I am a grad student at a large state university serving in a relatively unimportant but public role within our engineering department that requires me to send emails several times a week to all of the other students in the department.

I try to be nice to the other engineering students in accordance with the desire for a professional working relationship and  polite departmental culture.

Yet – I get emails from other engineering grad students who I scarcely know, that are aggressive and generally inappropriate for a professional environment and relationship. See below for an example of such an exchange. I don’t think this qualifies as harassment, but it is definitely annoying. And I am still not sure how to respond!

It all started last May, when my name was sent in a departmental wide email after I won an award. I ran into this guy in the hallway and was briefly introduced – he took the initiative to find my email and send me this message:

Ann,
Congrats on your award! That’s awesome. What are you going to do with your proceedings?
I’m going on a mission to the farmer’s market tomorrow morning and you should meet me there. It’s going to be fun.
And if you’re so inclined, I’m playing a graduation gig in the afternoon at a house party. Also should be fun. Let me know if you’re interested.
[name redacted]

Maybe if I had replied to this initial message the rest of this awkwardness could have been avoided. But I didn’t want to write anything back to this guy, that I didn’t even know, that was sending me emails telling me what I SHOULD do. I really hate people who tell me what to do, so this totally set me off. I did not reply to this message.

He continued about one month later in another email message:

You were at 100 points in dorkiness level for not responding to my email.
We’ll subtract 10 just because you listen to Nicki Minaj:)

This one also annoyed me to no end. And now, this guy who I don’t really know, who already sent me a stupid message telling me what to do, is now JUDGING me?! And assigning points? WTF. I asked a trusted friend for advice, and he said to send back a short simple message indicating that the effort was nice though misdirected. I replied:

Good effort, thanks for trying. Better luck next time!

To which he said:

What?! You don’t make sense!
Have lunch with me this week. I’m going to [place name]. Have you been there? It’s good.

I am confused, I guess about how to write about being a woman in engineering.  (hence no recent updates, among other things)

I have been looking at the Geek Feminism Wiki, specifically the timeline of public events in which women were categorically discriminated against or made uncomfortable. Sadly to say, none of them surprise me. But I wonder why they have to be public events to be reported? What I find terrifying – as well as statistically compelling – is not that events like this occur with high frequency on a public level, but how often and in what capacity they have happened in my one personal life. What’s so striking about discrimination is that it’s on all levels, occurring in an incredible variety as uniquely fitting for each situation. I wonder if starting a collection of personal stories might add another dimension to these stories of reporting incidents at conferences or advertising in journals. An excerpt from my experiences are below – please, I invite you to add yours to the story, anonymously or pseudonymously as you like – so that we can create a realistic cornucopia of the world as it really is, flawed as it is, and sufficiently detailed so that the subtle aspects of discrimination can actually be understood.

In looking back on quitting my job as a systems/project engineer at a mid-size consumer products company, I realize the exact moment of the first crystal of realization it was time to leave. In the midst of a product crisis, all engineers were on deck and emailing all day and night about potential solutions, crossing oceans to manufacturing and back. As the only systems engineer on the project I had naturally been included on all communications and was well prepared for a Thursday 8am to discuss.

At the meeting, software, electrical, quality teams gave updates and there were no surprises. When the mechanical team rose, and spoke, they referenced an entirely new design which had developed early the previous evening and had, over the course of the night, become a front-running candidate.

I had never heard of this design. The rest of the team (including marketing and an intern) nodded their heads knowingly. I grabbed the computer of the engineer seated to my right to double-check, pulling up his e-mail. I found, recently, an entire e-mail chain I had been left off of. It included extensive details as well as discussion among the entire team – including the intern!

It meant, again, that I had been excluded and left off of a critical distribution list. It seems like such a small detail, but in the midst of a crisis when communication is already shot to hell by lack of sleep and politics, being left off an ‘engineering’ e-mail is like death.

I knew the mechanical engineering manager didn’t give a shit about including me. I complained about this, to him, often. I would hear word of an interesting mechanical idea from an intern or my machinist friends, get it forwarded to me from one of them, and send it back to the manager with the request to include me the next time. I had complained so often that he had recently started yelling every time he sent an email out, “I’ll send this to Ann, its an important one.” This became particularly obnoxious as more and more inane forwards or strictly bureaucratic e-mails were also forwarded to me out of spite.

