Man Woman Job Recession

The Pew Research Center put together an interesting report on how the recession and subsequent "recovery" has affected men and women disproportionately. You probably heard all of the media crying about how this was a mancession or some such BS that made it sound like it was women's fault for men losing jobs at the early part of the recesssion.

The story you won't be hearing is that men have been recovering quickly since the end of the recession while women's employment is staying flat or dropping. If men took the brunt of job losses early on maybe it's to be expected they'd be picking up faster. But the report goes into talking about how layoffs in state employment might be contributing overwhelmingly to the loss of jobs for women. And while we hope construction and manufacturing will recover in this country it seems like state employees are the new favorite punching bag of free market junkies. So I wonder if this recession will be more permanently painful to women than it was to men. And probably an ignored storyline.

Strength in Sisterhood

There's a discussion over at Corporette about networking with older women. It's a follow up to an older post where they talked about networking with an older man who'd previously acted in a way that I would call "skeevy". Now, Corporette seems mostly written to and commented by lawyers so the advice is not universal. But it is a really awesome community for professional women.

So the original writer wrote in about how to navigate what was both a friendship and a networking opportunity with a group of older women she was working with during an internship. The advice was good but it made me a little pouty and jealous and bitter (which is kind of typical for me anyways).

Yeah I know engineering isn't as gender balanced as law is (though neither has a fantastic track record). But I had to think hard about any older women at work. Forget there being a group. There are a few other women my age. I guess I'm just not outgoing enough to suggest we all grab drinks based on our double X chromosome alone (plus if that got out to the dudes, we'd all be lambasted as hairy legged feminist bitches and probably limit everyone's career). But I am upset that there aren't enough women there that something like that would happen naturally.

I had a female boss back when I worked in health care and since working there I had one female boss as well. But she wasn't much of a mentor. In fact the women I've been closest to there have been striving to get out. To make the money they needed to make so they could go spend their days on the beach. Spending days on the beach isn't my thing and it makes sense not every woman would have enough in common to chat. It's just annoying that there aren't enough women that I can find any other female engineers or higher level people that maybe a few of us do have something in common. Maybe some day.

Looking for trends in all the wrong places

I found the above graph here. It's not so important that it doesn't include the last five years or so for my purposes.

 

I was looking at MegaCorp's new hires and discovered that in the last three months of intense intern hiring (it's the season for interns!) 24% of them have been female. I wondered how this compared to engineers hired. Turns out in the first 5+ months of this year, 10% of our new hire engineers have been female.

 

Now, my local university says that about 18.5% of engineering degrees are conferred to women. So the intern numbers seem to be, if anything, on the high side.

 

Compare the new hire numbers to the historical chart at the top and you'd see that we'd have to be averaging 30 years of experience for the engineers we hire for 10% to be a reasonable number. It's unlikely our average new hire engineer is 50 years old or more.

 

What does this mean? Why is the effort being made on the intern level to bring in more women but we don't see it when it comes down to hiring full-timers? It's possible, I suppose, that women are graduating with degrees, and working internships, but then somehow not going into engineer at all. If they are going into completely different fields after getting an engineering degree, and in high numbers, that could explain it.

 

Or is it part of the general trend that women tend to work in lower paying occupations so it's easier for a woman to get hired on as an intern than it will be for her to get hired as an engineer. Or maybe HR is trying to push diversity but can only manage to do so as a part of its intern hiring program but can't convince managers to hire more experienced women.

 

This might make a lot of sense if both numbers were on the low side or on the high side. Then you could draw some conclusion about MegaCorp's particular industry or maybe locality differences. As it is it looks a little strange.

Green eyed lady

There's this idea out there (stereotype?) that women are our own worst enemies. That when it comes to disagreements or getting along with our bosses we tend to fight amongst ourselves. I've only seen the result of this attitude (my last female boss who told me she had trouble working with female bosses, though I had no problems working for her, or male bosses who have assumed females would not get along) rather than the actual playing out of this. I suppose because it's on my mind a lot I struggle with it. When a man and a man don't get along, they are just people. We women don't have that luxury, so I make an effort to speak positively about other women and get along with them in the few instances I get to actually work with another female.

 

Over a year ago, a more senior female engineer left my group and company for a job where she's doing something that at the time was more "fulfilling" to her. She took a significant cut in pay to do so and left behind a higher level position, pay and respect than someone with her experience would normally achieve. Because of what she accomplished while here, she has a reputation of awesomeness. So when she had an opportunity to take some time of work recently, she suggested coming back on a temporary contract basis for a number of weeks.

 

I was going to go into the more personal reasons, that I suspect the significant cut in pay she took is hurting her. That the money she could make here could potentially be a lot more, maybe even more if they'd pay her the money they offered her when she tried to leave. But maybe all that's irrelevant.

