a lady in a lab coat
I just wormed my way through a fairly successful indirect discussion of privilege with someone who has repeatedly frustrated me and my efforts in said area. (By “successful” I mean that while I’m not sure I have a new privilege-understanding cohort, my points were at least listened to and discussed rather than rejected and/or mansplained away.)
We were talking about female engineers in the field - a topic near and dear to my heart, right? A coworker, D, has a young neighbor who will be a senior next year and is interested in Chemical Engineering. He asked whether I would be willing to talk to her a little bit about ChemE and about applying for schools (not only because I’m a lady, but because I’m much younger than D and also involved in interviewing); of course, I said. Any time.
The thing is, things in engineering have changed a lot since D entered the field. You don’t have to worry about being the only girl in your classes; and you don’t even have to worry if you are, because the guys are a lot more used to seeing ladies up in their sciences and maths now. You don’t have to worry about direct sexual/gender discrimination; there are laws and HR departments and paths to fixing that kind of thing. Nobody’s going to tell you that you can’t do this [job, class, co-op, etc] because you’re a girl; not in 2011, not in today’s colleges and universities.
But, as I was trying to tell J, that doesn’t mean that the environment is entirely equal.
He had made a comment about how in the places he’d worked in the past, he had “never seen” any kind of sexual harassment or sexual/gender (I am not even sure anymore what is the most appropriate term to use here?) discrimination, and he didn’t think that it existed. I tried to tell him that he might not have seen it, because he’s a dude. And also because what exists now is a very subtle type of discrimination, one almost harder to fight. He basically implied I was imagining things - that if I didn’t have direct evidence of sexual/gender discrimination, it obviously wasn’t, and I was making the problem worse by “assuming” it was gender-driven.
I asked whether he had ever felt like he wasn’t listened to because of his gender.
I think that opened the door a little.
It doesn’t matter whether or not it is discrimination, I said; what matters is whether it feels like it.
Ladies from my generation grew up on a good deal of strong messages: you can do this! they said. You can science and math and engineer just as well as any boy! Go out there and show them how awesome you are! You have to be confident in yourself and your answers, because you’re a lady, and your answers are worth just as much as any man’s.
You hear these things, and yeah, they’re positive messages, but then when you get in a meeting and your project leader listens to everyone else in that meeting but you, you start to wonder: am I just a bad presenter? Is it because I’m young? Because I’m new? Or is it because I’m female?
And I said to J: I guarantee that is NOT something you have EVER had to worry about, to think about, to concern yourself with. You've never given a presentation and had it ignored and wondered, hey, is it because I'm a guy?
Whether or not it IS because I’m female - that’s another issue entirely, yes. And one that shouldn’t be discarded. But that wasn’t my argument. My argument was that this is a prime example of where his male privilege was maybe blinding him from something he literally did not understand because he is a dude. He has never had to wonder whether someone is disregarding his words because of his gender.
The fact alone that I have to consider this is a big deal. Women of my generation, in engineering, got told that these things would happen, and to not let it stop us! Don’t let it faze you! Keep talking, they’ll come around eventually; you’re just as good as everyone else out there! But it was acknowledged to us, all over, by advisors and teachers and professors and parents and professionals you talked to like high-school students to (like D’s neighbor this morning), that it was out there.
J has never had to deal with that.
We both have to deal with people not listening to us for a myriad of reasons. But he has never had to think about whether someone is ignoring his advice, his data, his knowledge because he’s a girl. Because he’s not.
Well, J said, you’re filtering actions through a filter likely to pick up on this discrimination; that’s unfair. Um, I said: how else would you like me to filter it? The fact of the matter is that I have received a different set of messages than you have. Period. Because of gender. And my years of experience do not (yet, I am willing to concede) combat those messages. How else, then, would you like me to filter these things?
How often have you been told to watch out for sexual harassment or gender favoritism? How often have you been told to pay attention, that people may not take you seriously in the lab because of gender? Not as often as I. We get different messages and have different filters. I can no more filter through your view than you can through mine. I really just ask for acknowledgment that they’re different.
Well, he said, okay, maybe; but I don’t think women should get any kind of special treatment or privileges because of that. Um, I said: I don’t think I was asking for any special treatment. I asked for no special privileges. All I want is to be able to do this job that I love without ever having to think about whether or not my gender is standing in my way - because that’s what you have.
Here’s the thing. Most ladies of my generation got the same messages about being just as good as the guys. Some of us compensated by being louder - just making our answers heard, and feeling/sounding right whether or not we were, because we knew we’d be ignored. Some of us compensated by doing extra work - double-checking, to make sure that we were extra-right, because we knew we’d be doubted. Some of us compensated by just truckin’ on the same way we always would, deciding to spit in the face of that other stuff and do things our own way, because we knew it would be complicated. But you know what? We all compensated. We all adjusted. Something men don’t even have to think about.
In my experience, in my job, the majority - more than the majority; I will say most of the time, a passing-grade, even good-grade-level most of the time, I just happily do my job and don’t have to think about this shit. But then there’s that one time out of ten where something happens, and I start to think or wonder about people’s expectations, their perceptions, their opinions - and whether being a lady in a lab coat is fueling anything it shouldn’t.
In the end, it comes down to what it always comes down to. When you are discussing lady engineers in the workplace, whose opinion should be more important: the lady engineer in the workplace, or the man engineer? When you are asking whether or not it is still strange being a lady in a male-dominated field, who should be asked first: a lady, or a male? I can even make this a scientific analogy: if you want good GPC data, do you ask the person who actually runs the GPC, or the analytical manager who works in the same room with the GPC but doesn’t run it or really know how?
Not to say that my viewpoint = every woman's viewpoint, obviously.
J, I think, was finally made to understand - or at least think about! - the fact that maybe women know a little more about being women than men do.
Is it sad that I am excited about being able to consider this a success…?
(There are lots of Js and Ds where I work. This is not a dig on anyone specific. It's merely some musings coming out of a discussion.)