Yet it was all for show as crisis stress hit epidemic levels and higher level brain functions like being a teammate ceased. While some names, including the intern and marketing manager were added to the To: field, mine was left off entirely. E-mail is rather damming in this way as the trail of headers and forwards paints an interesting picture of who considered who, and when.

At one juncture, the program manager was added as well as the rest of the team – just excluding me. I had previously asked the program manager to invoke the use of project lists as email chains inevitably grew thermonuclear and twisted during a crisis. I reminded him frequently and created a general list just for this purpose, to avoid being left out!

At what point does it become personal, and you begin feeling excluded or left out? Is it the first time, the third, the fifth, the sixth in as many days, the tenth, the twentieth? Fingers AND toes? At some point – it’s too much.

I bubbled over, screamed, and threw a plastic assembly about 6″ long x 3″wide x2.5″tall directly at the table in front of the mechanical engineering manager. I remember my words exactly: “I’m on your fucking team.” I started crying, shamelessly, in front of everyone. I was so ragefully angry and fed-up and distraught. It was 8:30AM on a Thursday morning.

Later that day I already could laugh about it. I apologized, was glad there was no serious injury inflicted, and requested again that the team use distribution lists and make that much more of an effort to include me in conversation. Life continued, albeit after an awkward *family chat* with my project manager and the mechanical engineering manager I had hucked the part at, in which he told us we were both his rocks and needed to be strong to support the rest of the team.

Life continued, and I still worked. But the crystal that precipitated that day attracted more and more energy to it – began building, layer by layer.

I never got along the same way with the mechanical engineering manager. Our previous disdain gave way to outright hostility. He sent me e-mails when he saw me walk by or was reminded of my existence. He still forgot, a lot of the time. I signed a buddy up to check, each time he received a project-related e-mail of importance, that my name was also on the distribution list or to add me immediately. I probably should have done that in the first place – but I hadn’t realized how much I still needed someone to watch my back on my team.

I quit my job approximately 5 months later, thinking that engineering was not for me. I am glad that I returned, because it is who and what I am.

When I started working in industry as an engineer, I had a number of “Did that really just happen?” moments. Like you were thrown into an alternate dimension because things like that just shouldn’t happen in the real world of supposedly intelligent and reasonable people. Unfortunately, ridiculous, awkward, or infuriating things do happen. This was one of those moments.

Our company had a “professional development “course that all employees were required to attend. Pretty much everyone, including me, groaned at the thought of sitting in a room being talked at about something that only vaguely related to our jobs. However, I was reassured by higher-ups that the speaker was “highly recommended” and it wouldn’t just be any other boring training. I took this as a good sign and tried to be optimistic about the training.

The class I was in happened to be mostly engineers, and since I was one of the few female engineers, it was mostly guys. The one other female was our finance person and was only there for the morning session. The “highly recommended” speaker was a gangly middle-aged white guy and, initially, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Once the session got started, it was clear that this guy was energetic, loud, and obnoxious, in the rude and insulting kind of way.

Throughout the day, he kept making references to god and jesus, which I found completely inappropriate in a work setting, me being non-religious and all. He pushed his own strong opinions at every possible chance during his lectures, often going off on tangents about them. Every positive example he gave from his “many years of experience” were about men, but interesting how many of his negative examples of “people doing things wrong” were about women. I doubt this was purposeful, but it seemed like it was subconscious thing, not simply to be glossed over.

Even with all these signs of “this guy is a total douchebag” the “highly recommended” tag stuck with me and I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt. All these things he did and said just rubbed me the wrong way, but I kept thinking that it must just be me overreacting and that I would see why this guy is so great if I just kept listening. I kept trying to be attentive and find this great speaker quality, but to no avail.

Then, this happened: It was toward the end of the class and we were talking about reliability and the acceptable margin for error. Note that I was the youngest (at 23), newest (having only worked there about 6 months), and only woman in the room (the other woman had left after lunch). Since I started working I had been trying to do good work and make a positive impression as an engineer. I really wanted my colleagues to see me as a talented and hardworking engineer who happens to be female; I wanted to be known for my good work rather than just my gender. This “highly recommended” instructor decides he wants to use an example of how with some things any error is pretty much unacceptable, like, say in childbirth. He looks straight at me, makes a motion with his hands like he’s taking a metaphorical baby out of my metaphorical womb in front of the entire class of mostly older male engineers and says “Maelin, it’s a boy” and then pretends to drop it and says “Oops.”