 

The problem is me, and my attitude. I feel like in order to get half the level of pay and respect she got I've had to work twice as hard. I've been with the company a lot longer and really had to force my way into positions and demand higher pay while she was sort of guided into a higher level role. So despite the fact that we got along well when she was here, I now resent the fact that she's coming back. That my company would make the exceptions to get her a whole lot of extra money while I struggle to get paid the same as entry level engineers with far less experience. It's tough because I don't want to discourage another woman engineer. But I feel like I've finally staked out my space in the time she's been gone, and her reputation and how well-liked she was could outshine me in a matter of weeks. Even if it was a permanent move, it could undo all the prestige I've been working away to earn in the last year. I could be pushed back to a lower rung on the ladder while the higher level tasks get handed back to her. And it doesn't help that the powers that be would probably never give another female engineer the same chance they gave her. Just because they made her the token female engineer isn't her fault even if it does hurt me and even if her coming back hurts me.

 

I wonder if it's the attitude of male superiors and the token-ism that really contributes to this idea that women don't get along. We're lucky to get one seat at the table, and then we're expected to compete over it because we won't get any more seats than that. It'd be easier for me personally to rail against this behavior if it was a guy they were doing this for. I wouldn't feel like I'm sabotaging myself when I rage against the differential treatment.

Highest Paid Jobs For Women

There's an article today in Forbes discussing the highest paid careers for women in 2011. I condensed their very graphical gallery into a clean little graph. You'll notice some of the higher numbers for percentage of earnings as compared to men are also in the same careers where the percentage of women employed is a much lower position. This is a man's world, to quote James Brown. I guess I'm a little surprised some of the more people oriented careers don't have better equality and surprised there's only 31% of doctors and surgeons that are women. I mean we've been hearing for years now about how more women than men go to college and medical school and how that spells the end of dudes. The article quotes one dude who dismisses the pay gap with some great mansplaining:

 

"We may be witnessing an aging factor," speculates behavioral psychologist Matt Wallaert, lead scientist at compensation website GetRaised. "The highest paid doctors are the oldest doctors. With more women in the field, they may be aging up and earning more."

 

Right, we also may be witnessing a bullshit factor in which monkeys fly out of your ass. Women programmers make up 22% of the profession and earn a much better 95% salary compared to their male peers. So don't tell me we just need more women or time or some such crap.

 

They talk a little about "engineers" by which they mean software engineers coming in at #5 on the list:

 

"Engineers are generally employed by younger tech companies with less entrenched male-dominated cultures," says Wallaert, pointing to Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg as a female leader in the field. "Women need to embrace tech. It's a growing industry, and gender doesn't apply."

Technical occupations may be particularly promising for women because they are high-paying and require clear, objective qualifications. "You can program or not," says Blau.

 

Yes, technical positions are so clear that's why women kick ass at them. Oh wait, we don't. Any working engineer has known several douchebaggy coworkers who kissed ass and moved up in title and pay despite having no marketable technical skills or even a good understanding of the product they're on. So don't tell me this is a job position that doesn't allow for forms of discrimination. And secondly, looking at software engineers as working only at brightly decorated flip-flop wearing Web 2.0 companies is probably a very small piece of the pie. Some of us are working for dinosaurs who won't be satisfied until we've all sold our souls and self-respect for health care benefits and a 6x6x6 cube (notice a numbers trend?) to spend 80 hours a week in.

 

Not sure what I'd recommend women go into based off this list. Programming or software engineering where the pay discrepancy is lower but they have to deal with overwhelming numbers and possible dominant and established male culture or maybe healthcare where the earnings are decent though not fair but they'll have more female allies and mentors and superiors. Tough call.

Latina Engineers

In my liberal pinko-commie state (that's desperately slashing education and medical benefits to children and veterans) it's Cezar Chavez day. In a state where there are more hispanics under the age of 18 than any other ethnicity it's probably a quietly underrated day. Ironically Chavez was from the state of Arizona where people perceived to be "brown" are losing their rights every single day. Even here, latinos are a silent soon to be majority. They do not serve in public office in the numbers you would expect, perhaps a result of their not achieving political parity as a voting block quite yet. Despite the ever increasing numbers you won't see them in your university system or working as educated professionals alongside you. However I see signs of hope in community events, in the homogenizing culture that brings us all together and pulls us all away from our roots so we can be closer to one another, and in days that are used to recognize what this silent near majority has contributed to our society and our culture.

 

As an engineer I thought it would be worthwhile to drop a line in recognition of people who don't get recognized except on days like this where we are reminded to think of them. It's a failing of mine as well and no holiday or single point is going to bring us to parity but one day is better than no days.

 

On that note, here's a snippet from a magazine last year on three Latina Engineers. They all work for AT&T and as far as I can tell are computer engineers, but besides being featured on a "women of color" magazine cover where would you expect to see a Latina engineer so prominently featured? Shayla Rivera is a somewhat well known comedian but also does keynote speaking events as the "funny rocket scientist". She backs this up with an aerospace degree and years of experience with NASA and the space shuttle program (of course she left the field, leaky pipeline and all).

 

If you're looking to get involved there's the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Of course you might be somewhere where the local chapter doesn't have much going on, so you can always start your own thing. I attended an event at Northrop Grumman a few years ago and was impressed to hear they have a whole lot of internal employee groups that are run by the employees and for the employees and encouraged by management (of course this was outside looking in, I don't want to paint an over-rosy picture). I've read a few stories where one woman decided she'd take a few other women at her university out for lunch once a month just to pick their brains and get their perspectives. I'm impressed by this and impressed by the groups at Northrop that had started recreation groups but also people of color groups and latino organizations within the company. It takes a lot of guts to network and stand up and be proud when you are probably "the other" in your professional environment so kudos to those folks.

