's dressed or how she acts. That women should be treated as equal human citizens not second class objects. By that definition many men could probably count themselves as feminists. But a few crazy people have convinced society as a whole that "women's rights" are completely bunk and that a good woman criticizes her own kind for wanting representation.

If the women working in a tech discipline is 20% and the number of women speaking at a conference for that industry is 0% that's discrimination. It doesn't mean miraculously all the women are busy. It means the guys in charge are going by Ye Olde System of who you know and picking guys they worked with, or their friends, etc. Putting a few competent women up is a good way of proving to the naysayers that women are just as competent as men. Because if you keep excluding them from public speaking or from management a certain sector of society will continue to believe women are just not good at those things and not bother to hire or promote the women who do want to work in those industries.I've heard that bullshit before. The "we just can't get enough women" line. It's about as accurate as employers, in this economy, still not hiring because they "aren't getting qualified applicants." EHRL has never worked in a male dominated industry. Sure, maybe she worked for a company that was male dominated, but if she's in HR she never experienced the full barbarity that is being in a technical role amongst the dudes. Industry average for my field is 10%. In my classes there are about 20% females. And yet in my department, there is less than one percent female engineers. I'm sure that's not discrimination. Probably women whining. I'm sure the women in my classes are choosing to go do something else. Like raise their baby daddy's baby instead of working in an industry like mine.

Viscous Cycle

I was going to stay out of it, until they knocked my graph paper shirt. I saw this originally on PZ's blog; some dude posted a page of "15 sexy scientists". Other people have already said better what I could have said. PZ says:

I think it's an excellent idea to promote the idea that scientists can be sexy, and women who are comfortable with that should be able to proudly present themselves as sexual beings. But the important concept is that women should have the choice, and their decisions should be respected. Men do not get the privilege of having the roving eye, of being able to pick individual women out of the crowd to tell them that here, they get to be object of sexual interest, especially not if they're going to then publicly display them as clever eye candy.

Comrade PhysioProf says it rather well also(with his trademark sailor-based vocabulary):

The fucking skeevd00d's post is leering. Leering tells the person being leered at that their value as a human being is defined by how much other people want to fuck them. That is not a compliment. It is an oppressive boot on the neck designed to put women in their place. The internal mental state of the leerer and his "intentions" are wholly irrelevant to any of this.

Then YoungFemaleScientist mocks my graph paper shirts and asks whether it's so bad. That shouldn't we use sex to promote science to young women since sex sells. Well, it's true that sex sells. However, a list of women's photos with limited description of what they do or what is so awesome about their science is not even selling science. It's selling more "hot" photos of women on the internet, except now probably to men for whom the "scientist" mantle is appealing. And it's fantastic that there are dudes out there who want their women to be smart as well as sexy. But sexy still comes first. So that's not promoting science or intelligence so much as reminding us all how we look is still the number one game in town. This doesn't just hurt women. YFS links to a newsweek article where we're all held to ridiculous standards of beauty. How it hurts everyone who is more on the average scale. How pretty women in lower level or secretary jobs might benefit but the higher up you get your superiors assume beauty means lack of intelligence.

 

I haven't seen that so much in the corporate world, probably because we're all stupid. The "pretty" guys move up and the "pretty" women get promoted. Maybe the women don't get taken seriously at higher levels, but frankly so few women move up around here, and so many of the ones hired, period, are attractive so it's hard to make the distinction of whether their being attractive or not really helps them. Newsweek has another interesting article about what if men had to follow women's standards of beauty in society. As in, what if roles were reversed and shallow women held all the power while men were society's sex objects. I found this paragraph rather illustrative of the difference:

You certainly wouldn't see many paunchy, balding, older guys on TV. Sitcoms would feature couples where the men are tall, muscular, and hot, while the wives are chubby and witty. Salons, cosmetic-surgery offices and Weight Watchers meetings would be filled with men who spend a fortune trying to get that iconic masculine "V" shape women crave.

Humorous, though unfortunately not the situation we have. I'll admit unattractive guys suffer in the workplace as well. I have seen it. But I think it's more than just "pretty" vs "ugly". The executives at most big companies, like here at MegaCorp, are good at what they do. Or they think they are good at what they do. Confidence is key. Most of the decisions they make are a fly by the seat of your pants judgment. A quick, intuitive command. Frankly, we're all creatures of snap judgment and intuition, but in the executive ranks those judgments can actually affect people's lives and the confidence of years of experience make it all the more likely they'll rely on that.