Oh My Fucking God. Did that really just happen?! I was so shocked and embarrassed that I didn’t know what to do. I just kind of sat there and turned red, while people laughed uncomfortably. What in the world was this guy thinking? I’m young, unmarried, have no thought of children, trying hard not to call attention to my gender and this douchebag singles me out, creates this image of me giving birth in front of all my colleagues, and embarrasses me because I have a fucking uterus?! …Really?!

Thinking back, I should have flipped the table I was at, gotten in his face, told him off and left the room. Really, I should have. But I didn’t. I just sat there burning, angry, and confused, trying to figure out what just happened and what I should do. At the end of the class there was a feedback form and I probably could have told him face-to-face that I didn’t appreciate being used as an example like that because of my gender. But, I didn’t go off on the feedback from about what a douchebag this guy was and I didn’t talk to him after either. I was just too embarrassed and I even felt ashamed even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I wanted to pretend that whole thing didn’t even happen.

In my nativity, I wanted so much to believe in the good recommendation that I kept brushing off the clear signs that the instructor was actually not good (and in fact, terrible). It was easier to just tell myself that I was somehow wrong rather than believe that everyone else was wrong. But, when you’re coming from a different perspective, you will see things differently, and that’s ok. It’s tough being the minority opinion and even more difficult to speak up, but you shouldn’t try to hide it. A lot of times your gut feeling is right and if something keeps bugging you, it’s probably not you. Stick to your guns.

Addressing these kinds of problems is the harder part. What I should have done in this situation is in between all-out yelling at the guy on the spot and doing absolutely nothing. Confronting him in person probably would have been best, or writing candid, detailed feedback would have been maybe less effective but still good. A lot of times, it is best to call people out on something right after they do it, rather than waiting and bringing it up later. But it is also good to be calm and not angry when confronting people, so it is a bit of a balance. Confronting people about gender-related issues at work or school has been one of the hardest things for me to do and this is a skill that I’m still working on. But, I’ll be in engineering for a while (i.e. the rest of my life), so unless the gender ratio in engineering suddenly flips, I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it in time.

A former co-worker recently sent me this photo from 2007 of our team enjoying a Chinese dinner during a big trip to the factory to get everything rolling on the production line. Looking at this picture is confusing and fascinating – I see so much in it:

At a dinner party to celebrate a friend’s accomplishments, I met a retired mechanical engineer who had a wealth of experience in mining, on oil rigs, in designing mechanisms, and generally working in engineering.

I am not a NICE LADY engineer… instead I am a NASTY WOMAN engineer.. and I am totally okay with that, especially since it’s the good nasty, after all ;).

When I started working, I was stuck thinking that I had to be nice all the time – that people had to perceive me as SWEET and NICE for me to be able to fit in and assimilate in the workplace. Of course, that veneer of sweetness was short-lived as stress levels rose, responsibility increased, and fecal matter hit the fan in all the projects under my purview. My true nature surfaced: curt, short, and cut-the-bullshit-direct to enable me to deal efficiently with the never-ending shit storm… and I know that’s what I am remembered for, above all. The ability to get things done despite my low-level position and beyond what people expected from me. I couldn’t have done any of that – I could not have excelled at my job – had I still been preoccupied with being a “nice lady.”

Engineers are frequently not “nice” – why would they be? Instead, engineers are passionate – so passionate that meetings get dragged on endlessly to debate minute details that only engineers would actually care about… so passionate that design engineers frequently get over-invested in their design concepts and refuse to see the flaws…. so passionate that engineers set up mini-shops in their homes to do more engineering at home, as a hobby (what other professions do that?). I mean, if you had to choose just one attribute required for all engineers, wouldn’t you pick passion over niceness? Passion gets you through the long hours and serious lows, way past the stage of “nice.” Passion is what makes you stick to your guns and follow through with your good idea while you simultaneously bash someone else’s.* Sure, passion can bring conflict and resulting “nastiness” — but at least it’s from a genuine place. And if it does get remembered as nasty…rest assured that it’s way better this way than being a “nice lady.”

* intentional sarcasm… heh heh.

