Women in tech and guys too "smart" to be sexist

[politicat]

I want to start a discussion about being female in the tech industry and dealing with the hyper masculine culture that has developed over the past decade of geek ascendency. I'd especially like to hear any useful strategies others have come up with for asserting equality and ability in this field.

Here's where I am: I'm working full time again, for a small computer hardware company - my day's divided about evenly between documentation development and management, product testing, and office management. I've spent much of the last 2 years working part time as a psychologist (my actual field) and writing.

I'm the only female employee of four, and by far the most organized and focused. Two of the guys are focused in a kind of Adult ADHD way - they get so utterly focused on minutiae that they can't come up for air. The third is not focused at all. I'm used to geeks; I'm one, I'm married to one, and I've worked off and on in tech for several years - basically, whenever I can't deal with being a shrink anymore. One of my coworkers is married and has reasonable social skills; the others do not and are utterly unable to relate to women as anything other than barbarian chicks in role playing games. (Yes, the terms Asperger's and Pervasive Developmental Disorder has come to mind.) But as eye rollingly infuriating as such behaviors can be, they're not too bad compared to the customers.

The fact is, few of them want to talk to me because they don't think I can possibly know anything about SCSI drives or wireless cards. (I wrote the faqs, bub.) I get better responses to email inquiries when I sign my boss's name instead of my own. And more of them try to convince me to give them better deals than they do with my coworkers. The customers don't want to trust a woman computer expert. And yet, it's neither intentional nor conscious; they don't believe they're doing anything wrong.

Am I the only one seeing this?

[Cerridwen]

1. I was in the IT industry for 20 or so years.

Firstly, for my own sanity, I developed a sarcastic sense of humor. Yes, I know, sarcasm can be anger turned comical. It worked for me. The tricky part was to not stay stuck in the anger and frustration.

Another thing I did was speak firmly at all times when dealing with the nimrods that thought a uterus somehow lowered my I.Q. Since speaking firmly without smiling sweetly is usually labeled, in women, "angry," it could sometimes be an effective way to deal with the nimrods afraid of angry women. Eventually, they'd figure out that I was just doing my job and they got over it. In other words, they came around rather than me making it all nice and cozy for them.

For the true dickheads, I would usually direct them to a co-worker who may or may not have my level of expertise. If you have that option, perhaps you can use that. The truly fun part of that is when dickhead has to come back to you because co-worker was unable to answer their questions or fix their problem because apparently co-worker's penis was not an indication of higher I.Q. :evilgrin:

And finally, I learned patience. I kept putting my name to my email communications, kept making the phone calls to manufacturers tech support and letting them hear my female voice, kept talking with vendors and customers, firmly, professionally, and with obvious knowledge and eventually, they figured out I knew what I was doing and that I was straight up and honest with them. It took time and I'm not know for my patience, but the rewards were, for me, quite wonderful.

I once had the sales manager at the company for which I was Director of IT tell me "Cerridwen, you take care of us over here in sales and we'll take care of you. Don't you worry about it."

I looked him square in the eye and said "John, I'm here to get this network cleaned up, keep it up and running 24/7, make sure the PCs are current and available, and make sure your phones are always working for you and your sales staff. That's my job. I don't need a special arrangement with you to do that. You'll get the same good quality of service as everyone else in this company."

Since sales was the department most favored by the owner, and since my predecessor had been a "wheeler and dealer," I thought John might pass out from the shock of my rather socialist manner of doing business. Instead, he treated me with much respect from that moment on and sang my praises throughout the company. I may not have ever been the person he would want to "have a beer with," but he knew he could count on me to take care of his department. That was one of my biggest victories there - probably why I just had to share it. :D

I hope you'll find something in my musings to help you with your current situation.

I wish you much luck, success and sanity.


:toast:


edited for punctuation.

[Warpy]

2. Nope. You should have heard me convincing Qwest

that yes, a woman could install her own internal DSL modem and get it to work, uh-huh, no visit from their service tech was necessary.

When I was in engineering school in the mid 60s, I found that my intials on a paper garnered me a full letter grade higher than my name did.

Oh, and every woman out there has been part of a brainstorming session, has come up with a brilliant idea, been ignored, had the male sitting next to her repeat it and has seen him get full credit for it.

This is our world. It sucks.

[Senior citizen]

3. The patriarchal name game.

It can be particularly painful if you have a beautiful name, a name you love, or are named for a beloved female ancestor or feminist icon. But I feel that the Black Muslims had it right in discarding what they called "slave names." Having a different type of name based on sex is nothing but a relic of patriarchy. I'm not advising anyone to change their name, but I think we should take such things into consideration very seriously when naming female children. Think how many women in China who treasured their tiny feet, refused to bind their daughters' feet when footbinding was abolished. Sure it was painful to realize that their daughters wouldn't have the tiny feet that made them so special, but it was obvious that they also wouldn't have the pain that went with it, and would have greater mobility.

