So a woman I know, we'll call her Jane, works an IT job in an environment similar to mine. Her two coworkers are male and her boss is male. While the workplace has plenty of women in it, there are maybe three women who do actual technology work. And two weeks ago she put in her notice, to find a job elsewhere.
Why? According to her, her coworkers have spent the past two years harrassing her. Instead of helping her and teaching her things when she makes a mistake, they go on a diatribe. Instead of supporting her, they throw her under the bus. For two years they've blamed her for every broken process, tried to make her do their work, and one even asked another techie (not the boss) for a copy of her resume to "prove" she'd been lying about having a technology degree.
I've heard stories like this before, on the internet. This is the first time I've heard it from someone I know. She told me that if this is the way this team treats women, she's going to recommend to her boss that they don't hire any women. My heart sank.
That comment just plays into the narrative that women shouldn't be hired for technology jobs. It's not a good narrative. It's not a narrative any person, especially women, should ever support for any reason, even if they're angry. The narrative should be, "If this is the way the team treats women, the men should be fired and the team should be comprised solely of women."
Women are generally better at handling details. We're better (most of the time) at communication. And we are trained our entire lives to solve problems before they become problems, before anyone notices that there are problems. This is exactly the kind of person needed in STEM industries. So instead of saying "why not," let's all say "absolutely yes."
Because saying anything else only gives power to the idea that women don't belong in technology.
6 Responses
I hate it when people are such idiots. With rare exception, all of the women whom I’ve worked with have been fantastic people and excellent technologists. And as a rule, all of us computer folk are pretty good people, but we still run in to conclaves of ritual idiocy. I just left one such site where a micromanaging moron ruined what seemed to be a pretty good environment, now, outside of the help desk, there’s only one (maybe two) IT people with more than 10 years experience. But I can say that one of them is a woman (the other is GIS), kind of amazing that she survived the idiot.
I hope your friend lands on her feet soon.
Seconded. Though I’ve never been a manager, I’m completing a class in supervision/management and it definitely sounds like this place could stand to get shaken by a lawsuit.
I hope she lands on her feet soon too. I know a bit about the workplace she’s in and it usually isn’t like the way she described it. Which tells me a few things. First, the specific team she was on probably needed a sit down, sooner rather than than later (which was a month or two ago and way too late). Second, she didn’t say, when I asked her, if she’d reported the behavior to HR.
I know for a fact that this business has an anonymous HR line for such things and they say in their company handbook that this sort of behavior isn’t tolerated. I’d be very surprised if she did report it and they didn’t take action.
Given the way that women tend to bury things, though (even me), and are encouraged to do so by a society and an educational system that constantly tells girls they aren’t good enough, I wonder if she just assumed reporting the behavior wouldn’t do any good or didn’t want to rock the boat, thinking she’d be blamed.
It is, and apparently she did. She told me that the HR person had to work at keeping on the professional mask near the end of the thing. But now she has promised that in the future if crap like this happens again, she will report it to HR first thing instead of waiting.
Thanks for the link. The gym’s response was horrible. The programming or the database behind it can certainly be changed.
Yep. Pretty much.