Shout-out to all those Wu-Tang lovers and haters out there… this song (C.R.E.A.M.) has been stuck in my head for the last week, maybe related to a slew of articles about $$$… cash… salaries…operating budgets… negotiations for women in technology.

Starting with this list from CNN/Careerbuilder of the 25 Best Paying Jobs for Women:

Computer software engineers
Women – Median weekly earnings: $1,351
Men – Median weekly earnings: $1,555
Women’s earnings as percent of men’s in same occupation: 86.9%

Computer and information systems managers
Women – Median weekly earnings: $1,260
Men – Median weekly earnings: $1,641
Women’s earnings as percent of men’s in same occupation: 76.8%

Computer and mathematical occupations
Women – Median weekly earnings: $1,088
Men – Median weekly earnings: $1,320
Women’s earnings as percent of men’s in same occupation: 82.4%

Computer scientists and systems analysts
Women – Median weekly earnings: $1,082
Men – Median weekly earnings: $1,240
Women’s earnings as percent of men’s in same occupation: 87.3%

Computer programmers
Women – Median weekly earnings: $1,003
Men – Median weekly earnings: $1,261
Women’s earnings as percent of men’s in same occupation: 79.5%

Architecture and engineering occupations
Women – Median weekly earnings: $1,001
Men – Median weekly earnings: $1,286
Women’s earnings as percent of men’s in same occupation: 77.8%

While I don’t entirely understand their categories (what’s the distinction between computers programmers, computer scientists, and computer software engineers? And all of the rest of engineering can just combined with architecture?) the numbers are still compelling. Yup, we’re still WAAYYY unequal in many categories, particularly “engineering.” But why?

Relevant to this discussion is this article in the Money section of the NYTimes, providing “A Toolkit for Women Seeking a Raise.” Indeed, as much as the pay discrepancies in engineering can be blamed on the legacy of the pay gap, the negotiation table where starting salaries are defined and annual raises are assigned is definitely one area where we can actually take tangible action and start to lessen the gap for ourselves.

A college professor of mine gave a memorable lecture in which he described the future of our young graduating class and what happens as you enter the workplace: Imagine two students, both bright, both smart, and both hired at Company Y. They are both given the same starting offer – $65k annually. Our Orange friend accepts the offer, thrilled to have a job out of college. Meanwhile, our Green friend does some research and chooses to push back. She points out all of the unique attributes that make her special and indispensable to the company.  She counters with a request for $70k and Company Y willingly agrees, happy to have someone of her skill.

Both Orange and Green work hard and both become top contributors at Company Y. As star performers, they are given a 5% raise each year. After 5 years, Green’s salary has increased to $85k annually while Orange is making $79k – the gap between their salaries has increased from $5k to $6k and over those 5 years, the Company Y has paid overall $28k more to Green than Orange. After 20 years, the gap just keeps widening and widening — Green is now making $177k annually and Orange is at $164k. While this is a difference of only $13k in their annual salaries, the cumulative earnings gap between Green and Orange has grown to a whopping $165k difference! Starting with a difference of only $5k – over twenty years it becomes a huge discrepancy in accumulated earnings.

After starting behind, Orange will never catch up to Green at Company Y since annual raises are always a percentage of the previous year’s salary. She can always leave to find a new company and get another chance to negotiate a salary – but her expectations will be colored by her previous salary and it’ll be hard to get up to that next level.

So — knowing all of this — I still barely negotiated my first salary. I still regret not pushing harder for, if not a higher take-home pay, at least a larger signing bonus or some kind of per-diem for my extended work overseas. After working at my previous Company X for a year or two, it was painfully obvious that I was a high performer whose work led to tangible profit and results for my company. I tried a few times, mostly unsuccessfully, to lobby for a raise. Each time I would be so worried about how to negotiate, what to say, that by the time I got in there I had mostly already defeated myself and was willing to accept any peanuts they threw in my direction to make myself feel better for my efforts. Oh, and the peanuts they did throw ;).

The NYtimes article recommends talking to male colleagues about their salaries to get a fuller picture of the salary landscape before starting negotiations. Definitely, definitely, a great idea. I would also recommend talking to male colleagues as a reality check for how much arrogance and self-importance you can bring to the table! My friend’s tip on how to negotiate – “don’t phrase it as a negotiation… its already been decided in your mind, and you’re right, and they just need to agree.” Another colleague frequently threatened to quit or transfer divisions if he didn’t get the assignments he wanted — and it worked, because his threats actually had teeth in the form of offers from other companies and internal departments. I should have done the same, so long ago, but never felt like it was worth my time to apply for a job I didn’t want just for the chance to lord it over my current employers. It still seems ridiculous, but these kinds of games do get results… and if you want results, you have to play the game.