 

There's also the Mexican American Engineers and Scientists society and the National Society for Hispanic Professionals which gives this good advice for mentoring latino students. Ask yourself if you've done your part this year and what you can do better in the future. Could you make a group where young people can get involved and network? Could you participate in groups like this that already exist and volunteer your time? If you're in a position of power have you thought about mentoring young students who don't look like you even if they haven't explicity asked you? If you're in a position to hire have you made sure you've done what you can to recruit from underrepresented groups and stood up for minority candidates in the hiring process?

 

Here's to a year where we make strides and make this world a better place for everyone. We can't let a whole crucial group in our society to be forgotten and ignored day after day whether by ignorance or self-interest. This is our community and by working together we can make it stronger.

How to network without really trying

I went to a "technical talk" at another company in a related industry to mine last week. It was put on by the Society of Women Engineers and a local organization of Systems Engineers. I'll admit I had diverse motivations in attending this. The topic interested me, but honestly if I was 100% happy staying at MegaCorp I probably wouldn't have gone.

On the outside it looked much like my own company. Non-distinct white buildings with glass windows several stories high. Grass and other greenery around the perimeter, and the occasional benches and tables for employees taking their lunch. The lobby looked much like any lobby I've ever been in. Then I turn around and see a placard for Women's History Month. A variety of events were occurring, some with the company and some not. Let's just say that this sort of thing would not be tolerated at MegaCorp. Some dude would loudly ask when Dude History Month is and why we have all these "special" things for non-white dudes like himself. I mean, he never got an unfair hand up.

I was further surprised when I realized their women's bathroom had  "mother's room" attached. Or I am assuming, a lactation room or whatever you want to call it. I have no experience with motherhood but I probably signed something when I started at MegaCorp where I agreed not to lactate within five miles of any work buildings (see MIL-STD-JK). So all of this was pretty foreign to me.

But besides the obvious advantage we women had going into it, the actual talk was still overwhelmingly male from the local systems engineering group. There was one woman from that group, and two other women both members or officers in SWE. And all of the women there had jobs. There was another probably eight dudes, half of which were currently unemployed. And I couldn't help but wonder that their being unemployed was the only reason they were there.

They looked uncomfortable and awkward as you might expect from a guy without a job who showed up because he hopes he'll meet someone here where he can get a job. Some were "project engineers" (who blog readers will know I have no love for). All were easily over 40. Everyone there was white. I had to wonder as we all introduced ourselves and they heard all the women cite employers if the dudes watching were angrily thinking to themselves how easy it is for a woman to get a job and how difficult for them. And I wonder if there's not a difference there that's leading to this misconception.

I know several graduating female engineers who have job offers already, or at least some place to pay them for a while. I also know several still unemployed graduating male engineers. All the female engineers I know with early job offers worked internships. I'm not sure if this is because of a purely male/female thing; perhaps female engineers knew they would have to work harder to prove themselves and wanted "practical" experience. Perhaps the kind of woman who becomes an engineer is already more devoted to the field than the average undergraduate male. And when they all have job offers, but some percentage of the men do not, that can create a mis-perception that women have an easier time getting jobs.

And I wonder that maybe because of this, that women already in the field know they have to be ever vigilant and stay up to date in order to keep up with their male colleagues. That oftentimes they will be expected to work harder to be treated the same. Or in my case, feeling alienated at my own workplace I reached out to a woman's group just to meet people a little like myself and not feel so alone as a female engineer. So though we all had jobs, we were still there. But the guys clearly didn't need this support system until they were actually job hunting.

Just my observations. I'll wait for the barrage of guys who would like to write in and tell me how easy women have it in getting scholarships (I should know, I never got a single scholarship, as someone who worked full time and went to school part time the deck was stacked against me as well as most scholarships require full time status) or how easy women have in getting jobs (again despite having way more experience than my classmates my job hunting experience has been about average, or slightly below average when you consider I should be doing better). And all that is dangerously anecdotal. But I do think the way men and women treat networking is something interesting to consider, especially in a male dominated field like engineering.

Leaky Engineering Pipeline

You ask managers why they have problems recruiting women they will probably tell you things like well, women just choose to go into other fields. Or they like more fulfilling careers helping people and don't like working with machines. Ask those managers why they have problems retaining women they'll probably tell you because all those women keep having babies and leaving the workplace. My own manager in the same breath as promising to finally help me out here (see me whine about my salary here with a colorful graph to illustrate) asked whether he'd have to worry about me taking a "baby leave" anytime soon. I should have turned the question around as he is equally married, only a few years older than me, and just as likely to produce spawn himself. Instead I just took some Fukitol and shut my mouth. Turns out plenty of other women working in engineering might be taking the same drug.

 

A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee nearly half of women who leave engineering leave due to the environment and working conditions. Only one in four who left did so to spend more time with family. How many never enter engineering? I know a female student who is graduating and may or may not enter the field. Nothing to do with babies either. According to the study, one third of women who graduate with an engineering degree but don't enter the field do so because of their perceptions about the field being inflexible and having a culture non-supportive of women. Listen to this chilling account from the article:

"Engineering school was pure hell for me," one survey respondent wrote. "My personality inspired much sexist behavior from my male classmates and my teaching assistants. At some point, after many interviews, I decided that I wouldn't want to spend the majority of my waking hours with the type of people interviewing me."

