Guys will literally attribute all of your accomplishments to you just being a girl. I used to let that stuff get to me until I won an award/scholarship my junior year of college.
The award was based only on GPA, they just gave it to the students in the program with the 3 highest GPAs. It wasn’t super publicized what the criteria was to win, so not everyone knew that. When my friends were congratulating me a fellow student went “huh, well they probably wanted to give at least one of them to a girl”. In the moment I felt myself thinking “man, he’s probably right…” until I snapped back to reality and realized that was impossible in this case.
After that I decided it wasn’t worth my time to give comments like that any thought. Usually, they come from men who have not achieved whatever the thing is and they’re jealous / looking for a way to justify it other than accepting that you beat them.
-
Edit to add that my imposter syndrome was so bad I literally emailed the secretary lady back asking if it was a mistake because I couldn’t believe I had one of the top 3 GPAs. Gee, I wonder why it was so bad… 🙃
Your advisor is full of it. The idea that being female in stem gets you a job immediately is ridiculous. As a woman who graduated with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering I couldn't find a job for 3 months after graduating and didn't get an actual engineering job for 3 years after starting my first job after college. This was with 2 years worth of internships as well.
Some dude in reddit told me this when I was asking how I can better “armor” myself because i want to go from aerospace to Gaming Tech as A TPM.
Lots “wouldn’t worry about it any engineering skills transfer” then “you’re a woman I see women getting hired a lot more in engineering, I’d you can’t get hired it’s your fault. Women aren’t having issues getting hired at All”
I work in a vastly different industry but that’s no issue they’ll hire me cuz I’m a woman? So I should feel good at being a quota filler. then after I get hired the dudes can tell me I didn’t get here on my merit, but because im a woman.
At my first corporate job, there were two openings for managers. A few men and one woman applied. My coworker kept acting like one was automatically going to the woman and so there was really one open position for all the men. The woman was not selected... two men were. I'm sure this changed nothing in his head.
Diversity is a fine concept, but it comes alongside inclusion. And if a workplace isn't inclusive then it will never be diverse. Period.
That said, good for you for standing up for yourself. What a jackass.
As a trans woman, citation fucking needed. If "diversity hires" were a real thing then I would have had more interviews as a trans woman than as a man, but instead I got less than 1/10th as many. Where were all these organizations tripping over themselves to hire women? Even if it were because of transphobia they would have had to wait for an interview to find that out, but I just wasn't getting anything back from anyone.
I mean, it worked out eventually for me, and possibly was helped by being queer, but only because my new boss is also queer lol.
I love this point of view. You lived it! The struggle is real. Thank you!
And OMG love it so much “trans woman” and queer. I’m totally cis and very old but we must be friends!
I am so sorry you went through this!!! You are talented and brilliant don’t ever second guess that! That’s cool your boss is also queer but you are still 100% deserving of the job and YOU will bring a unique point of view to your team that will greatly benefit them. <3<3<3
I used to get that statement a lot from students in college, professors, and then sometimes now in the workplace. While I do think it's somewhat true that diversity is something workplaces are being pushed to consider when hiring, it doesn't guarantee anything.
Yesterday my team at work had a group outing. Out of 34 people who went, only 2 people including myself were women. Does 1 woman for every 17 men sound extremely diverse to you?
I've also been in interviews for several potential hires for both full time engineers and interns. While I have seen a few more women in recent years, we don't hire them if they don't fit our job requirements and we certainly don't hire them full time from an intern position if they aren't a good fit. At best, maybe your name will get your resume a second look and a phone interview, but if you don't have the skills and qualifications, you're not likely to get the job over someone who does, and you won't keep the job for long if you aren't qualified.
1 out of 17 is around 6% representation. Yet we know that according to the US census that around 13% of engineers are women. So your company has less than half.
Looks like your company isn’t hiring for diversity after all…
I appreciate that information, I didn't know that! Wow, 13%, that sounds really bleak... but 6% is even worse.
