The Little Woman July 23, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, societal commentary, work.Tags: introductions, invisibility, sexism
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I’ve discussed both the drawbacks (and here) and benefits of working with my husband before. Today, however, I’m feeling like discussing another drawback.
Recently, we were in a situation where we ran into a colleague we’ve known for a while. This colleague (whom I shall call Colleague #1) had someone with him (Colleague #2). (I know…I’m boring. Maybe I should call them Bert and Ernie?) When Colleague #1 (Bert?) introduced us to Colleague #2 (Ernie?), Mike was introduced first with a mention about his work position. And I…I was introduced as his wife. There was absolutely no comparable mention of my professional attributes.
This is beyond annoying, especially when this person is someone with whom I only interact in professional settings. I don’t mind so much when we are introduced professionally and then, as note afterwards, someone will mention we are married (although I’m not sure why this is necessary). I even seem to vaguely recall one time when Mike was introduced as my husband, which was a bit amusing. At least I can’t say it’s never happened.
However, the situation where I am introduced strictly as his wife is something that people ought to know better than to do. This belittles my professional accomplishments and makes it seem like the most important thing I do is provide companionship to my husband and, probably, take care of his kids. It ignores the fact that I am a capable engineer and makes it appear that I have nothing more to add to the conversation than perhaps the affirming nod here and there.
To his credit, there have been occasions where Mike has picked up on this and brought it up himself when the person introducing us to someone has failed to give me ‘equal due’. Still, I’m irritated that it happens so often. I’m surprised that I haven’t yet been introduced as Mike’s little woman.
(As a side note, just as I was about to post this, I noticed I’d already tagged another post ‘introductions’. Wow…deja vu. I think I need to stop letting people introduce me and start doing it myself.)
Ambassador for the engineers May 22, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, humor, work.Tags: conference, feminism, sexism, trade show
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After writing about my experience manning a booth at a conference (geez…even how you work a booth at a conference can be phrased in male-centric terms), it has slowly dawned on me that there is another way to view the experience. I was rather frustrated that people seemed surprised when they found out I was an engineer. I have realized, however, that I need to look at it in a different light: such a reaction, when not accompanied by an obvious derogatory or sexist statement (as has happened), could potentially be viewed as a compliment. Maybe in expressing surprise that I’m an engineer, what they were really saying was: “Oh my! You can talk to me without using technobabble or looking at someone’s shoes! Nor do you have male-pattern baldness!” It’s a good thing to go out and destroy those stereotypes, right?
Booth Babe May 3, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, work.Tags: conference, feminism, sexism, stereotypes, trade show
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Last week, before leaving for a conference, I posted the following on Twitter:
So if I’m working our booth at the conference, does that make me a booth babe?(That IS a joke, BTW.)
Now that I’m back, I realize that comment should’ve been taken as a bad omen. I actually didn’t expect there to be booth babes (and if you’re not sure what I’m referring to, please read this), but I was very wrong about that. There were, in fact, booth babes at the show.
I went to this conference because I was invited to give a talk about my research. However, my employer said they would provide my room and board for the trip if I helped work a booth at the trade show promoting our services and capabilities. We frequently work with private industry, and it was assumed that having a handful of intelligent people showing what we could do is good for the bottom line. I’m in favor of having an income and love talking about my work, so this seemed like a reasonable deal for me, as well.
But back to the booth babes, I’m sad to report that this was not the most disturbing part of working our booth. The most disturbing part was interacting with some of the people who came to visit us, many of whom apparently have interacted with them. I was chatting with a fellow, and toward the end of the conversation, I gave him my card. He read it and said, “Oh! You’re an engineer?” I responded I was, and he then asked, “And you actually work at the center?”
Then there was one person who was talking to a colleague about one of my demo projects at the booth. When the guy asked this colleague for a card, he said he didn’t have any but said it was my project. The visitor looked at me for a moment, open mouthed, and said, “This is YOUR project?” I nodded and introduced myself, and gave him my business card. He looked back and forth between myself and my colleague a few times, looking like he wanted to give me back my card. Then he said thank you and walked away. He apparently didn’t want to have a conversation with me.
Admittedly, these were some of the worst cases, but it was obvious that about half of the people who came to talk to us had no desire to talk to me, asking to talk to someone who was “in charge.” Others, when I approached them while they were reading our posters, would say they were waiting to talk to an engineer or faculty.