Holy crap. I'm happy to report no discrimination in my university experience. Or at least, none that I witnessed personally or can remember. But it could be my experience is not typical. And it's disappointing to me the cold shower of disappointment that hit after I entered the industry is actually getting to people before they even start working and discouraging them to enter the field. So what about the women who leave after they get started in the field?

Women engineers who were treated in a condescending, patronizing manner, and were belittled and undermined by their supervisors and co-workers, were most likely to want to leave their organizations, according to the study.

Long working hours, unclear work objectives and a lack of company planning also drove women to leave the field.

...

"This study touched a nerve with so many women," Fouad said. "Those who stay in the field differ in that they have supportive supervisors and co-workers, and they have very clear perceptions of their jobs and how they can advance in the field."

Total shock that women probably want the same things from their jobs that men want. We are not all baby making machines ready to leave once the 'mones kick in. Asking too much not to be belittled or undermined in the job, having some vague idea about what your job purpose is, and knowing how to move up? I know you're thinking, "Hey FrauTech, I'm a dude, and I have these same concerns!" You're right sir!

Men could have the same complaints, but they haven't left the field as often.

...

Many companies have struggled with employee retention.

"There are probably quite a few male engineers who aren't necessarily thrilled with the workplace climate," said Charlene Yauch, Industrial Engineering program director and associate professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

...

It also says companies should have zero tolerance for bad behavior.

"We hope to reach out to men as well," Fouad said about another study she wants to do.

It's kind of sad that for this kind of thing to get traction means they have to "reach out" to men. Like we're two different species. I tend to agree with the statement in the article that states that engineering universities should "give women a more realistic preview of engineering tasks and workplace cultures." But I don't think that's a women only problem. And much as the macho/top-dog/kill yourself working culture hurts women it hurts men too. Only the other societal pressures on men are probably not as heavy as they are on women, hence why women leave the industry more often. But that doesn't mean fixing the workplace culture wouldn't benefit everyone. And it means it's not some crazy niche idea for women only.

But the numbers for women have stayed pretty flat: "Women comprise more than 20% of engineering school graduates, but only 11% of practicing engineers are female, according to the National Science Foundation." I hate to think how much talent we lose when we ignore the low numbers of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering. Or the creativity and innovation we're throwing away when we stick to models of "good old boys" that hurt everyone, women, minorities, even white guys. I guess we need to "reach out" to those white guys to get them to buy into this idea that the system isn't working for them either. And that by working together we can make it better.

On which I rant with my ladybrain

My colleague over at Engineer Blogs wrote a great post on women in engineering. This is one of those cases where the internet both nurtures me and discourages me. It's nice to know there are dudes out there who respect me as a colleague and engineer first. It's nice to know there are guys who think society is largely responsible for the different career tracts men and women take. Before I graduated college I worked in the health care industry part time. And I really had no idea that there were still men out there who felt women were any less capable or intelligent.

 

But then I met so many excellent women on the internet who had the same experiences I did it was pure joy not to feel so alone. So this is just another rant about all the bullsh#$ floating around on the net and in my life and if you don't like it you don't have to read it.

 

The dudes on the reddit comments for Fluxor's article talk a lot about how women get all the jobs. That there are all these "big companies" out there who have to hire women to fill their diversity quota. Where are these companies? Perhaps someone could point me in the right direction? I'm job hunting in engineering with significantly more real world experience than my peers while applying for the same level of jobs. And yet, no bites so far. It would be interesting to know how many of my peers have job offers and whether that's overwhelmingly in favor of the perhaps 15-20% of women. But I can rant on what I do know.

 

In the last n+3 years my department went from having 0 female engineers to then 2, then it lost one, hired another one to bring it back up to 2, lost one, and hired back the one who left initially to push us back up to 2. In recent days we've swarmed to a whopping 4, three of whom are young early 20s and the other perhaps late 30s early 40s. These 4 people make up approximately 4.8% of the department's engineers. That's well below the national average of female mechanical engineers being something closer to 10%. One supervisor once told me until he hired his first female engineer that was the first resume he'd ever received from a woman. I don't know if that's true or not. With, as I said before, 15-20% of the engineers at my school being female one has to wonder why they either wouldn't be applying or would be getting screened out of even entry level positions.

 

And check this sh@# out, female engineers still earn less than their male counterparts. Glassdoor looked at female and male salaries based on years of experience alone. Looking at the bottom end you wouldn't expect "choices" about childrearing to have any affect on this. And yet, women compared with equally qualified men in the 0-3 years of experience range earn 97% the salary of their male colleages. Once you get into the 4-6 year experience category that gap widens to women earning 91%. Now I'd like to make some conclusions based on the women I know in the workforce but unlike the commenters on reddit, or many of my colleagues, I prefer not to draw conclusions from 4-5 people. When I've known perhaps several hundred engineers where 4-5 of whom are women it would be pretty idiotic to draw conclusions about their capabilities "as women" their relative ease or difficulty in career advancement or ridiculously unrelated things like their perceived level of attractiveness. I'll end this post with some quotes heard in the workplace and in all cases said to my face (not "shop talk" or "locker room talk").