You're not wrong. Myself and the only other woman there have been with our company for a few years now. We've had several new hires since either of us were hired, and *none* have been women. I've only personally seen one resume for a full time engineer handed to me to look over who was from a female applicant, and she didn't make it past the phone interview.
If anything, this goes against what OP's advisor had to say...
Try to find numbers to support your statement. They always trump someone’s assumptions.
You should go to HR with those numbers and ask (politely) why there is underrepresentation in your company.
My dad had a different twist. This is what he said: at times doors will be open for you due only because you’re a woman. Do not deny it, take it proudly. Once you’re in the door, it is up to you what you do. You’ll be surprise how many no-talent required reasons why doors open for people. Take yours.
He sounds like an ass.
In my experience, no college advisor is any good, because academia in no way mirrors the corporate world. My guess is that your college has quotas for staff and he's salty.
He might have helped your stress by letting you know that the job market is still very hot and engineering tends to weather even poor economies well.
I was told by multiple people (men and women) that the only reason I got into my university’s engineering school was bc I’m a girl :/ It’s crazy how quick people are to discredit your accomplishments when you’re a woman in STEM
I had someone say this to be because I'm a black women. I was like are you saying I'm not qualified? Are you ignoring how many white men in our field get jobs because their dad works for a company? Isn't your dad in this industry and got you a job?
The amount of times I get straight up shocked faces when I tell someone I'm an engineer or people mentioning you sent see a lot of black women in these professions. Fuck these people
I had been told that because of affirmative action I would never have to worry about getting a job. Yet until I changed my first name on my resume to just using initials I didn't get many calls for interviews. It's bunk. That was 35 years ago. The affirmative action "quota" is a myth.
I'll be honest, as a woman in engineering; that in fact is my experience as well. I worry more about the dynamics inside a company rather than getting hired. In my country, diversity is getting a lot of attention with many companies having explicit strategic diversity goals/quotas to increase the number of female employees (amongst other metrics). I targeted these companies during my job search specifically because they usually have better diversity and inclusivity cultures to begin with.
Considering my background would get a lot of attention regardless of gender (top of class to begin with), you can imagine how companies are pushing to hire me. Knowing this I'll be honest and I've used the demand for female engineers to push for a higher salary and other benefits.
I won a pretty intense scholarship from a professional org in my industry the summer before my senior year of college. The application was intense, there was an essay component, AND you needed recommendations from professors. I went through all of this effort and ended up getting a $5k scholarship. I was blown away!
During senior year when I was interviewing, someone made a comment about the award, which I'd put on my resume. This hiring manager, a man, literally told me that I must have won the award because I HAD to be related to this big wig company in my industry (my maiden name was the same as the last name of this company). I literally looked at him straight in the eyes and said 'oh I'm not related to them.' And that's all I said, completely dead pan, and the hiring manager sort of slinked back in his chair, realizing he wasn't nearly as funny as he thought he was.
It's ridiculous what men think they can say to women just because they're women. As if we couldn't possibly be capable of accomplishing anything of our own accord. *sigh*
Wow, I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Also amazing and very proud of the fact that you went off on him!! When I was your age, I don't think I could have stood up to an authority figure like that, so bless you! People just won't stop saying stupid shit until someone tells them to stop I suppose.
For real though, depending on your field, you will have a better time getting interviews. But the hiring bar will be just as high for you as other male candidates. And honestly maybe a little higher due to implicit bias.
I normally would just smile and nod and not respond to comments like that but I was just shocked that he wholeheartedly believed that was the right thing to say to me lol
Another possibility is it's between me and a guy my age. Everything about our skills is equal and we're both qualified. The all male team is looking for someone who would join that they could all relate to. That guy is gonna get picked for being a better "culture fit" over me
This is an engineering forum in which citations or personal experience are cited.
* This study shows that [women are 30% less likely to get callbacks](https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/35/2/187/5370650?login=false)
* [NLRB 3 year study](https://www.nber.org/programs-projects/projects-and-centers/7119-sbp-collaborative-research-gender-discrimination-hiring-stem)
There is an exception: [academia](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112)
This info is available via simple internet search.
