In my professional life, I work in the IT sector for a major bank. I have worked in IT for about a decade at this point and it has always felt like a good fit, in terms of culture. The IT world is a bit more laid back professionally, and there is a large emphasis placed on teamwork and group cohesion, as knowledge-sharing is imperative. As a woman, I rarely got the feeling that I was out of place or looked down upon for being in IT due to my gender (at least as far as my coworkers and management were concerned), and I didn’t spend much time thinking about my gender in relation to my job. Then one sunny day in 2015, a seemingly innocent interaction shook both my comfort and my confidence.
About midday, a male executive from another city pulled myself and all my female coworkers off the floor and into a large conference room, without explanation. There were only about 8 of us, and we realized quickly that our male coworkers were conspicuously absent. The executive then entered the room, and asked us why more women didn’t work in our department. He had, apparently, gotten a poor mark on a diversity scorecard, and wanted very much to set things straight. He asked what it was about technology that women don’t like. He asked us why we weren’t referring our female friends. He asked us if the men were making us feel uncomfortable with their “loose talk”, or if they smell bad. The eight of us were largely silent, which upset him, so he tasked us with creating a committee to determine why women weren’t applying so that it could be fixed. We were to meet every day for at least an hour until we could get him some clear steps forward. We were also to enroll in a “Women in IT” group, whose aim was to improve the IT skills of women and empower their professional development.
This executive’s mindset was a good example of benevolent sexism, which can be defined as attributing positive or desirable traits to one gender over another (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Sexism refers to any type of bias based on sex, but benevolent sexism specifically deals with positive-seeming biases. He believed that women were cleaner than men and less tolerant of curse words and racy conversational topics, and that these sensibilities could be why women wouldn’t want to work in our male-heavy department. Though it seems complimentary that this executive believed women to be more “pure” than the men they were surrounded with, his words were based on sexist stereotypes. Furthermore, since the women and the men on the floor used bawdy language in equal measure, the executive’s sexism had the added effect of shaming the women in the room for not being more “pure”, as though it made them less womanly to join in with their male coworker’s behavior. Although his intentions may have been good, the message the executive was sending us was decidedly harmful.
The eight of us in that room were not given the option of participating in this committee to determine why there weren’t more women in the department, but were told we had to do it. I felt that this was wrong, and was very angry while sitting at that table, but I didn’t speak up. I came to find out later that most of the women at the table were quite angry about this, but also felt that they should not speak up. I was a team lead at this point, and therefore of the eight women in the room I had the greatest authority. The women expected me to say something because of my position, but I felt that contradicting the executive in front of his subordinates would be unprofessional, which is why I remained silent. We all fell into the trap of the diffusion of responsibility, meaning that each of us felt that it was not our duty to address what was being said and done alone, thereby calling the brunt of his reaction down upon ourselves.
Furthermore, the eight of us in that room were also not given the opportunity of declining membership in the “Women in IT” group, which I found to be an even greater affront. My skills and the skills of my female coworkers were at least on-par with the skills of our male coworkers, so the idea that we needed to attend IT classes to get better at our jobs was insulting. Furthermore, these meetings are held every month at the same time, so if every women in our department left at the same time for a couple hours for one of these classes or meetings it would be very conspicuous. Going to these meetings caused me, and likely my other female coworkers, to feel stereotype threat, which is an anxiety that your behavior or performance will reinforce a stereotype about some aspect of yourself to others. By this executive telling the women in his department that they alone need more training, he was reinforcing to the males and to the females in the department that women need more help to be at the same level as men.
Now this stereotype threat could have had echoing consequences as well. Our jobs in this department required triaging and diagnosing technical issues, then choosing the right solution. Reminding women that a stereotype exists that says they are not as good at men at IT could cause their performance to tangibly decline. According to the NPR article “How Stereotypes Can Drive Women to Quit Science”, a study on stereotype threat by psychologist Claude Steele showed that when women were reminded that a stereotype existed saying that they were bad at math, they performed worse on an ensuing math test (Vedantam, 2012). These data have been generalized to many domains since they were gathered, and it seems likely that with further research this could include the field of IT.
To compound matters even further, all this time away from our desks for the “Women in IT” group as well as the meetings to determine how to get more women to join the department would have the added effect of adding more work to our male coworker’s plates. This added work would likely create resentment towards the women on the team, and create in-groups and out-groups along gender lines in the department where before, the in-group was all the workers on the floor and the outgroups were other departments, or teams in other locations (PSU WC, 2018). The men would feel like they were being unfairly loaded down with extra work, likely so that women could become “as good as them” at their jobs, and women would feel the sting of this resentment and may internalize negative concepts about their own skillsets.
If the executive had performed some research before he pulled us into that room, he may have discovered that the issue with women in technology is likely that women see very few women in the field and assume that they wouldn’t be good at it. Stereotype threat can hit almost immediately, and according to research, does. As Vedantam states in his NPR article, the best course to get women to join technology jobs is to get them to go into technology fields, which occurs before they ever hit our departmental floor (2012).
This initiative of the executives didn’t pan out very well, fortunately, and lost steam about two weeks after the initial meeting. Despite most of my fears about this situation never being realized, it still causes me very negative feelings when I think about it or discuss it, and I’m sure it has impacted how I present myself and the risks I am willing to take within my chosen field. While I certainly agree that a gender disparity within IT is an issue that deserves attention, it must be handled carefully so as to prevent further women from feeling discriminated against and staying away from the IT field.
References:
Pennsylvania State University, World Campus (2018). PSYCH 424: Lesson 6: Intergroup Relations/Diversity. Retrieved from CANVAS: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1924488/modules
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Vedantam, S. (2012, July 12). How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2012/07/12/156664337/stereotype-threat-why-women-quit-science-jobs
First I want to say that I am very sorry that this experience has happened to you. Discrimination of gender in the work force is a big issue in our society today. I also wrote my post about this issue. The fact that they made you create a group called “women in IT” angers me extremely. I could not imagine being in your shoes, and I give you major probs for keeping silent through that. This is a major issue, and although I think that their intentions meant well, these meetings and groups just may have made the gender discrimination worse. Women should not have to attend special groups or meetings from the men that have the same position at work. This again is discrimination against gender in a work place. Another on going issue between gender in a work place is wages. I have found that often times men and women can have the same position at a job, but the men will get paid more. This is unfair, and if each gender is qualified the same, and has what it takes to do the same job, their wages should not be different. I loved reading your post, and I am glad that someone else also addressed this major issue in our society.