 

Why isn't this organized? You should organize this, women are supposed to be good at organizing.

 

Could you go over to the shop and bat your eyelashes and make friends so we can get these parts done?

 

Did you know that so-and-so slept with her boss to get her job? She also slept with DudeA and DudeB. (All not true, but all none of his business regardless)

 

Well I had to give DudeX a raise, he has a family to support.

 

Who do you think is good for this role? Oh? Why would I promote her, she's preganant, right? So we're just going to lose her anyways. No, we'll find someone else. (She came back after the pregnancy and still works there).

 

What? That applicant didn't tell me she'd just had a kid. Can't believe she hid that one this whole time through the whole interview process.

 

I'm not sure why we're hiring another woman.

 

Stop disagreeing with me on this (engineering related discussion) I get enough backtalk at home.

 

Oh I see you're dressed like a lady today, that's a change. (wore a skirt, my bad)

 

Why are you working while in school, aren't you married?

 

And much, much more! Here's to me getting a job elsewhere as at the very least I'll have access to more data. And more data is always better.

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.

Wimminz in STEM

A lot of brilliant and smart people have been speaking their minds lately about "women science bloggers" post Science Online 2011 and some other traffic. There's too many to hit all the great responses, but here's a list anyways:

Even when we want something we need to hide it - Kate Clancy

Self Promotion Tour 2011 - Dr Becca

Women and Science Blogging - Daniel Lende

Where are the female science bloggers? - scicurious

It brings up a lot of things Cherish the Scientist and I have been thinking about as we go forward with our new blogging collective EngineerBlogs (am I plugging this enough? GO THERE AND READ! ADD OUR FEED!). How do you make sure you are achieving diversity and looking beyond the people like you tendency we all have. I mean, it's easier for me, I'm a female blogger so naturally I'll gravitate towards other female bloggers. So how do you convince other people that intentionally recruiting for diversity is a good thing? I like Tenured Radical's post on affirmative action and the idea that merit is actually a system, or even better, the myth of merit. The idea that certain groups don't have distinct advantages from an early age or that our tendency to befriend, to recruit, and to reward people who are more like ourselves doesn't come into play with a historically white/male dominated world. This might be less obvious on the blogosphere, but it's certainly no less obvious in my life. Zuska also wrote a great and succinct post as well on the whole I want to earn this on my own when none of us really accomplish anything purely on our own merit.

It looks like they'll be hiring another female engineer here. The holdup now is she is supposedly "asking for too much" and negotations are occurring. I applaud her for asking for too much. And I wonder if a guy with similar education and experience who had asked for that much would have been categorized in the same way. No way of knowing really, I'm not that involved with the hiring process. Hiring her will bring the department representation of female engineers from 2.7% to 3.3%.

She's replacing a woman who left a while ago to teach. Sometimes I think because the last woman was so successful the people in charge thought let's hire someone like her and that's the only reason we're getting another woman. That if the last person had been a man, and good at his job, it would have been a man like him we'd be bringing in. Due to the other woman's leaving to pursue an alternate career (leaky pipeline? too limited sample size) she was asked somewhere in the offer stage whether there was anything she wanted to disclose, anything that might take her away from here. She mentioned then that she had just had a kid.

One of the people that interviewed her balked that she hadn't told him that, that throughout the multiple interviews she had failed to mention that. Clearly she should have said nothing. Sure, mentioning a pregnancy or future birth of a child might be appropriate by the presence of already born children certainly shouldn't be. She was already holding down a job, clearly she had it worked out. Not to mention the person who balked at it has a grown kid and presumably worked at some point in his career with a child just born. Or not to mention other higher level people in the group have little kids at home. We are reminded it is only a factor for women.

Some of my colleagues are dreading her being brought on and worrying whether she will be demanding or a tyrant of those she works with. But I'm not worried. I'm not one of those women who thinks it's hard to work with other women. I can't say every woman I've ever worked with has been my ally but many have and I've had fantastic peers and mentors that were both men and women. All the women I've worked for and with have had the same spectrum of the men I've worked for. I've yet to work under a real tyrant of a boss, but the ones I know about are all men. I suspect though that's an institutional thing and that the men in charge just wouldn't tolerate a dictator in the form of a woman, they'd make sure to encourage her out of the organization.

I look forward to meeting the new engineer. I hope we will get along and secretly I will try to help her and encourage her, even as the underling I am, as I have tried to do so for other women, minorities, and talented employees who I feel don't get the support they should for whatever category management thinks they don't fit into. Sometimes the things I hear or when I am called a bitch or labelled or put into a box makes it feel like death by a thousand cuts and I feel like giving up. But sometimes I feel like I'm a secret agent and my mission is to seek out these people and help them in whatever little ways I can. Maybe my little contributions will make up for the thousand cuts.

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.

You've come a long way, baby

It's no surprise the prerequisites to be a "geek" by society's standards are to be male, middle class and white. I've never watched The Big Bang Theory but I know the blonde is probably not portrayed as one of the smart characters or geeky characters. And none of the show's cast appear to be anything other than northern european.

