<p>A little bit of perspective here. Back in the late 70’s, I was the first female engineer ever hired at a company with about 50 engineers total. All the other females were secretaries (back before they were called “administrative assistants”). I didn’t fit in with either group. The women sat in the Ladies’ room polishing their nails, and the men went to the break room and talked sports. If I tried to talk to any of the guys about anything else, they acted like I was hitting on them. It was very awkward. I transferred to another branch of the company. The new branch was worse, there were nude centerfold photos posted next to the technicians’ work benches, and on the insides of the lab cabinets. Hustler magazines were left open on desks at lunchtime. One of the middle managers had a red Mustang convertable that he used to occasionaly use to drive one of the many secretaries to lunch. With the secretary sitting in his lap. Then suddenly in the news the word “sexual harrassment” began popping up when women began suing employers. Within 6 months the company had posted new employee rules barring such behavior. The centerfolds came down. But the sexist attitude remained, especially among the older men. Little by little as the older men retired, and more women were hired, the work conditions improved. Today, new female engineers don’t believe me when I tell them what it used to be like. Believe me, what you are experiencing now is nothing like what my generation put up with. Take the high road, politely ask the guys to take their conversation elsewhere if they are bothering you.</p>
<p>aibarr, you are far too young to feel that you are stuck. If the situation truly saps you to such a great degree, then you can find another place to work (either within that company or elsewhere). Heck, I am over 50 & recently back to work after a 20-year break … I live in an area with an extremely high unemployment rate & new jobs that pay less than $10/hour … and even I feel like I will be able to move beyond my present job in the near future. Keep your chin up, and NEVER feel you can’t control your own destiny!!</p>
<p>UCLA Band Mom’s experience is similar to mine. I worked in investments in the late '70s - mid '80s, and on the sell-side of that industry the guys often acted as if they were still in a frat house (or worse.) At our firm, for a long time I was the only woman who wasn’t a secretary. With only a couple of exceptions, the clerical staff dressed like they were going out to nightclubs and flirted with the men. One did snag a broker that way, but the other men made it clear there was a difference between who they’d have fun with and who they’d marry. I know that may sound awful to younger adults, but it was not an uncommon attitude back then. </p>
<p>I made a point to dress uber-conservatively (skirted version of an old banker’s suit) and was all-business at the office. For a while, I pretended to ignore the talk about the local topless bars and acted as if I didn’t get the crude jokes. It didn’t take long for the (very) few decent guys to shush the others if they were being vulgar when I entered a conference room. When some continued to pass around nudie magazine or discuss their latest exploits in my presence, I just smiled and asked the boys to save it for the locker room. </p>
<p>Eventually, the atmosphere improved considerably. It helped that I made more effort than my fellow analysts to really help the brokers. I also didn’t talk down to them or make rude jokes about them being like used car salesmen as did some of the others in research.
For the most part, we ended up with good working relationships. </p>
<p>There were still a few who’d come into my office with a question, then start a conversation with another guy there as if they were at the water cooler. I’d remind them that none of us would make that month’s bonus if <em>I</em> couldn’t get my work done and provide them with something to sell - so shoo! </p>
<p>My D has had a similar problem with a couple of managers at her company. Her solution has been to smile and say, “Hey boss, if you want that TPS report I need some quiet so I can focus.” The guys chuckle and move on. D also uses her ipod to help mask annoying noise in the cube farm, but doesn’t hesitate to speak up if it’s keeping her from meeting her own goals.</p>
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<p>Silpat, I used the same strategy as you. I ALWAYS dressed conservatively and acted professionally. Eventually the more decent men told the crude men to knock it off. </p>
<p>One of my current coworkers used a very different strategy during her earliest days on the job, in the early 70’s. She was working as a technician while still going to engineering school. All the other technicians were men, and they all had centerfolds posted over their work benches. Men from around the plant would also come up to her and ask her how much she “charged”. She complained to her roommates about it, and one of them went out and bought her a Playgirl magazine and told her to post the centerfold over her workbench. She did, and by the end of the next day, all the other men had taken their centerfolds down, and she was never again propositioned for “outside work.”</p>
<p>I had no idea engineering was such a sleazy profession. I’m sorry, but I equate “hanging centerfolds” with uneducated people, and I know that is somewhat class-insensitive, but still, there it is.</p>
<p>^^ When I started in engineering (electronics/computers) 35 years ago I don’t recall seeing what’s described above. I think what was tolerated varied with the particular company with everything getting more consistent (consistently better) now. I don’t think what’s described above was unique to ‘engineering’.</p>
<p>The entire work place was different 30 years ago. I remember stories about people getting drunk at lunch time. There were fist fights in the office and language and behavior towards women was intolerable.