One more related article in the Wall Street Journal this week asks “Why Are Women-Owned Firms Smaller than Men-Owned Ones?” Some interesting parallels to the wage gap/negotiation discussion, as many women may not set goals high enough for what they can achieve and may not have access to networks that would explain what they should be shooting for.  Overall though, these all seem like symptoms of the underlying problems and inequities that still exist in the professional world — and they’re also opportunities for us to start making change.

[WuTang Clan - "C.R.E.A.M." Video - cash, rules, everything, around, me (and us)]
[CNN/CareerBuilder.com - 25 Best Paying Jobs for Women]
[New York Times - A Toolkit for Women Seeking a Raise]
[Wall Street Journal - Why Are Women-Owned Firms Smaller than Men-Owned Ones?]

Happy Take Your Kid to Work Day! If I was at an engineering workplace today I would try to show kids the beauty and excitement inherent in engineering design: keep them out of the meetings, the arguments, the useless beating of dead horses… instead be proud and demonstrate the artifacts and tools that are part of the fun of being an engineer, show off the brainstorming and grandiose blue-sky ideas that can solve real-world problems, and introduce the kids to the engineers who are more than blue shirt and khaki uniformed Dilberts with pocket protectors and thick glasses.

Sorry things have been a bit quiet on the blog front lately. Many recent changes/excuses (for me, deciding on grad school/future life path, re-arranging all furniture and lifestyle to start a yoga studio out of my home, basketball playoffs, general spring distractions) but don’t worry, we’re still here, and still writing.

So much interesting news and data to ponder recently – some links for you:

1) Laura Fizpatrick’s article for Time Magazine, published Tuesday, April 20th – Equal Pay Day. Many of the articles written to describe the pay gap take a broad view – comparing all of womens salaries to all of men’s, with just a few adjusted statistics for unionized workers or certain specific industries. I would love SWE or some other organization (nonprofit research groups like Catalyst?) to do a specifically detailed investigation into the pay gap in engineering. Though statisticians may be uneasy as there’s never enough data points on the female end to balance the male numbers, wouldn’t it be great to know?

A similar article by the Numbers Guy in the Wall Street Journal includes a chart that has a category for “programmers”:

They’re at the top of the list! Female programmers make 92.7% of what men in a comparable position earn. Better, but still plenty of ground to make up. Do you think other types of engineers (civil, aerospace, mechanical, electrical, chemical, materials, petroleum, etc. etc..) would be same, above, or below?  I’ll start trolling around for the data..

2) Four Women in Space Sets Record on April 5, 2010 – Sweet milestone, but as this blog post at G is 4 Girl points out, maybe someday this won’t actually be such monumental news…

3) Smile, Boys! It Would Make the World So Much Prettier For Us Women! – Have you ever been told to smile at work by a male colleague? It has happened to me, too many times, and I would imagine many other young women engineers share this experience as many older colleagues, especially, don’t seem to understand how ridiculously inappropriate and annoying it is to be told to smile all the time. Thus Spake Zuska has a great dissection and explanation of this phenomenon at the link.

4) Upcoming Science and Math Activities in the Age of Obama – every day, I seem to hear about more and more celebrations for young people about science, math, and sometimes engineering.

Science Club For Girls has a big listing of Science & Math Activities mostly in Massachusetts and the Boston Area for the rest of April and May.

National Lab Day – the first ever will be celebrated on May 12, 2010. The website has a searchable database of projects around the US with the intention of matching students and teachers needing resources for their proposed projects with professional scientists and engineers. Check out what’s happening in your area!

USA Science & Engineering Festival – another first ever event sponsored by the Obama administration – October 10 to 24, 2010, the USA’s first national science festival! The focus is in the DC area but it looks like satellite celebrations are slowly springing up across the nation and beyond. Check out the contests for K-12 students as well as anyone — for instance, you could write a jingle for the USA Science and Engineering festival and win $500! Entry deadline is April 30th ;)

<–Orange Timberland Sneakers I purchased in 2005 in anticipation for my first ever real industry engineering job (summer internship), thinking I needed shoes that sent the message that I was tough and a valid presence in the machine shop while being simultaneously slightly hip, interesting, and youthful.