One colleague, when I complained about the situation, said I need to just “prove them wrong.” I agree that this is the right spirit to have, but it is overwhelmingly frustrating when you’re sitting there, and someone obviously comes to the conclusion that you’re an idiot by virtue of your sex while the people around you are obviously competent for the same reason. It’s a horrible experience, and I seriously doubt most men really understand how hard it is to be motivated to ‘prove them wrong’ when you have to do it with every single person you meet. Men, in similar circumstances, are accorded this respect simply by breathing. It certainly doesn’t require the equivalent effort a female would have to put forth.
I will say that it is somewhat understandable that people would make the assumption that I’m a salesperson given that most of the women on the trade show floor were, in fact salespeople…or booth babes. In many cases, it ended up that once people got over the surprise that they were talking to a living, breathing, female engineer, we were able to move on and have some extremely interesting conversations. Unfortunately, the shocked look every time I was introduced as a researcher got old very quickly.
You know what they say about assumptions… March 29, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, societal commentary.Tags: feminism, sexism
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This past week, Mike and I had a meeting with some people on a project that I had run. One of the people was someone I’d met before as we’d interfaced on another project. As we all sat down and finished up our introductions, this person faced Mike and started asking him questions about the current project. After a couple questions, it was pretty clear that he thought Mike was in charge of things. I sort of inwardly sighed and waited. I’ve had this happen more times than I care to recall.
After about the third question, Mike said, “Well, Cherish is actually the one who came up with the idea, so I think she’d be better at addressing these issues.” From that point on, things were a lot more balanced.
I spoke with Mike afterwards, and I asked if he noticed this person focusing on him initially.
“Oh yes, that’s why I turned it over to you as quickly as possible and then left the room for a few minutes. If I wasn’t there, he’d have to talk to you.”
It was bothering the both of us, however, that we couldn’t tell if this person had focused on him because he knew me from this other project or if it was the stereotypical ‘the guy must be in charge’ assumption. Either way, I would have preferred if he had asked first which of us was leading the project rather than making assumptions.
Public shaming of men March 22, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, societal commentary.Tags: adria richards, feminism, sexism, sexist comments, technology
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I’ve been reading the stories about Adria Richards…and reading, with abject horror, the comments on those stories.
The primary thing that irritated me were the comments saying that she shouldn’t have posted the pictures to Twitter. She should, in their opinion, have simply told them to knock it off.
Obviously these commenters have no idea what they’re asking. One of my first experiences where this occurred was in a college cafeteria. I was sitting with another woman and two men, both of whom were loudly ogling the women in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated (ETA: it was actually the swimsuit issue). The other woman asked them to stop. They ignored her and kept on. She repeated her request, and they glared at her before telling her that if she didn’t like it, she could go somewhere else…and then returned to their activity. When she got up angrily and left, there was loud muttering about what a bitch she was.
In the twenty years since this happened, I have never seen such requests, either from me or other women, have any positive outcome. In fact, they’re almost entirely replicas of the above conversation. Occasionally, there’s the, “Can’t you take a joke?” line thrown in, as well. And in the twenty years since this happened, I have encountered many such opportunities to try this tactic.
It doesn’t work.
My observation is that men who are stupid enough to think it’s okay to behave this way in public, especially in a professional setting, are also too stupid to realize that it’s sexist and that they should quit, even when told directly. Somehow it’s okay to make jokes at a tech conference that you’d never make in front of your mother. (There’s a bit of scientific evidence to back this up.) If you honestly think just telling them to stop actually worked, all of them would have stopped making comments like that a long time ago. There’s a website devoted to dealing with the issue, which would be unnecessary if just telling people to stop actually worked.
The only time I’ve seen any different outcome is when I did something similar to Adria: I publicly shamed the offender on the biggest soapbox I could find. You see, in the twenty years I’ve been dealing with behavior head on, I have learned that men won’t listen to me on the topic of sexist behavior as they ascertain that women aren’t good evaluators in this realm. Instead, if you want them to stop sexist behavior, you need to get other men to tell them to stop. In my situation, it actually worked. While I would like to think that the man making offensive comments suddenly saw the error of his ways, I think the reason he really apologized (albeit with a defensive remark at the end) was because other men and some women piled on and said it was out of line. I’m incredibly appreciative of all of those people, too.