While I worked for the government and we had some of this behavior I am repeating situations that my friends told me from their private employers? My friends on Wall Street behaved like they were on a Club Med vacation.</p>
<p>Oh, the stories I could tell about auto manufacturing plants 30 years ago … ;)</p>
<p>kelsmom- I plan to write a book- “your tax dollars at work” It will combine the style of the Office and Barney Miller. The first chapter will be about my boss who called me in and told me he was only in the job because while he invented the color television and the microwave oven but RCA stole his ideas. He then leaned back in the chair and flipped over his head hit the wall and the next thing I knew he was floundering around stuck between the desk and the wall.</p>
<p>^^ I think you have the first chapter/episode down!</p>
<p>I believe I would read that book!!</p>
<p>“Uneducated people??” I used to work with PhD scientists, mostly males. These scientists routinely “rated” our female secretaries and technicians as these women walked down the hall, by holding up “cards” based on the 6.0-scale used to rate Olympic skaters.</p>
<p>They weren’t rating wardrobes, either.</p>
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<p>Admittedly, I don’t know the woman, and she may be an obnoxious twit, but what exactly would you have had her do…? Walk up to you all and say, “Gentlemen, we need to discuss your hand-eye-trousersnake coordination”…? Write a passive-aggressive little poem on the wall, “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie”? I’d have gone to management and have been like, “You’re a manager. I’m told you manage things. Can you manage to get them to clean the bathrooms more than once a month?” I think the problem’s with your management team missing the point, not with the woman complaining that she has to dip her pants in her coworkers’ urine multiple times a day… but maybe I’m just oversensitive about my dry cleaning bills. ;)</p>
<p>(^^And normally, this is how I deal with these kinds of situations.)</p>
<p>I went to a girls’ school for thirteen years, so heaven knows that I know what it’s like to be in an all-female environment-- it’s certainly no picnic. When I go back and talk to the current students as an alumna about my job, I describe the good side of what it’s like working with guys, too… There’s no keeping track of who’s mad at who, there’s no cattiness, there’s no pettiness, there’s no avoiding someone because one of your friends is ticked off at them for something silly… I tell the girls that if you have a problem with one of the guys, you yell at them, they yell at you, and then it’s done and you all go have a beer. The girls melt-- what a spectacular drama-free heaven I must live in!</p>
<p>On the other hand, my senior year, they shipped three of us young women off to the local boys’ school for our science courses (because girls can’t do calculus-based physics, don’t-ya-know), where we would dive headfirst daily into the cauldron of testosterone-stewed adolescent males who had been happily simmering in their own boys-will-be-boys nest for twelve years. So, we’d dart across campus to the science building from our bus every day, wearing our requisite Catholic school girl uniforms. We’d occasionally get separated and cornered by the guys. “Do you like anal sex?” two of them asked one of us once, cornering her in a stairwell. She pushed her way past them. “I don’t know what those girls are doing in this class, anyway,” another said in class before we got there, “they’re just going to be housewives someday.” We kept a communal sexual harassment log in a spiral notebook and took it in to the disciplinarian towards the end of the year. His response in our formal meeting with him was, “Why on earth didn’t you drop the class?” and our complaints were never addressed.</p>
<p>I keep telling myself that I’m thankful for my breadth of perspective.</p>
<p>Certainly, what I’m experiencing now isn’t NEARLY to the degree of what we experienced then, but I do know what it’s like, and even today, there still exist some incredibly hostile environments for women. It bothers me that a common response is that I should be glad that it’s not worse, like it was back then, since I know that “back then” is still around in some places.</p>
<p>It bothers me more, though, that I can be a successful engineer and ignore all the jerks in the business, OR I can work in a place where my gender isn’t a consistent undercurrent that works against my professional progress.</p>
<p>And I know there are places where this is the exception, and not the rule. This is my second job since I graduated. I left the first job because it was the same sort of subtly-hostile environment, and I held out as long as I could-- but when we hit 40% attrition, all the other engineers under the age of 30 had quit, and the only two females standing were me and the secretary, I knew it was time to hit the trail. I started the second round with five job offers, and I carefully chose this firm because it was a “best place to work” for three years running. The department director is a stupendous and inspiring person whose wife is also a professional, and who carefully selects his employees based upon building a team environment. It was a pressure cooker, but the people were genuinely respectful of one another. Then economic upheaval hit the construction industry, the director was told to lay off me and another young woman during one of the multiple rounds of layoffs we’ve had, and instead, he knocked on doors until he managed to convince the department manager of my current department that we were two people worth saving. I have a job, thank God, I still have my same salary and benefits, and with my husband being unemployed, it’s a blessing beyond belief. But now I find myself back in the same situation that I was in with my first job. Despite my careful selection of a positive work environment, it feels like I’m back in the same hole I’d just managed to climb out of. Major arrrgh.</p>