Now I’m a little embarrassed to admit I spent this much time thinking about my shoes on the first day of the job (full first day of the job outfit: mannish khakis, a mannish collared shirt, and a vaguely feminine necklace) – but it shows me how worried and nervous I was about fitting in the engineering world as a young uninitiated woman. I really believed these shoes would help, so I wore them tirelessly that summer until I realized a few things:

1) THEY ARE UGLY. And my feet looked gross in them. Weirdly lopsided yet unstable, pointy in weird places (what is up with those toes?!) and looked dirty as soon as I put them on.

2) I HATED WEARING THEM. Partially due to #1, but they became a symbol of me trying to dress/be someone I wasn’t due to the belief that I needed to change myself in order to be respected in engineering, that being myself wasn’t a sufficient condition to mandate respect within the organization and company culture. THAT IS SO MESSED UP that before I had even started working there, I had already convinced myself that I needed to be someone I wasn’t in order to fit in. What made me think that? How long did it take me to change?

3) I AM NOT A MAN and do not need to dress like one. During the first two months of that first summer internship, I have these vivid memories of commuting home after work and immediately stripping off all of the boring, drab, personality-less work clothes and changing into skirts, dresses, blouses while adding on earrings, hairbands, everything. As girly as I could get in the post-work hours! Reclaiming the personality that I could not express at work due to fear and confusion about what kind of image would be appropriate and optimally supportive of my developing engineering career. My roommate at the time, a male engineer in a similar first-ever internship experience, found my behavior a little hilarious and would frequently laugh at me as I emerged from my cocoon of mannish clothes every day after work to reflect my innate feminine nature. But I wasn’t alone! My other female engineering friends did it too! I remember another male friend remarking that the difference between male and female engineers was made clear in our post-work habits: women like myself got more dressed up after work to somehow compensate for the suppression of our inner selves during the workday whereas the men untucked their shirts, took off the collars, and generally cared less about their appearance to relax after work.

I donated the orange shoes away after that summer, I didn’t really want to look at them anymore and be reminded of my stupid thinking that these shoes could somehow be a magical talisman symbolizing my membership in the engineering brotherhood. It is hard to find a balance between wearing what you want and dressing appropriately for the workplace as a young female engineer! After that summer, I managed to stop wearing shoes that were downright ugly to the engineering workplace though the challenges of finding and expressing my identity as a female engineer certainly persisted.

I had another reality check a few years later when working in a Chinese toy factory as a manufacturing liaison to an American design company. In the factory, though I theoretically had freedom to wear whatever I wanted, I was reluctant to wear anything that would draw attention to myself. I stood out enough already as the only female engineer and the only Asian-American in the building – plus the few times I wore form-fitting jeans or even a V-neck I was on the receiving end of uncomfortable stares and gross looks from some of the male truck drivers and plastic handlers at the factory. So, I wore mostly company T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers just as my male colleagues did. That was fine and dandy for a few months until a close friend asked me, jokingly, “Well Ann, you’re basically a man anyway. When’s the last time you wore a skirt?”

Whoa. It had been months… many months… since I had put on anything but jeans. Work had been all-consuming and tiring, though I hadn’t realized to what extent it was completely taking over my life. I was shocked – I still thought of myself as feminine and somewhat fashion-conscious, yet it had been months since I had dressed in a way that expressed my femininity. How could I let that happen? Was that me letting being an engineer trump being a woman? Definitely a moment of self-reckoning and realizing – I am NOT okay with that! 

Anyway, the inner battle between the girly-girl and the tough engineer is ongoing and expressed in the clothes I choose to wear each day. There’s a greater balance now in finding a tough yet feminine edge, and while I’m not in love with my current “tough” machine shop shoes (see right) at least I don’t hate them, either.  At least, not yet…? They are not altogether different than the orange shoes – in fact, they look remarkably similar so I guess its primarily my reaction/interpretation of them that has changed.

