Yesterday, I went to a meeting at a fairly well-known tech start-up. They're relatively well established, and have very smart people working there. I've been analyzing technology companies and cyber security systems for over 10 years now, which is probably longer than most of their employees have been coding, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.
I asked a question of their head of internal infrastructure - "can you please describe your migration plans and timeline for moving from outsourced to owned data centers?" I realize that may sound technical to some - basically, I was asking what they were going to do about moving their computing systems from someone else's servers they pay to use to their own servers. The dude looked at me and started: "Well, currently, we use other people's servers for our data center, which is basically like the machines we plug the cables into..."
"Yeah, I know what they do."
(Looks shocked) "Oh, OK..."
This was right after they discussed something really technical without dumbing it down to a dude sitting next to me. I've known the guy for years. He doesn't work in the space often. He had no idea what they were talking about. That's no slight on him - there just aren't many people that do what I do, and fewer that have been doing it for as long as I have.
...
When I was a little girl, my Grandma June used to take great pride in telling me I was the first born daughter of a first born daughter of a first born daughter... seven generations back. While that is very special in many ways, yesterday I wasn't feeling so into it. Being a girl working in business isn't always all it was cracked up to be.
My mom burned her bra with her sister-in-law in feminist rallies when she was young. She then promptly got married and stayed home to raise me and my brother. That said, her basic belief was that her generation had fought the battle for future generations of women, and the workforce would be a fair place for me once I entered it.
I love my mom, but she was way off base.
The funny thing is, my great-great-grandmother, Edith Adora (Dansdill) Murray was a suffragette. She fought the fight so that my great-grandmother could vote the minute she came of age.
Just because one generation paves the way for a right to exist for the next... It doesn't mean that right is a given for the next generation. Grandma Edith may have paved the way for her two daughters to vote. She and her husband may have sent both of their daughters to college in an era when women just didn't do that. But just because my great-grandma had the right to go to college and had the vote doesn't mean she didn't face all kinds of discrimination at school or even the voting booth.
Similarly, my mother may have burned her bra for me to be able to "break through the glass ceiling", but I certainly haven't broken through yet, and I'm not sure it's possible. Or rather, it's possible, but only if you're willing to focus on that and nothing else, and only if you put up with a whole lot of shit. Men don't have to make the same choices to achieve the same life outcome.
My Grandma June went into the work force during WWII - she was a riveter in Richmond, CA. She was tiny, so they had her rivet in the nose of the ship, where most people couldn't fit. After the war ended, she kept on working. Grandma June is my mom's mother. She ended up working for my dad's dad (Grandpa Wally) in the assessor's office for Contra Costa County. She told me he was always very fair, but I always found it odd that all the women crunched the numbers, then Grandpa Wally checked for accuracy. It didn't seem to me like he did very much - though I realize that's oversimplifying everything significantly - Grandpa Wally was one of the smartest guys I've ever known, and always did very well in business.
Today, I go into a meeting, and whenever I ask a question that demonstrates my knowledge of the space, I get one of two reactions:
1) surprise - "holy hell - does she know what I'm talking about?"
2) confusion - "did she get lucky asking that question the right way? Is it possible she read up on the subject on her way here?"
Inevitably, either reaction ends with the person to whom I asked the question looking at the guy sitting next to me, who is almost always significantly junior to me, and directing the answer to my question to the dude (whom is assumed to be my boss).
What the literal fuck?
I don't get exercised about much. But when people doubt my intelligence, I get pretty keyed up. I graduated from one of the top 10 universities in the world... early... with honors... working 30 hours per week through most of it... I worked my way from being an assistant to a Vice President at a financial institution in 7 years... I'm not the smartest or hardest working person in the world, but I'm certainly no slouch.
Which is why I get frustrated. Obviously frustrated. I'm treated with more respect and am given more benefit of the doubt on the finance side of my job than the technology side of my job. And when you walk into a room and the INSURANCE people are more diverse/accepting than the tech guys, you know there's a problem.
But, materially, there are problems in both sectors. The more I talk to other female friends, the more I realize the problem is pervasive in other sectors too.
When I go on business trips, I have two sets of "clients" I see. First are insurance brokers - they know I'm smart, but the second they see me, they feel like it's OK to drool on my carefully covered-up cleavage. (I used to be far less concerned about what I wore to work, as long as it was business appropriate, but after the third broker attempted to shove his tongue down my throat on a work trip, I decided it was time to invest in turtlenecks.) Second are the insurance buyers - these are usually technology companies, but minimally I'm interfacing with IT people even at non-tech companies. If these people are able to talk to me without drooling, they are not usually able to talk to me without dumbing down everything they say. Ev.Er.Y.Thing. "The machines they plug the cables into..." Ugh.
Why is it that some men seem incapable of assuming I have a brain in my pretty little head? And even when they assume I'm smart, they still feel like it's totally cool to hit on me. They assume that because I ask them to what I would consider a business dinner, we're going on a date.
In the immortal words of my Grandpa Wally - "keep your prick out of the payroll". Idiots.
It's the same freaking problem my Grandma Edith fought against - women don't have the mental acuity to understand politics... or is it business?... or is it technology?... Well, fuck. Now I'm confused too.
People say that women make different choices. People say that when women make the decision to not get married and not have kids and go into male-dominated fields, there is no pay gap.
Well whooptie-freakin'-do.
I have no children. I have no boyfriend, let alone the prospect of getting married, but yes... I probably make as much as the men that do what I do. All of those men have wives and families at home. All of them. Instead of having a husband and kids to support me at home, I have my retired mother help me with my laundry and errands - I don't have time to do them myself, and I feel guilty as hell about it. I also feel guilty as hell that I made the "choice" to focus on work over having kids. All I wanted to do was be a mom, but I felt like it would be irresponsible to do that if I couldn't support a family, or at least myself.
I wonder if the guys I work with feel guilty as hell that their wives do their laundry while they're busy making money?... I kind of doubt it.
Gentlemen, I know many of you reading this are not my intended audience, but in general, it's time to check your privilege. And it's time for those of you who realize this is a problem to actually do something about it.
If men think I'm stupid when they look at me, they are less likely to believe what I'm saying. And if they think you're smart when they look at you, they are more likely to believe what you're saying. This is what I mean by privilege. I do not have the privilege of assumed intelligence when I walk into a room, but the dude next to me who knew nothing about the topic did. It's not right, but he just did.
I'm sick of women being the only ones that fight this fight. I have several awesome dude friends that will speak up about this, but I need more. We need more.
I pray that the engineer who tried to explain server farms to me got chewed the hell out by his boss. I pray that my very flatly telling him "Yeah, I know what they do" woke him up a little. I pray the next time a women asks him a question, he doesn't try to dumb it down. But I kind of doubt that too.
Like our LGBT friends, I don't think women will start receiving a fair shake until people understand how pervasive the problem is. Women have to tell our stories. We can't keep taking it like it's OK. We can't keep trying to be the "cool girls" that aren't bothered when people treat us like shit. Similarly, we won't get anywhere until our outside friends (in this case, men) start speaking truth to power too.
Grandma Edith was a pragmatist, and I consider myself one too. I'm not proud. I just need things to change. Who's with me?
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