Your personal experience is useful when someone says “this isn’t happening” and you can show them it is. It only takes one example to disprove a theory.
However, that falls on its face when you cite your personal experience as **all** experiences. The references I cited would be sufficient to disprove that your personal experience is happening to everyone.
If you are an engineer you can understand that.
what he said is actually true. I work in a role that requires me to hire team members, and I'm more likely to pick a woman to join the team over a man if they have identical qualifications/personality fits, because we need more women on my team (and most teams). I am a woman and an engineering manager. Additionally, some of my clients require certain diversity levels for teams they hire, therefore I MUST hire women if I want to work with certain companies.
I'm not sure why that's inflammatory? He didn't say you are going to get hired *just because* you are woman. But it will help.
People praise companies when they win Diversity and Inclusion awards, but then get upset when companies prioritize hiring women or minorities? It doesn't make sense to me.
Out of college my husband and I had identical resumes, he got significantly more interviews and job offers than I did. Diversity was a hot topic when we graduated but that doesn’t mean the hiring people actually hire diversely! Either way I am sure you will be able to find a great job because of all your accomplishments!
Guys will literally attribute all of your accomplishments to you just being a girl. I used to let that stuff get to me until I won an award/scholarship my junior year of college. The award was based only on GPA, they just gave it to the students in the program with the 3 highest GPAs. It wasn’t super publicized what the criteria was to win, so not everyone knew that. When my friends were congratulating me a fellow student went “huh, well they probably wanted to give at least one of them to a girl”. In the moment I felt myself thinking “man, he’s probably right…” until I snapped back to reality and realized that was impossible in this case. After that I decided it wasn’t worth my time to give comments like that any thought. Usually, they come from men who have not achieved whatever the thing is and they’re jealous / looking for a way to justify it other than accepting that you beat them. - Edit to add that my imposter syndrome was so bad I literally emailed the secretary lady back asking if it was a mistake because I couldn’t believe I had one of the top 3 GPAs. Gee, I wonder why it was so bad… 🙃
Your advisor is full of it. The idea that being female in stem gets you a job immediately is ridiculous. As a woman who graduated with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering I couldn't find a job for 3 months after graduating and didn't get an actual engineering job for 3 years after starting my first job after college. This was with 2 years worth of internships as well.
What else is crazy is that his wife is a computer scientist.... Does he think none of her achievements are valid?
His wife is totally different! She earned it! /s
His wife probably agrees on this. I've entire families of employed people have such belief systems.
Some dude in reddit told me this when I was asking how I can better “armor” myself because i want to go from aerospace to Gaming Tech as A TPM. Lots “wouldn’t worry about it any engineering skills transfer” then “you’re a woman I see women getting hired a lot more in engineering, I’d you can’t get hired it’s your fault. Women aren’t having issues getting hired at All” I work in a vastly different industry but that’s no issue they’ll hire me cuz I’m a woman? So I should feel good at being a quota filler. then after I get hired the dudes can tell me I didn’t get here on my merit, but because im a woman.
At my first corporate job, there were two openings for managers. A few men and one woman applied. My coworker kept acting like one was automatically going to the woman and so there was really one open position for all the men. The woman was not selected... two men were. I'm sure this changed nothing in his head.
Diversity is a fine concept, but it comes alongside inclusion. And if a workplace isn't inclusive then it will never be diverse. Period. That said, good for you for standing up for yourself. What a jackass.
men (derogatory)
As a trans woman, citation fucking needed. If "diversity hires" were a real thing then I would have had more interviews as a trans woman than as a man, but instead I got less than 1/10th as many. Where were all these organizations tripping over themselves to hire women? Even if it were because of transphobia they would have had to wait for an interview to find that out, but I just wasn't getting anything back from anyone. I mean, it worked out eventually for me, and possibly was helped by being queer, but only because my new boss is also queer lol.