I’d like to say that I’ve come a long way: Now, instead of racing home after work to change into clothes that make me feel like myself instead of a formed-in-the-mold engineer, I start the day with work-appropriate pieces that are feminine. I bring shoes and shirts with me, as needed, to change on the fly if I need to do some machining or working with dirty/greasy parts. At first I was self-conscious about the Mr. Rodgers wardrobe change at work, but after realizing how much happier it made me to not have to wear ugly shoes all day, it’s worth it!

Furthermore, on days when I know I will not be doing dirty work with heavy machinery and am meeting clients or presenting my ideas instead – it is a pleasure to choose shoes and clothes that are comfortable and reflective of my identity as both a woman and an engineer, simultaneously. And yeah…that’s progress, right? :)

“You’ve just got to have thick skin.” This is the “advice” I’ve heard from several males when I talk openly about the gender biases and discrimination in engineering. For a long time, I told myself, “Yeah, thick skin, just deal and get over it.” While I understand that the idea is “don’t let it get to you,” I absolutely detest this phrase. Thick skin implies passiveness. Just take it and try to brush it off. It implies helplessness. A mentality of “you can’t do anything to change things anyway, so don’t even try.” I refuse to have that mentality, especially towards something as important as my career in a field that I absolutely love. I refuse to go though life waiting hopelessly for things to magically get better. You have to stand up for the things that are important to you.

There is a certain finesse to choosing your battles, but just letting everything go and not speaking up for yourself gets you nowhere. Sometimes the points can be subtle. Other times, you have to be explicit and initiate that awkward conversation that no one really wants to have. Sometimes, standing your ground and making your point may change your relations with other people, but it has to be done. Relying on thick skin only prepares you for abuse; identifying and addressing the root of the problem is the best way to induce change.

The confusing part is that not all women in male-dominated fields share the same perspective on the best way to induce change and increase acceptance of women in engineering. Particularly, on the common problem of how to integrate women into an established all-male group. I had a female coworker who was unbelievably intelligent, confident, hardworking, and overall, just amazing. We were the only two women in a group at a large engineering-focused company. We were both new to the company/group and wanted to be “part of the group.”

At work, plans were made to go to a bar for a social hour. It turned out to be a sports bar where the waitresses wore skin-tight, low-cut referee shirts and spandex shorts as their uniform; I can’t even imagine what the interview for this job would be like, wtf. When we got there and I noticed how much the setting was clearly geared towards the straight male, I made a comment to my female coworker about it. Her response was to the point of “Yes, but this is what you have to do to be part of the group.” The group happens to be mostly male and this is the kind of place they hang out. Isn’t it better to go with the group even if it’s to a place that isn’t quite fitting to you, rather than completely boycott it and become disconnected? Can’t fight the boy’s club? Then join it! I understand and respect this perspective, but something just did not sit right with me. It seemed so gender slanted for a work-related event at a company that touted its “family friendliness.” I wrestled with it for a while, but didn’t really know what I could do about it.

The next time we had a social hour was at a normal restaurant, where the servers were properly dressed, and I was looking forward to a normal, enjoyable evening. The conversation got going and everything was pleasant. Then one of my coworkers, who had been in the company for a long time, started complaining about our current boss. He told us how under previous bosses at the company the group had gone out to titty bars and used company money to pick up the tab. When I heard this, I felt like someone had just punched me in the face. I started to question, would that have happened if there had been any women in the group? Were they really using company money, that I was now helping to earn, to go get off at some titty bar? Shouldn’t the company be buying the equivalent for women, trashy romance novels or vibrators or something?!

I was angry and conflicted, but I could not brush this one off. I couldn’t stay silent. In an extremely awkward conversation, I told my boss about the interaction. I didn’t give him all the details, just that this coworker talking about titty bars at a work-related dinner did not seem appropriate to me. Since I was still new to the group, I was not quite sure what my boss’s reaction would be. He was actually quite upset and told me he would talk to that coworker about it. I felt relieved that I had spoken up, but I also felt like a snitch. Now, my coworkers would see me as someone that they had to watch what they say around; like I had just lost my cool card or something. As much as this made interactions with that coworker slight awkward, I still knew that it was what I had to do. Part of me wishes I would have had the courage and confidence to tell him directly instead of going through my boss, but I addressed it the best way I knew that I could. In the end, this and a number of other work and living situation issues are what drove me away from that job, and honestly, I’m much happier for it.