Over at SheThought, Heidi Anderson shares a geek flowchart with us showing the path from 16th century geek to computer/tech geeks, to star wars/star trek, and in the end the disappointing path leads to trivialization of the geek label with food geek and fantasy football geek.

The flowchart is all male with 3 out of 26 "geeks" being persons of color (or people of non-whititude at least). Lest the womenfolk feel left out, Heidi points us to "Which Female Tech Influencer Are You?" in fantastic pink. Whiteness is still a requirement here, and traditional roles of femininity and hints of frivolity are encouraged to get you through their flowchart. It seems like women in tech can't just be about women in tech. No shame to the women they featured there, I'm sure they are talented and smart and technically competent- you just wouldn't know it.

This got me thinking about a recent search I did. You see, things are going well over at EngineerBlogs. Finding engineers who blog about engineering and are also halfway decent bloggers is not an easy task. It gets even more hairy if you want to expand your electrically-dominated blogging circle or reach beyond to try to get people with more unique perspectives. So I'm hunting around looking for top bloggers and find several lists, 100 Top Female Bloggers and such like that. I click it thinking, well, a few of these women have to be engineers, right? Wrong.

Okay, a few were engineers, but none blogged about engineering. (Too boring for the internet in general?) Most were blogging about "social media" or "marketing" or even "blogging." How do you blog about blogging? A post here and there sure, but your whole focus? Seems like there's a good number of people out there blogging about technology and making stuff and then a whole lot of women who've been pushed into the blogging about fluff category. The only fluff I think should be regularly blogged about is adorable animals.

So anyways, graphics departments, feel free to make some geek flowcharts that show how diverse the real field of being a geek is. And women bloggers, don't be afraid to blog about the technical stuff you know and kick ass at. And we're still looking for a few good engineering bloggers so if you think you're up to it visit our site, check out the write for us link, and you can contact us there or email me (see my profile on the left) if you have any questions.

Possession with intent of double-X chromosome

Just stumbled across an oldie but a goodie, how female stars succeed in new jobs from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge articles. Professor Boris Groysberg looked at top performing equity analysts as an easy to study profession whose yearly metrics he could compare before and after a change in employers. Because most equity firms were located within 1 mile of each other geographical changes would also have less of an affect.

 

What he found was star male analysts performance actually dropped after changing jobs while star female analysts maintained their performance. Because analysts tend to have the same clients and outside contacts after switching companies Groysberg hypothesized the first reason for why women do better as:

One is that they are more invested in external than in in-house relationships. There are four main reasons why star women maintain external focus: uneasy in-house relationships, poor mentorship, neglect by colleagues, and a vulnerable position in the labor market. External focus makes them more "portable" in terms of making a positive move, but can cause problems if they want to progress within their own organization, because you need a solid internal network and good political capital to get things done in organizations. Anyone who focuses mostly on external relationships will not have that.

So kind of depressing. Women do not have good mentors, internal contacts, or internal institutional support at their own companies. Moving to some other company where they don't necessarily know anybody any better than at their previous employer changes nothing for them. Not really a sign of progress I think. His second reason is a little disappointing, indicating that women do more due diligence in a job search to make sure they are not a token female and that they will have more institutional support whether as a female or just as a person.

I don't like hearing this argument that women don't go into higher paying professions like management because they "have more ethics" than men or don't go into science or engineering because they "choose better jobs" than men and that seems like the argument here. I mean at least we've moved on from "women make better secretaries" but it's like saying African Americans dominate professional basketball because they make better choices to get in as opposed to their white sports colleagues not that their white colleagues actually have more avenues of success available to them.

On a side note, being a lego fan I was looking for a cutesey lego picture to top this post and a google image search of "lego figure" is shockingly masculine. I'd say 98% of figures were male, with a few scantily clad female lego figurines popping up or a few female superheroes. I think I got one hit in the first five pages that was just a normal female figure(lego figures do not even have curves, do we really need to sexualize them as well?). No worries, I thought, this is probably selection bias from the sexist interwebs and hopped over to the lego shop. I search through their City series looking to find ordinary women doing ordinary things. Police, fire and rescue are an all male club it seems with one single police woman who works at the police station but doesn't appear to be a part of any of the units that leave. Transportation shows men only as travellers, city workers, officials and mechanics with a woman working a pizza shop, another of unknown occupation and one travelling with her family in a camper.

It seems we women do not fix or run anything but are only a part of larger sets where clearly there should be at least one woman so the population can procreate and not die out. Other sets are even more disappointing with no women dueling with knights or no women wielding swords, no women swimming underwater to fight the weird sea creatures of Atlantis, no women ninjas, and only a few specific character women in the movie sets (Harry Pottery, Star Wars, Prince of Persia). Okay I suppose some of the ninjas could be women, it's not like the lego figures lead to distinct body shapes, but I still expected a little better from a company from pinko-commi freewave socialist Denmark. Getting past the shear lack of numbers, I think of being a little girl and not getting to see people like me wielding swords or building things but instead being in castles wearing less than everyone else and needing to be rescued. Come on Lego, get it together.