<p>I’ll continue to keep a copy of the serenity prayer in my desk drawer. There’s some hope that my old boss can transfer me back soon, but since they just lost $2M from their backlog with another project going on hold, the prospects of that happening soon are kind of slim.</p>
<p>I’m frustrated, but I need to not be defeated… I’m contemplating taking Thursday and Friday as mental health days. Heaven knows this is what they’re for. I’ll do some relaxation, meditation, studying… Go for a run, spend some time with the cats, take a bath, work in the garden. Hopefully I’ll bank up enough zen that I can shake myself out of this funk of frustration and not be so bogged down by ‘bein’ such a girl,’ to use the parlance of the situation.</p>
<p>Just keep swimming…</p>
<p>What do we do we swim, swim, swim… </p>
<p>Aibarr, you should be proud of yourself that you are encouraging young women into engineering. Someday engineering will be as integrated as all those other industries that are now less testosterone fueled (and a damned sight more efficient, I bet!) now that they have more women in them. You need to be honest with women about the downside of working in a heavily male environment, but also about the cool projects and exciting work. I think you deserve kudos for helping move your company forward, even if it feels like baby steps. You are doing more good than you give yourself credit for, I suspect.</p>
<p>I sure hope so, intparent. Thanks for the words of encouragement.</p>
<p>tom1944-
Don’t you wish there were camera phones back in those days? A pic of that bozo floundering stuck behind his desk would have been priceless on all the bulletin boards, or over the urinals.</p>
<p>aibarr-- hang in there. I totally agree-- get your PE and then start looking for options. Surely there are lots in Houston, even in this lousy economy. I’ve followed your posts and your vents in the “say it here” thread, and it sounds like they really treat you like dirt there. Is it because you are the junior person, because you are female, or both?</p>
<p>lololu- post# 72-- priceless :D</p>
<p>and tom1944–
If that ex-boss claims that RC stole the design for the 45 RPM record-- blow the BS whistle on that one. My H’s uncle was on the design team in about 1949-- at RCA.</p>
<p>This thread has expanded to a point where we all can see now, if we step back, how things some said innocently could be offensive to overly-sensitive people. Or possibly that less-than-sensitive people may unknowingly say something offensive.
Examples: Those who enjoy seeing the beauty of the female figure are low-class. I would agree tho, that it should be done in private.
Women fresh out of college are “girls”
What if I am offended by a nude or nearly nude pic of a male model?
Men know when they are urinating on the floor, but choose to ignore it.
Even the broader- men urinate on the floor- comment could be too much info for some to be comfortable with.
What if I feel discussing a man’s urination is as offensive as discussing the wardrobe of a female reporter in a men’s locker room?
We’ve heard a man’s ability to see diminishes as he ages- should we believe a woman’s eyesight improves? That post hinted it only affected men.</p>
<p>Now to me, each of these are silly little statements picked from the last few pages of posts here. But someone too sensitive to those words or ideas expressed here might feel uncomfortable. Someone who feels slighted by a comment might be incomfortable. My point in this post is to show while there can be blatant examples of inappropriate talk, it can be difficult to judge someone else’s sensitivity when the talk is more subtle.</p>
<p>Aibarr, “even today” is such an interesting sentiment to me. Because we are still IN the transition. There is no “even today.” Young women look down their noses at the “women’s liberation movement.” As if we are even close to done. This struggle has been going on since ancient times, like when the mother based druid religion was overtaken by Rome in England. Sure, watch Avalon again on Netflix. This is a very ancient and ongoing “discussion” between the sexes. It is not something that will be fixed in one generation.</p>
<p>Oh yeah and it was just 20 years ago when my BIL went on business to Japan and they were offered women as a matter of courtesy. Not to mention other countries and cultures today. /cough middle east afghanistan /cough</p>
<p>Aibarr, not to start a geography dispute, but it sounds like you live in a part of the country where swagger is um, valued. There are boorish men everywhere, but some of it may be the culture of the state you live in as well. Just saying percentage wise, as you will find some of it everywhere.</p>
<p>The education level of the males has nothing to do with anything.</p>