It’s depressing, however, to find that there so many more out there who feel like Adria just needs to get a thicker skin or are clueless to the fact that making sexist remarks go away isn’t a simple feat. To me, this is a very clear sign that sexism in tech is still as much a problem as it was two decades ago.
(If, after reading all this you’re still frustrated, then cheer yourself up by reading this wonderful parody about how women should remember their place in science.)
Stereotypes are good because they’re true February 3, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, societal commentary.Tags: feminism, sexism, sexist comments, stereotypes, women in science
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A couple weeks ago, I was talking with someone who mentioned an email about stereotypes of women. He apparently thought it was funny, and I made the quip that I hadn’t seen it because obviously no one would be stupid enough to send something like that to me. There was some effort at defending the email, but I said that stereotypes aren’t defensible because they cause you to judge all people who fall into a particular category the same way rather than viewing them as unique individuals who may or may not resemble the stereotype.
In particular, I talked about my experience when I first started going to college. A frequently overheard comment my first year or two of college is that, “Women are only accepted here because of affirmative action.” Dummy me, I started to believe it.
It was a couple years later when I realized it was bunk. I was working on a website for the women’s center, and I was asked to put up statistics that compared female and male admitted students. It turned out that the stats came from my particular class, and one of the things that I was putting up was a comparison between SAT scores of the two groups. I found it interesting that there was only about a 10-point difference between men and women. What really got me was when I found out that my SAT scores were actually higher than the average male SAT scores. I was livid. I’d been told for so long that I had only been admitted because of my uterus that I would’ve never believed it. That meant that my SAT scores were better than more than half the men in my cohort.
Going back to the conversation, I became even more irritated when someone else jumped into the conversation, making the assertion that stereotypes are just fine. Apparently, in this person’s world, the people they misjudge are apparently acceptable casualties because “most of the time,” it’s true.
Sadly, I doubt this person would understand how their judgments impact other people. In fact, I think they’d be especially reluctant to agree with this article about how stereotypes are bad even when they’re good.
I admit to having caught myself assuming stereotypes of people. It’s something that I have to work on constantly. It’s disappointing, however, that there are still people who think stereotypes are a reasonable approach to human interaction.
Typical woman November 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, societal commentary.Tags: feminism, humor, jokes, sexism, sexist comments
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I was ribbing a coworker at a meeting, and his response could more or less be summed up with, “Typical woman.” I was completely expecting him to say that, and I laughed when he did. However, one of the other people in the meeting was obviously very uncomfortable with the exchange and quickly changed the topic, redirecting us back to our original focus.
After this exchange, I was somewhat troubled because I started wondering if I had some sort of double standard: in this scenario, my coworker was obviously kidding and I know that he doesn’t really believe that. (At least, I’m fairly certain he doesn’t. We have a very good professional relationship.) On the other hand, I know that if certain people did it, it would probably offend me as it would just cement my view that they have issues with women.
This left me wondering when, if ever, sexist humor is appropriate. Is it alright as long as the woman or women present aren’t offended, or ought there be a more universally applied standard? I know some people who feel it is never okay to make jokes like that. Or should it be situation dependent?
From whom it has concerned November 10, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism.Tags: books, donations, gifts, mrs. claus, santa
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I was buying some items at Barnes and Noble today when the cashier asked if I wanted to buy a book to donate. I picked a Lego book of some sort, and the cashier handed me a card and asked me to fill in the “From” line. I contemplated a second, and he said, “You can just write in Santa if you like.”
That didn’t feel quite right, so I wrote in, “Santa and Mrs. Claus.” (Does Mrs. Claus have a first name? I feel horrible for not knowing.)
The cashier looked and smiled. “Hmm…no one has written that before. But you know, that makes sense. She’s probably the brains of the operation, planning everything out. She should get some credit, too.”
Indeed, she should. But I imagine the elves are going to complain that they were left out…or the reindeer.
Telling women to smile on the internet October 7, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, societal commentary.Tags: facebook, feminism, sexism
10 comments
There’s an interesting phenomenon that many women have experienced: a random stranger off the street will suddenly come up to you and tell you to smile. If you’ve never heard of it before, just google “men telling women to smile” and you can read more about it than I have room to give you here. The general consensus is that it’s a control issue. Men can demand things from women (or feel entitled to) because of their privileged position.
The funny thing is that you can get this on the internet, too. Only there, I’ve run into it several times in the form of “you shouldn’t post that on your facebook page”. It’s happened several times to me:
I don’t want to see pictures of your kids. I want to know what’s going on with you.