 

I'm pretty sure the White Men Rule the World at my company isn't a conscious conspiracy. Sure, there are probably a few racists and mysogonists who know that's who they really are. But the rest of them are well meaning Good Guys(TM) who believe in equality and think they are operating under that. Unfortunately, when they think about what makes a good engineer or what makes somebody a good manager they have to rely on what they know. And for a lot of people making these decisions, its their intuition and their experience that guide them. And in their head are all these images (engineers tend to be visual) of who've been good engineers and managers in the past. So they aren't necessarily thinking of ruling out minorities and women, but the built-in montage in their heads is dominated by white men. And so the cycle repeats.

 

I was just talking about this to a minority at my workplace. His eyes looked around nervously as we spoke. I could tell he was afraid to say anything. He offered that it was hard for a woman at higher levels to succeed around here and waited to see how I took that. Was I a feminist-denier? Would I tell him that that wasn't real sexism and so we didn't need to worry about it? No, I said, he was right. Then he mentioned talking my old boss about it, about how hard it is for a minority to get a chance around here. And he waited again. We are so institutionalized here that it's moments like these where someone yells you are being a bitch, or getting too emotional, or taking things too seriously at this point. That they too, as white dudes, have it hard. I don't hate white people, my coworker told me, in case I was going to be one of those people and chew him apart for mentioning it's not all milk and honey around here. Moments like these are a brief respite from the usual struggle to fit in, shut up, and keep your head down. He told me how hard my old boss had had to work, to fight, you have to work twice as hard he told me. I agreed. I told him how tiring it was to keep fighting. To wonder if some a-hole would be chewing you out and cursing at you if you were a 6'2" man or if it's because you're a woman and your disagreement means he feels the need to put you in your place. That he's threatened by your intelligence, but not by you as a person, and needs to build the box around you again.

 

It's like you swim for a living. And swimming at my last job was just swimming. Now you're swimming in some highly viscous fluid. They've replaced your pool with honey, or molasses or hot fudge instead. So you're working twice as hard and you're fighting. You're fighting not to make the sarcastic comments you want to to the executive who makes snide comments about women. Instead you just ask him what his daughters would think if they knew he thought like that and move on. You don't tell him he's an unstable douchebag who shouldn't be in charge of a houseplant because he's in your chain of command and you don't have the freedom he does to be a jerk, or in your case, a bitch.

Now, what did you say?

I'm tired of the double standards. Especially the one where women have to be meek and kind and subservient to get shit done(good thing HerrTech doesn't read this blog, he hates it when I curse needlessly). A couple weeks ago one of my colleagues told me not to become "a bitch, like so-and-so" is. So-and-so is extremely polite and optimistic. She encourages everyone, even douchebags who should be slapped back to Failville. (Failville, the new Farmville for Failbook!) But I guess any woman in authority becomes a bitch. He attempted to correct himself and say that that was ok and necessary in the business world, that he himself was an ass more often than not. But the fact that his immediate impulse was to not appreciate how authoritative, confident and proactive she had become was discouraging.

 

So imagine my lack of surprise when this all broke out on the blogosphere. Where two of my favorite female bloggers were called out for being bullies on the merits that they had called out another blogger for being a racist. Supporting data that when people left comments on their site they actually defended their own opinions on things or disagreed with said commenters. And other people disagreed too. That made it a conspiracy.

 

But the problem here isn't discourse or what has happened to being polite and the usual whining about anonymous commenters on the internet...the problem is two women had strong opinions. This isn't allowed. Even on the internet. Even where either one of them could be a dude in real life pretending to be a woman (for what purpose I don't know, but there you go). All it takes is an internet moniker where someone can place you in the female category and then immediately lump in all their stereotypes about what you're doing right or wrong. Isis gets accussed of blogging about her kid too much or blogging too much about shoes. Because in order to be a "true" feminist, I guess you can't like shoes or heels. That is just wrong. And on the other end of the spectrum Zuska is often insulted as being not feminine enough, one of those "hairy legged" feminists. So there's no winning. And now because people read their blogs some douchebag is asserting they have "power" and that by disagreeing with other people on the internet that is considered bullying. I hope said douchebag moves on to topics of more interest because Isis and Zuska know as well as I do the real crime here; blogging/writing/speaking while female.

Lady Gaga, feminists stereotypes and the myth of sexual power

There's an interesting opinion piece in the NY Times called Lady Power. The author is Dr. Nancy Bauer, philosophy professor at Tufts. She starts off with a risky sentence.

If you want to get a bead on the state of feminism these days, look no further than the ubiquitous pop star Lady Gaga.