What About the Boys

This probably makes me a bitch, but I don't like mansplaining with my coffee. Even if it's from a woman. I'm not sure why I started watching the video over at Machines Like Us. It's offered with no commentary, so it's hard to say what the poster's intent was. But the video coming from the American Enterprise Institute should have clued me into its being a load of crap since the rest of their videos are all libertarian mumbo jumbo about how taxes are what's wrong with this country. I really wish our elected representatives had to take an up or down vote on a public option and those that voted no wouldn't receive healthcare from the government. If they're so sure it's a bad idea, I'm sure they won't mind buying their healthcare on the "private market" like they suggest for the rest of us.

 

But this doesn't have anything to do with healthcare. This is all about why aren't there more female scientists? The video is snippets from some panel mostly with Christina Hoff Summers who thinks women choose to go into other fields even if they are equally apt because other fields are more fulfilling. She's also the author of a bunch of bullshit books about how there's a "war on men" (like the war on Christmas right?). I agree with some of her concerns, but achieving parity between the genders in college attendance is not something I'm going to freak out about. Does this really mean fewer men are going to college now or just more women? We didn't worry about it in the 1950s when there were way fewer men, so why start a national movement to freak out about a few percentage lower men attending some colleges now? And anyways, her goals are all wrong. It's not because we've "forgotten" about the menfolk or that we're rigging the system in favor of women. It's because while women are making gains, inner-city and poor men are losing ground. So this is hardly a gender thing so much as a class thing. And I agree we should make more of an effort to support inner-city and disadvantaged youths, male or female. But reaching out the olive branch to the middle class, educated white men who read her books or follow her bullshit is going to gain us nothing in further educating anybody.

 

Where does she get off talking about women in science anyways? She has an unspecified BA and a doctorate in philosophy. So she's been in the folds of academia and liberal arts her entire life. Maybe when she gets a job in a math or science career or talks to more than one woman in the scientific field without holding her preconceived notions I'll give a damn about her.

 

Her ignorance is further amplified when she suggests there's a severe shortage of scientists and engineers in this country and that it's the NSF's responsibility to recruit people, both men and women (though I assume she means men since women choose to do other things). I guess she doesn't know about all the hoardes of scientists and engineers that are out of work right now. How there are all these PhDs in science who can't find jobs or have to live separately from their families or take extremely low pay just to keep working supposed to contend with even more people competing for the same low number of jobs. I mean if she's even part libertarian she should know that if there's a market demand for these jobs, people will go into these careers. If we start creating companies that produce things and need scientists and engineers, people will start training in that instead of becoming lawyers or working on wall street.

 

Luckily for my blood pressure, someone sent me this article from 2006, Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist. Dr. Ben Barres is a neurobiologist who was once a woman and is now a man.

After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."

And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: "Your boyfriend must have solved it for you."

"By far," Barres wrote, "the main difference I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect" than when he was a woman. "I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."

Barres underwent a lot of criticism for writing on gender differences, or lack thereof, and even though most of his writings focus on studies and data people assume he is taking things "too personally."

Some of those who argue against him tried to bring up a handful of studies again, the typical ones that argue that a man performs better at the highest echelons in math than women even though on the average, men and women perform about the same. Or other studies that suggest women are better at "verbal" things and men at computation. One of Barre's colleagues, Dr. Spelke, responded to the interview and has argued against making conclusions from such data that would imply genetic differences between male and female brains. Coming back to Ms. Sommers and her hackneyed theory that women "choose" to go into other fields and that is why they are absent, I love the quote from Dr. Spelke:

"You won't see a Chinese face or an Indian face in 19th-century science," she said. "It would have been tempting to apply this same pattern of statistical reasoning and say, there must be something about European genes that give rise to greater mathematical talent than Asian genes."

"I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today?" she concluded. "The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."

So non-Christian scientists or Chinese scientists in the 19th century European theatre probably just chose to do something else, something more fulfilling, right Sommers?

Now they get their own button?

Anyone stopped by Technorati lately?

What's this all about? A whole button for women bloggers and women's issues? A whole month is just never enough for these people is it.

Actually, I can't decide whether this is a cool thing, or gimicky, or patronizing...I mean it's better than Science Cheerleaders, but where is it in the spectrum? All good? Do I like them featuring women bloggers in the same way I expect to see women speakers at tech conferences? Or does it seem like an effort to save face without actually changing the way women are treated, like a corporate diversity program. If you have an opinion, tell me.

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.

Some white guys pontificate

Tony Velocci, one of the editors over at Aviation Week, writes this week about an executive roundtable in which he and some aerospace and defense executives discussed diversity in the industry. Or maybe more appropriately, the lack thereof.

It is a question worth pondering as one surveys the makeup of the industry as a whole: mostly Caucasian men, with nearly a third of the total workforce 50 to 59 years old. Among larger contractors, about 40% of all employees, many of them involved in major defense programs, will be eligible for retirement within several years.

Of course that's the same spin on soon to retire engineers we keep hearing every month or so. And it appears to be total bunk. I'm pretty sure the 60 year olds I'm working with will keep working long past when they are eligible for medicare, which tends to be the defining measure for when people retire around here. But clearly they aren't getting real good data when they throw out predictions like that. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about Gen X in the workplace: stuck in the middle. Frustrated Gen Xers waiting for Boomers to retire and dealing with "entitled" young millenials in the workforce.

