[TriLUG] The biggest deterrent for women in tech

[Brandon Van Every]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Linda Gardea <linda.gardea at gmail.com>wrote:

> When I was insistent, I noted this
> adviser seemed to lose interest in helping me - I thereafter only saw
> advisers as absolutely required by school guidelines.  I question whether
> this would have happened to a male.
>
>
You can certainly get a bad advisor when you're a male.  Coming in as a
freshman, I tried to take an Honors Electricity and Magnetism class that
was way over my head.  I thought because I had AP credit, I should be able
to do that.  My advisor didn't steer me towards something appropriate, he
didn't clue me into this class being *really* really hard.  He was like,
well yeah try it and see.  It was stupid advice, and nearly flunking out my
freshman 1st semester pretty much killed my would-be career in physics and
holography.  If I had taken the Honors Mechanics class, which I thought
would be redundant because I had that AP credit, I might have had a totally
different career.  It was probably at the level I actually needed to be at,
and you'd hope the advisor would be the one who knew about AP feedership
and course difficulties etc.  If you get a good advisor, that's great, but
I think a lot of us got disinterested or semi-interested advisors that were
really more interested in getting back to their own research.


> 2. When I resigned from a technical consulting position for another
> opportunity (2005), I had multiple VPs trying to coax me into staying (all
> male).  One, when talking to me, told me he was advising me as if he was my
> father.  Another offered to call my father, convinced that my father might
> join the conversation and help him change my mind.  I doubt these
> approaches would have been used for any of my male peers.


That's pretty darned obnoxious and very patronizing / patriarchical.
 "Father knows best."  Well, unless your father was Bill Gates or something
and you're not giving us the full context.


>
> 3. A fellow technical female, and friend, told me that she hated working
> for women (2007).  They are just too emotional she stated.  Then later she
> told me I was an exception.  Then later she told me that her current female
> boss was an exception.
>

Umm but what does this indicate though?  "That if women ruled the world,
we'd still have wars" ?  It's hard to see your friend as a pattern.
 Rather, she has a bias, rooted in her own personality makeup.  Maybe she's
extremely competitive with women and provokes them.


>
> I suspect that most females do not get the level of support that I had
> within my household.


Most people don't get that level of support no matter what profession they
pursue.  I at least had parents that didn't get in my way, and didn't try
to force me into any predetermined mold about what I was supposed to do.


> I think most women do not have social expectations
> encouraging them to go into technology.


That would seem to be the broad social pattern.  I guess it can only be
attacked piece by piece wherever it manifests.


> I also think that for those that
> do go into technology, there will continue to be social barriers.


Yeah, "Life's Hard," as they say.


> As women
> currently in technology, we just have to carry on and keep asking for more
> - otherwise expect to get the minimum.  Negotiation is an area where I
> strive to improve.  I have seen that women statistically negotiate better
> when representing a 3rd party compared to men.


Well yeah, because that already supposes they're professional negotiators.
 Being women, they probably have more communication skills on average and
are less likely to piss people off with their egos.  Not speaking so much
from experience with women negotiators, as knowing what my father is like.
 He was a corporate lawyer!  Also inclusiveness vs. independence is a well
documented gender difference on average.  Read that in a book titled, "You
just don't understand!"  Same author as "Men are from Mars, Women are from
Venus," I think.  Anyways, one of the typical communication schisms is a
man proves himself by doing things alone, whereas a woman usually wants to
be in the loop with whatever is going on.  "I bought a chainsaw today."
 "Why didn't you consult me?"  "I don't have to consult you."  "It's not
that I wanted to stop you from buying a chainsaw...."  "Then why are you
bugging me about this?"  I'm saying the gender pattern of more inclusive
communication, probably is good for being a negotiator.


>  Women should know this and
> try to leverage this strategy. I'm open to tips from you fellas too :).
>
>
If you're not a professional negotiator, that bit of selective observation
doesn't help you in the slightest.  Only you can be tough representing your
own interests.  I'm not sure what kind of deep programming makes a lot of
women think it's not ok to go after what they want, to say "me!" instead of
deferring to some other person or group's concerns.  Maybe it's an
amplified version of the same kind of social pressure that I think most of
us feel.  The pressure to be "fair" and not "hurt" people or be "greedy."
 Yet, if we spend enough time following the headlines of The Wall Street
Journal, we know that in this society it's a complete lie.  People who do
not stand up for themselves are steamrollered.   They are paid less and
ordered around, by people who are far more willing to hoard and control
resources and tell other people what to do.

Yes I have a B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology.  :-)


> If we want to see more women in technology, I think more people need to
> reset their expectations,


I'm political.  I don't believe in wishing for such things to just happen.
 How do we force people to change?  Or manipulate them into changing, at
the societal level?  Yes I have a B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology, which
in the earliest days of the discipline, was applied brainwashing of
indigenous peoples.  Eventually anthros did a complete flip and became
champions of those peoples, mostly.


> and ensure we are encouraging females with higher
> expectations.  Our expectations, more often than we comprehend, drive our
> behaviors.
>

Yeah.  If you have no model for success, imagining your success "from
scratch" is very taxing.  It's not impossible, but it consumes a lot more
mental energy when you just don't know if you're going to be safe, if your
expenditure of hundreds of hours of energy is nothing more than a complete
waste of time.  If you have few examples other people's life success, you
may not even know what's possible, let alone how to achieve it.


>
> I encourage any of you to take a stroll through toys-r-us.  Look at the
> "boy toys".  Look at the "girl toys".  You will see very quickly our
> society's expectations for females versus males manifested.
>

Preaching to the choir.  Did you know that the colors of baby clothing are
for programming adults?  The babies can't tell what gender they are by
looking at their own clothes, it's not for them.


Cheers,
Brandon