I recently read an article on MSNBC about a trending twitter
hashtag, #1reasonwhy and felt the strong need to write an entry about it. The
hashtag is a result of a Games Project Specialist at Kickstarter, Luke Crane,
tweeted the question “Why are there so few lady game creators?” I think Mr.
Crane posed a great question, but probably didn’t see what was going to result
of it.
Many female developers and gamers commented with the
trending #1reasonwhy outlining why women feel isolated within that industry,
from seemingly innocuous things such as people mistaking them for receptionists due
to their desk location, to more serious allegations of sexual harassment,
groping and pay discrimination. The outcry of discrimination seems crazy since
we are in 2012, where there are even laws about equality in place.
On the flip side, commenters such as Dillon Paradis (quoted
in the MSNBC article) posted "I look at #1ReasonWhy and I laugh at all the
feminists who think they matter. If you were good in your field, you wouldn't
be misrepresented." While I definitely understand where Mr. Paradis is
coming from, its definitely a fantasy in my reality. It would be great to think
that if you are a good employee, working hard, adding value to your
organization that you would be put in a position similar to a lot of these
female developers, but sadly that just isn’t the case in a lot of instances.
Gross generalizations that say it always or never happens should be discounted immediately!
I’ll give a real world example of just something that
screams inequality and really does illustrate that negative perceptions,
intentional or not, are still hindering many women in any career, but
specifically male-dominated ones. I have a friend who is obtaining her Masters
in Electrical Engineering this semester (kudos to her, because that is
definitely not my thing). She has been searching for a job, has had many
internships, research projects and has a good GPA, but so far has not found
one. Now, she isn’t the typical stereotype that you would think of for an
engineer, male or female. She is cute, blonde, involved on campus and was in a
sorority.
She tends to make it past the phone interview, but as soon
as she has an actual face-to-face interview, things begin to fall apart. Her
face-to-face interviews are always VERY technical in nature (the phone
interviews are as well) and she makes it a point to be very prepared to speak
in the technical terms and display her thorough understanding of the concepts
that she would be faced with on the job. She asked me (as the resident HR
friend) if that was normal, and in my experience, yes, however there is
typically a behavioral component in conjunction with the technical side. She
expressed that she has only ever been asked a few behavioral questions, which
sounded odd to me. She had a few male and female friends apply for the same
position and compared notes on what their interviews were like and was
astounded! All the females were drilled technically and all the males
experienced pure behavioral interviews. She even had one interviewer tell her
she should go into technical sales because she is “clean.” He went on to
clarify that she was well put together.
I really feel for this friend, as a I know that she is very
capable, but has to completely change her career path because people find her
as an adequate sales person based on the way she looks, but not an adequate
engineer. This really could be unintentional and purely based on a perception
of the interviewer (optimistic, but true). The HR in me has to say DON’T DO
THIS. Structure your interviews so that it never happens to overshadow people
that would be a great fit even if they don’t look the part!
Now, the ultimate question is what can you do about it? As
of now, this is the reality, good, bad or otherwise and women have to deal with
it. We can either be positive and progressive or we can fight tooth and nail
for it. My personal opinion is being positive and progressive will result in better things. All that I am in
control of is myself and my reaction to any injustice. With that being said, I
will continue to work hard to prove that I am a good hire/employee. I will also
seek out the places that don’t have these practices and add value to them so
that they continue to be successful. I will set the example for the women that
come after me. I will fight when I have to, but I will pick my battles. I won't give up and I will win out!
"... But we were all refined, good
girls from good families, and we realized somehow that we weren't going to
college just for ourselves, but for all the girls who would follow after us -
if we could just win out." -Bettie Locke
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