There are many other ways some bigot can learn that you're female. It could be your phone voice, your appearance, or they could learn it from someone who knows you. But once you know that your name will get you a lower grade on school papers and less respect in the business world, there's no point in merely ranting about it and blaming anyone else for 5,000 years of tradition. Just wait until you get the chance to name a female child, and change the tradition. Remember the first female admitted to that horrible southern military academy, who got accepted due to not having a traditionally female name, so the school failed to realize that the applicant was female? There are many barriers to equality that we cannot remove. Names aren't one of them.

Many feminists have written about the unpaid work done by females in the workforce that isn't in their job descriptions. The efforts spent in merely convincing morans that you're capable, fending off the droolers, etc., is, to quote Cuckoobananas, "hard work." Sometimes the same people who defend patriarchal traditions will be the ones warning females to list only their first initials rather than their first names in the phone book, and not to post to chat rooms with reconizably female names, so as to avoid harassment. But they still give their daughters names that they know will invite harassment if not concealed. To my mind, relics of slavery should be kept in museums, but no place else.

The history of female geniuses is one of not getting credit for their discoveries and inventions, being overlooked in textbooks, and being discredited whenever possible. We all know that George Sand was female, so how important can it be to have a traditionally female name? Patriarchy loves nothing better than to expose a female--witness the multi-billion dollar porn industry. But on rare occasions it is possible for a person to have the opportunity to refuse to expose themselves unnecessarily. The way I see it, if you're not being paid to "act like a woman," you shouldn't have to do it.

[BlueIris]

4. Before I respond to anything in your OP, politicat--what's

Pervasive Developmental Disorder?

It's been a long time since I've had to look at any version of the DSM--I'm not familiar with that term.

[politicat]

6. It's the umbrella term

Autism, Aspergers, PDD: they're all the same family. Sometimes we can't diagnose a kid with autism for some reason or other, or there is massive overlap between Aspergers and autism or whatever.... so PDD it is.

[BlueIris]

7. Oh, okay. nt.

[geniph]

5. I've been in IT for more than 25 years

and it still depresses me to go to a conference or training and discover I'm the only female out of, say, 100 participants. At the level I'm at, I see very few other women. As to how I deal with it personally - I don't have too much trouble anymore. Oh, usually the first day or so dealing with a male can be touchy, but I generally manage to either convince them of my competence or intimidate them into shutting the hell up in short order. I'm not confrontational by nature, but I don't tend to be quiet about technical issues; I'm a very senior network manager and don't have any doubts about my abilities in that arena anymore.

I'm involved with a group called IGNITE that was founded by women at Microsoft. The group, Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Education, provides examples and role models of women in technology to high-school-age girls to encourage them to pursue careers in high tech. What's demoralizing sometimes is to find out how many girls, still, to this day, think there are such things as "men's" jobs and "women's" jobs, or think that high tech is all "boring guy stuff." We try to show them otherwise. If I can get through to even one girl at each session, hell, that's something anyway.

[geniph]

8. By the way, it's not just the men in high tech

that are prone to Asperger's...I'm one of those rare female Aspies myself, albeit pretty mild. I'd say a majority of techies, male or female, are Aspie types.

I call it the Raised By Wolves syndrome. We just aren't very good with social interaction.

[politicat]

11. Oh, yes, I know the concept....

But there is a difference between being Raised by Wolves (and I'm gonna steal that, okay? That's great.) and thus being not so good at the social interaction.... and what I'm seeing.

I've been in tech off and on (more on than off; I really hate being a clinical shrink) for about 15 years, in start ups, stable small companies and mega corps. I actually respectfully disagree that most techies are Aspie type, or alternately, anyone who loves and lives their job is Asperger's type. I've seen that type of obssessiveness before but this is not that. This is far and away beyond that, and it's like walking into the neuro-atypical section at the clinic where I still work (only part time, and with a reducing client load. Thank dog....)

And I'm saying this coming from my own perspective as a somewhat obsessive perfectionist with a serious lust for hardware and software who can think of no better way to spend a weekend than over a bench rebuilding a Lombard powerbook. But then again, I am a mac geek.... this may be part of the problem. :silly:

It's language issues - person X cannot refer to a person with XX chromosomes as "she" nor can said person understand why sales conversations need to be documented (cuz how else are we supposed to ship stuff??) now why others cannot seem to download his thoughts directly.... It's the flip side where everything must be explained in GREAT GREEN GOBS of detail when it's absolutely not necessary. It's that insular communicative dystrophy commonly associated with Au/Asp. That's what I'm seeing along with the sexism.

But anyway, at least the Boss is out of town for rest of the week and the others are working night shift because its in the 90s during the day and being outside is not working for them.....

[bleedingheart]

9. Actually I don't have this problem in my office

I an an engineer in a very specialized field. I am well respected by both male and female colleagues.

The only time I have run into problems have been with outsiders and then they normally figure out that I know what I am talking about.

[Finder]

10. My husband prefers women engineers...

because they are more detail orientated. He is in IT and has noted some discrimination from customers though.