One of our European readers sent me this email. She asked me
to preserve her anonymity, as she does not want her co-workers
knowing her remarks. But I think she perfectly captures the
difficulty of playing the game while at the same time trying to
make it better--a real no-win situation.
> > S L Forsburg (forsburg at nospamsalk.edu) wrote
> > Yes, I agree. However, you still have to be able to get into
> > the system and have them pay attention to you in order to effect
> > change. That means walking a terribly fine line between
> > improving things(and probably getting labelled as a troublemaker,
> > or, gasp, a feminist!) and playing the game by their rules so you
> > can stay in the system.....
> >.... the academic ivory
> > tower at any institution gets pretty lonely when there are almost
> > no women in it, and so few willing even to try.
>> Dear Susan, how right you are - but not only with respect to the
> academic ivory tower. Industry, at least in a male dominated field
> like mine, can be just as bad or worse. I say "can", because I know,
> and have experienced, that it doesn't have to be this bad. It all
> seems to depend on how comfortable people in your environment are
> with themselves, their jobs, their lives.
>> Well, let's explain it more clearly. I moved
> to a job in industrial research, and was and am very happy with it -
> interesting, and a very supportive environment (even though the
> percentage of women among the scientists here is something like 5 %).
> But since 4 weeks, I am living in two worlds - half of my time is
> spent "helping out" the development department to fill a temporary
> void they have because recruitment of new people is going slowly at
> present. There, I feel completely at loss as to how to behave to be
> taken seriously, but still get some cooperation from certain people.
> It is so hard and tiresome to walk this fine line between being too
> loud and opinionated (as compared to how they believe a woman should
> behave) and not crying out loud enough. I even wonder if the fact
> that I ended up with this assignment (and not a certain colleague of
> mine, who would have been accepted as competent far more easily than
> I am, because of his education and experience in certain fields) has
> something to do with my appearing so compromising and friendly to
> some people (even though I am far louder and more outspoken than this
> colleague). By the way, there are other women in the development
> department, who are essentially invisible - they just quietly do
> their work as they are told, even if that means doing certain things
> twice or more often because the men are unable to find a compromise
> among themselves on certain issues, and seem to have given up
> fighting - if they ever tried.
>> Looking at many events in the last few years, in the academic and
> industrial setting, it seems to me that you really cannot do things
> right - even in a setting where people are generally very quiet -
> behave as quietly as the guys, you are overlooked - be just a wee bit
> too loud, and you get labeled a bitch and troublemaker.
>> But aside from that, as I mentioned in passing above, the crucial
> factor to the atmosphere seems to be how comfortable people are with
> who they are and what they are. If they have the feeling they should
> be higher up on the ladder, that they are undeservedly staying where
> they are, any woman in a slightly better position is an insult and
> threat to them. And, since nearly everyone (but especially men) tends
> to think he deserves more than he's got, the problem is ubiquitous,
> at least in male dominated environments.
>> But still, we have to keep fighting, because what does it help if
> women are in the system, but have resigned and do not fight for a
> more _human_ environment? But I also understand very well how they
> stop fighting - I am already starting to get very tired of it.
> Anyway, from what I see right now I also see that maybe the most
> important place for women to be visible is in the universities, as
> professors, because that's where the "cultural" background of this
> dominating breed of engineers (in my case) is formed or at least
> cemented (since in many minds, it was there before they entered
> university). I keep on trying.....
--
-susan
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DON'T REPLY to the email address in header.
It's an anti-spam. Use the one below.
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S L Forsburg, PhD forsburg at salk.edu
Molecular Biology and Virology Lab
The Salk Institute, La Jolla CA
http://pingu.salk.edu/~forsburg/lab.html
Women in Biology Internet Launch Page
http://pingu.salk.edu/~forsburg/bio.html
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"These are my opinions. I don't have
time to speak for anyone else."
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