Yuck I immediately thought. Lady Gaga is a dime a dozen pop star not an example of a feminist. However, Bauer seems to pick this up right away. She seems to be referencing the problem that a lot of today's young women "embrace the old canard that a feminist is by definition a man-hater".

The tension in Gaga's self-presentation, far from being idiosyncratic or self-contradictory, epitomizes the situation of a certain class of comfortably affluent young women today.  There's a reason they love Gaga.  On the one hand, they have been raised to understand themselves according to the old American dream, one that used to be beyond women's grasp:  the world is basically your oyster, and if you just believe in yourself, stay faithful to who you are, and work hard and cannily enough, you'll get the pearl.  On the other hand, there is more pressure on them than ever to care about being sexually attractive according to the reigning norms. 

Bauer seems to understand how there's a new game in town. One where women can supposedly be anything they want to be, but are punished if they don't conform to cultural/societal standards of beauty. And it's hard to say someone like Gaga (or many of the other 'strong' women out there) are really changing norms and encouraging women to be self-confident and feminists when they themselves conform so perfectly to the visual standards that our society accepts of them. So what that she wears weird clothes or weird hats? As Bauer says...

Of course, the more successful the embodiment, the less obvious the analytic part is.  And since Gaga herself literally embodies the norms that she claims to be putting pressure on (she's pretty, she's thin, she's well-proportioned), the message, even when it comes through, is not exactly stable.

Bauer addresses the near-heartbreaking way this middle class woman tries to convince herself she's living her own narrative rather than one written for her. Convince herself that being objectified somehow gives her power. This is I think the most poignant part of Bauer's piece (yes it's wrong, but it's worth it to read the whole thing).

 

If there's anything that feminism has bequeathed to young women of means, it's that power is their birthright.  Visit an American college campus on a Monday morning and you'll find any number of amazingly ambitious and talented young women wielding their brain power, determined not to let anything — including a relationship with some needy, dependent man — get in their way.  Come back on a party night, and you'll find many of these same girls (they stopped calling themselves "women" years ago) wielding their sexual power, dressed as provocatively as they dare, matching the guys drink for drink — and then hook-up for hook-up.

Lady Gaga idealizes this way of being in the world.  But real young women, who, as has been well documented, are pressured to make themselves into boy toys at younger and younger ages, feel torn.  They tell themselves a Gaga-esque story about what they're doing.  When they're on their knees in front of a worked-up guy they just met at a party, they genuinely do feel powerful — sadistic, even.  After all, though they don't stand up and walk away, they in principle could.  But the morning after, students routinely tell me, they are vulnerable to what I've come to call the "hook-up hangover."  They'll see the guy in the quad and cringe.  Or they'll find themselves wishing in vain for more — if not for a prince (or a vampire, maybe) to sweep them off their feet, at least for the guy actually to have programmed their number into his cell phone the night before.  When the text doesn't come, it's off to the next party.

It's tough because women should feel free to be as sexual as they want to be. That it's no longer a man's domain to enjoy sex and be promiscuous. But at the same time, being convinced that this is some kind of power when it might well be making them feel empty or used doesn't seem like feminism to me.

Bauer goes on to discuss Jean-Paul Sartre and being both an object and a subject, and unable to reconcile the two. Then she brings up Simone de Beauvoir (whom Bauer has a published book on Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism.)

When it comes to her incredibly detailed descriptions of women's lives, Beauvoir repeatedly stresses that our chances for happiness often turn on our capacity for canny self-objectification.  Women are — still — heavily rewarded for pleasing men.  When we make ourselves into what men want, we are more likely to get what we want, or at least thought we wanted.

It's not a short opinion piece, and the inclusion of Lady Gaga might make you think it's some useless pop culture reflection either praising her or shaming her. But Bauer does neither, and teases you with a few philosophers to give you a taste of analyzing the self-objectification vs power in today's society. For my own part I can picture these young women. I work with some of these women; walking the fine line of acting in a way that makes them feel free and powerful but also succumbing to visual standards and confusing power with objectification. I don't think Bauer or any self-labelled feminist would tell these women they are doing any wrong either way. The road they walk is not one where walking a certain path will give them the power they want. They can only try to achieve some satisfaction in making choices for them and not for somebody else. But we can't be holding up our women to impossible standards (the virgin/whore complex) or expect them to always be happy with the limited set of choices they are being given. I'm not a philosopher (Dammit Jim...) but I think Bauer captures this dichotomy pretty well in a relatively short opinion piece. I hope the inclusion of a pop culture icon means more women are reading this and feeling less guilty or abused over the decisions they've had to make. I think the message in the article is more empowering than anything Lady Gaga is doing.