 

But is it really like that? Yes it seems like there's a lot of old guys hanging on, but at the same time most of my management chain are either Xers or at most on the young side of Boomers. And I don't see too many people here counting down the days until retirement. We all know the recession destroyed a lot of people's portfolios so I'm sympathetic that people need to work longer and save more. While most commenters on Velocci's story predictably said things like "this isn't even an issue" or "this is a silly story" a few had insightful comments on the aerospace industry. Bill Sweetman, another Aviation Week writer, had this to say:

Part of the problem with attracting "the best and brightest" to a mature industry is that you are competing with the new and trendy. Aeronautics and space were in that position once - think of the 1950s and 1960s in southern California - but the bloom went off the rose with the 1970s layoffs, and since then the hot tickets have been IT, biomedical engineering, and robotics.

 

You do have to wade back in and compete. And indeed to some extent, the problems we see in aerospace might be of its own making, along with its customers. See my post today: what is exciting about 25-year procurement cycles? You become an engineer to make things, not support the tenth analysis of alternatives that may (this time) lead to an RFI, before the customer takes his ball and goes home.

 

It's fast-cycle companies that are attracting the talent (Scaled, SpaceX, Insitu, iRobot, Aurora, to name a few). But it is still industry giants that have most of the money.

And he's right. It's hard to tell people what I do because when you think engineering you think something really hands on and awesome. Many of my classmates have leapt at the opportunity to use me as a contact to get in at my company. But then they talk about the lab where they are currently working, happily often, and sometimes I think they should stay. Or another commenter, who points out the industry is still as appealing as anything else:

But since graduation, I've applied to countless jobs across the industry with no response. After nine months of searching I eventually went back to graduate school to try and improve my chances and keep my skills sharp, but so far it's only resulted in a single phone interview. I'm not alone, either - some of my friends have sent out over a hundred applications with no success, and my graduate classes are filled with people who gave up for the time being on getting into the aerospace industry and went back to school. I hear stories at job fairs and company presentations of hiring managers that are swamped with hundreds of applications for each entry position, and the booths of companies like Lockheed and Boeing often have lines just as long as those at Apple and Google.

So young people are still trying to get in at these companies, and in high numbers. And does the defense industry want to rebrand anyways? I am reminded of an old Admiral who didn't want too many days off because "the military doesn't get those days off." And the military in this case was also the customer. Or as Mr. Velocci asked,

Companies like Apple and Google are magnets for young people, but can you imagine any of the 20 largest companies trying to duplicate the work environment that exists in those iconic enterprises? Probably not. You do not want your culture to look too different from that of your customer, one senior executive observed.

But even the dismissive posts, the ones that think this topic is silly, that you just hire a consultant and the consultant will tell you how to fix your problem. They have actually managed to nail it on its head. It's an employer's market right now. And if a company can't get young people/minorities/women/ewoks it's probably because they're not really trying. And maybe that's what disappoints me the most. Not that engineers continue to tend to be mostly white males, but that nobody cares. That the people with the money and the authority to make a difference choose not to, again and again.

Thank you Anita Hill

Nearly 20 years an African American woman spoke the truth in front of a bunch of white men with real, political power. I had never seen the hearings myself, having been too young to be considering either politics or my place in the workforce. I know, of course, what the general take from it was. I suppose that depends a little on your political bent as well. After reading how Clarence Thomas' wife left a phone message at Professor Hill's workplace asking her to "apologize" I decided to look into it a little more.

 

Back in 1991 you couldn't slip back into historical congressional testimony with a few clicks of the mouse, but now thanks to modern technology I can access a few snippets rolling around on YouTube. I am incredibly impressed with her poise in the interviews. She describes herself as being 24 at the time of the harassment. What a tender age for a young woman trying to find her way in a man's world, law. I'd like to think law is a little better now, but was surprised to see from the National Association of Women Lawyers that even though women have been entering law firms in near equal numbers to men (48%) for the last two decades, they do not move up at the same rate as men. The percentages of women at higher levels in law firms gets much lower very quickly, both from women not advancing and from women leaving law firms. A quick google search shows there's even more complaints that women's pay in law might not be keeping up with men either.

 

So I wasn't in the workplace in 1991 and can't compare. It was a nostalgia trip to see a young (and still weak and incompetent) Joe Biden as well as a younger Ted Kennedy, both allowing Arlen Spector to rant on (now there's someone who should apologize) while a confident, youngish African American woman kept full composure. If she was lying, why not make the complaints something The Menz could understand? A man trying to make excuses can see "So I was watching this porno last night, and I thought of you, and here's what they did..." as just idle talk. People who have experienced sexual harassment or bullying know it's never in a quotable obvious form. It never comes perfectly packaged with a bow on top that will help your HR department can that idiot. If it had been made up, it would have made better headlines. The truth isn't always pretty and hard to digest. But she was there, and still is. Being a strong, intelligent woman. I'd like to think little girls in 1991 saw her calm and poised testimony and could ignore the babbling talking heads just long enough to think maybe they could grow up to be like her. I know the workplace was changed from that moment on. Yes it's not perfect and still a work in progress. But it was a monumental step forward, on one woman's shoulders.

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.