If something is truly important to you, having thick skin will not prevent it from getting to you. Once it gets to you, pretending it doesn’t bother you only fuels the fire. And, ignoring it will just make you burn from the inside out (or explode spontaneously). It takes courage to challenge the status quo, but if things are going to change for women in engineering or in any situation, we have to continue to step up and take on that challenge.

I realize many of my posts have been somewhat… negative lately… in analyzing, remembering, and describing the current state of women in engineering. To balance it out, I thought I’d throw in a more uplifting type anecdote. So, this is the story of how I was taught by a male supervisor to stop making a fool of myself in the machine shop – and its all about leverage!

I worked in the college machine shop during the first couple of years of my engineering education. It was fun and engineeringly-cool, though I didn’t feel completely comfortable holding my own in any around the shop banter and definitely wasn’t one of the guys. Compounded by my own self-consciousness and lack of confidence in my abilities in the shop, there were a few tasks that I specifically dreaded because I didn’t know how to do them with my body.

For instance – have you ever used a milling machine? It was one of my favorite things in the shop, super viscerally satisfying, awesomely powerful yet requiring a delicate and careful touch (like all machining, really). Yet for all that I enjoyed using the milling machine to make parts, I dreaded working on it because there was one step of the break-down process I wasn’t strong enough to do…I thought.

To remove a collet that’s installed in a decent-sized mill, you have to loosen the hex drawbar nut that is at the very tip top of the machine (~70″ from the ground or higher) while simultaneously applying a brake to the spindle at the same height so that the nut you’re trying to loosen doesn’t just spin freely with the assembly. Suffice it to say, you have to do this:

At the end of each work or class session when it was time to pack and clean up, I would literally hang from the brake lever, swatting at the wrench attached to the drawbar, praying somehow to generate enough torque to loosen the damn nut. It usually took more than a few tries, the entire time me thinking “I hope no one’s watching, I hope no one’s watching, I look so weak and buffonish….”and furtively checking after each try to play it cool and make sure no one saw me flailing away at this wrench and brake above my head.

I was too proud to ask for help – none of the guys needed help! At that point, I was trying really hard to fit in and not call any extra attention to myself, plus I had a lot of misplaced pride and thought that doing stuff alone without help would make me me tougher and more “respectable”. I had seen my fellow student workers them do it and knew they could without any problems, so I assumed that I should be able to as well despite being a foot shorter and at least 50 pounds lighter then them.

Eventually, thankfully, my shop supervisor noticed my tarzan moves and taught me an amazing lesson in leverage. He brought over a stepstool, told me to stand on it and give that nut one more try now that my arms were in line with the center of my body instead of fully extended over my head. Simple, right? But SO effective. By pulling my arms into the same plane as my torso, I was able to use the strength of my entire chest, core, shoulders and arms (as opposed to just my arms) to hold the brake and loosen the nut. And it didn’t require him doing it for me – just handing me a tool to even out the mechanical advantage. He knew I was physically strong enough to do it, but just didn’t understand how to position myself in the situation.

I had never previously noticed that there were stepstools in the shop since I hadn’t ever seen anyone use them before. (And I was ashamed/scared/too stupid to look for one or think about using one?) But, come to think of it, they had mentioned something in the machining textbook about positioning yourself in the same plane with respect to the object of your work.

~~~  a brief side note and at home demo ~~~

In addition to being a female engineer, I am also a yoga instructor. As so much of yoga speaks to me biomechanically as proofs of leverage and force balances, this whole problem with the mill strikes me as also telling of how unconnected and ignorant of my own body I was back then.

One of the fundamental principles of yoga (and physics, statics, and dynamics as it turns out) is that hugging to the midline or bringing items in from the periphery makes you more stable and gives you more power. You can easily do a little experiment to verify this:

And its also an excellent illustration of forces, moment arms and torque! Remember that torque (τ) is the (cross) product of a force (F) and its moment arm (r). Let’s draw some free body diagrams to analyze further….

So  – to recap – my reasons for not knowing how to loosen the nut from the spindle were:

1) I was too lame to ask for help.
2) I didn’t know how to use my body to maximize my leverage and strength
3) I didn’t know how to apply the physics and math principles in my own body.

And, thankfully, the shop guy handed me a stepstool and told me to get on it. An elegant solution, to be sure, that taught me much more than just how to remove a collet from a mill. =)