I don’t want to see pictures of your dogs. They aren’t part of your family.
I don’t want to see your political rants. I want to know what’s going on with you.
Interestingly, that last comment came immediately after I’d posted something about how the president of our university mentioned my research in his state of the university speech. This same person never bothered to comment on that point.
And this leads me to believe that this is exactly the same phenomenon, as it always seems to be men who say these things to me. They somehow feel that they can exert control over what I choose to post and they feel I am not sufficiently entertaining.
I wonder how they would feel if someone said to them, in a conversation, “I don’t want to talk about what you’re interested in. Let’s talk about what I want to discuss.” Most of us think people like that are assholes.
After telling my husband about this latest comment, he responded incredulously, “It’s your Facebook page. You can post whatever you want!” And a few hours later, another friend posted exactly that on the conversation on Facebook. I was more polite than that in my response, but given this has happened multiple times, I think I’m going to use this as my response from now on: “Don’t like it? Don’t read it. I’m not here for your entertainment. Also, learn to use the ‘hide’ or ‘unfriend’ options.”
Of course, that would be rude. And women can’t be rude.
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The myth of the myth of the wage gap July 29, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, feminism, societal commentary, work.Tags: discrimination, sexism, wage gap
6 comments
Someone made a comment to me this weekend that I found rather interesting: “Why are men judged more on their income level than women?”
I thought this was interesting for two reasons. First, Charles Peters posted something related on Facebook…which I’ll get back to in a moment. (Thanks, Charles.) Timing is everything. Second, I was going to respond that, given our society is given to traditionalist notions, it’s kind of hard not to. In traditional roles, men are supposed to be the breadwinners…hence, their income level is the primary characteristic by which they’re judged. Feminism argues that this shouldn’t be the case, that men are more than just breadwinners and should have the same options to be stay-at-home dads, and it’s catching on…but slowly.
Anyway, I understand why the question is being asked and I do agree that it’s unfair that men are judged this way. On the other hand, there’s a level of silliness in asking the question when it’s obvious we don’t live in a society where men and women are completely equal.
Going back to Charles, he posted a link to a video by Steven Horowitz that supposedly shows that women don’t actually make less than men and that this ‘supposed wage gap’ is actually a result of the fact that women go into fields where the income level is lower and also tend to work part-time.
Here’s the video, if you’re interested:
I love how, at the end, the Horowitz makes the comment that the wages paid “reflect the productivity of those choices.” (And yes, I hope you’re getting the sarcasm here.) Based on that comment, he’s ignoring the fact that, by his own argument, women having anything to do with raising children is completely unproductive. Therefore, the real smart choice is simply to not have children. (And, well, if you look at the women who tend to be highly successful in academia, it’s not a surprise that a good number of them don’t have children.)
So sorry guys (and maybe some gals): you have a choice between marrying a successful woman or having children, but don’t expect both.
Horowitz also glosses over the fact that there is a serious chicken and the egg question about the lower-paying fields. Are they really ‘lower productivity’ choices? Is a school teacher really less productive than an engineer? According to the market, maybe, but is that really a good evaluator of productivity? Personally, in my work, I don’t know that I work a whole lot harder than a school teacher. In fact, I was part of a program in undergrad where I worked with school teachers and, after seeing what they go through, decided there was no way it would be worth it. The question in my mind is whether these fields are undervalued precisely because they are women-dominated. (And, in fact, there is research that shows this.)
And finally, there’s this notion put forward in the video that women aren’t actually paid less than men. The Center for American Progress put forward a study showing that, if you look at the wage gap in each occupation, it turns out that 97% of jobs pay women less. This flies in the face of Horowitz’s suggestion that the solution is to encourage women to go into higher paying jobs.
Of course, the second part of his solution is only marginally helpful: men need to help more with child care. However, this is asking 1) that men do something ‘non-productive’ in terms of market and 2) doesn’t do anything about the lower salary in many women-dominated fields.
It seems like he missed another point: while women have made strides into entering male-dominated fields, the reverse has not been as true. There is the possibility that, if men were encouraged to enter those fields, they may become more valuable. On the other hand, men who do enter such fields tend to be promoted faster than women.
So back to the question of why women aren’t judged as harshly as men for their income levels: it’s because society still believes in traditional roles that women are really about making babies and their contribution to the monetary economy isn’t relevant because they aren’t as competent as men.