This Is Why I Act Like a Man

Recently I have seen a few blog posts about this article stating that women have a pretty tough time working in science and technology due to a “pervasive macho environment”. Ironically, this article was published in the “Fashion and Style” section of the New York Times, and that raised the ire of some more women. The article stated that 53% of the women surveyed said they have to “act like a man” in order to succeed and that 63% of women experience harassment on the job. Sadly, as a woman working in technology, I have to say that this really isn’t news. Here are some of my thoughts and experiences surrounding this issue.

I have to say that I am pretty used to “acting like a man”. When I entered the EECS program at UC Berkeley, my class was only 18% female and I remember that in one particular class there were only two girls. Consequently, all my friends and project partners ended up being guys. I think one thing that makes being a man easy for me is my name. You can’t really tell whether I am male or female from the name Xin (in Chinese it’s a name appropriate for a man or woman). It is funny to me when people assume that I am male from my resume, though. One time a recruiter called me and I answered, “yes, this is Xin”, and he actually said, “Oh, I’m pleasantly surprised that you are a woman”. I think my name makes people who read my resume and emails comfortable because they generally assume that I am another faceless immigrant man working in technology.

Another thing that helps me is that I am pretty immersed in the geek culture so I have common interests with the guys and I know how to communicate with them. For example, at my first company I met guys that watched the same SciFi shows as I did and played the same games. Then I made friends at work at the second company I worked for because I posted a list of games I liked. Suddenly some engineers that never spoke to me before started to talk to me. It has been my experience that most women are not as nerdy and dorky, though, so they tend to be outsiders in a majority of game loving and young hackers and alienation is never a nice feeling. For most of my school and career, men have treated me like one of the guys, and I am pretty sure that has spared me a lot of harassment. So once again, I think I am validating the original article’s point that you need to be like a man to be accepted in a man’s world.

Finally, another point in the article that I have thought about a lot is the attrition rate of women from science and engineering jobs. I wrote in a previous article that female engineers with children are somewhat disadvantaged because they are supposed to work the weird hours like everyone else, but their kids don’t allow them to, and as a result resentment brews. Just as the article pointed out, a lot of women drop out of science and technology between the ages of 35 to 40 because these women don’t have the luxury of a wife that takes care of the kids. This is actually one of the reasons why I want to make enough dough in seven years and quit working full time in the tech industry.

Right now I am actually in a pretty good company where approximately half of my team members are female engineers. The company seems to be really supportive of its employees in taking care of their personal issues.  When a teammate went through a personal tragedy everyone allowed her to have as much time as she needed to recover.  I find this quite rare and somewhat endearing. It gives me hope that perhaps I would stay a long time here and more companies will work on retaining their female talent with flexible schedules and moral support.

Share This

Related Posts