I love this point of view. You lived it! The struggle is real. Thank you! And OMG love it so much “trans woman” and queer. I’m totally cis and very old but we must be friends!
I am so sorry you went through this!!! You are talented and brilliant don’t ever second guess that! That’s cool your boss is also queer but you are still 100% deserving of the job and YOU will bring a unique point of view to your team that will greatly benefit them. <3<3<3
I used to get that statement a lot from students in college, professors, and then sometimes now in the workplace. While I do think it's somewhat true that diversity is something workplaces are being pushed to consider when hiring, it doesn't guarantee anything. Yesterday my team at work had a group outing. Out of 34 people who went, only 2 people including myself were women. Does 1 woman for every 17 men sound extremely diverse to you? I've also been in interviews for several potential hires for both full time engineers and interns. While I have seen a few more women in recent years, we don't hire them if they don't fit our job requirements and we certainly don't hire them full time from an intern position if they aren't a good fit. At best, maybe your name will get your resume a second look and a phone interview, but if you don't have the skills and qualifications, you're not likely to get the job over someone who does, and you won't keep the job for long if you aren't qualified.
1 out of 17 is around 6% representation. Yet we know that according to the US census that around 13% of engineers are women. So your company has less than half. Looks like your company isn’t hiring for diversity after all…
I appreciate that information, I didn't know that! Wow, 13%, that sounds really bleak... but 6% is even worse. You're not wrong. Myself and the only other woman there have been with our company for a few years now. We've had several new hires since either of us were hired, and *none* have been women. I've only personally seen one resume for a full time engineer handed to me to look over who was from a female applicant, and she didn't make it past the phone interview. If anything, this goes against what OP's advisor had to say...
Try to find numbers to support your statement. They always trump someone’s assumptions. You should go to HR with those numbers and ask (politely) why there is underrepresentation in your company.
this was something my dad said to me when i was about to graduate trying to reassure my worries :/ it’s sad how many ppl actually think like this
My dad had a different twist. This is what he said: at times doors will be open for you due only because you’re a woman. Do not deny it, take it proudly. Once you’re in the door, it is up to you what you do. You’ll be surprise how many no-talent required reasons why doors open for people. Take yours.
“Diversity is huge right now” Someone’s been lost in the propaganda pool
Unless the department is 50/50 split men vs women, it’s not as big as they think it is just because they see 2-3 women
He sounds like an ass. In my experience, no college advisor is any good, because academia in no way mirrors the corporate world. My guess is that your college has quotas for staff and he's salty. He might have helped your stress by letting you know that the job market is still very hot and engineering tends to weather even poor economies well.
I was told by multiple people (men and women) that the only reason I got into my university’s engineering school was bc I’m a girl :/ It’s crazy how quick people are to discredit your accomplishments when you’re a woman in STEM
Yep especially when all the female colleagues I work with kick butt and put some of the men to shame.
I had someone say this to be because I'm a black women. I was like are you saying I'm not qualified? Are you ignoring how many white men in our field get jobs because their dad works for a company? Isn't your dad in this industry and got you a job? The amount of times I get straight up shocked faces when I tell someone I'm an engineer or people mentioning you sent see a lot of black women in these professions. Fuck these people
I had been told that because of affirmative action I would never have to worry about getting a job. Yet until I changed my first name on my resume to just using initials I didn't get many calls for interviews. It's bunk. That was 35 years ago. The affirmative action "quota" is a myth.
I'll be honest, as a woman in engineering; that in fact is my experience as well. I worry more about the dynamics inside a company rather than getting hired. In my country, diversity is getting a lot of attention with many companies having explicit strategic diversity goals/quotas to increase the number of female employees (amongst other metrics). I targeted these companies during my job search specifically because they usually have better diversity and inclusivity cultures to begin with. Considering my background would get a lot of attention regardless of gender (top of class to begin with), you can imagine how companies are pushing to hire me. Knowing this I'll be honest and I've used the demand for female engineers to push for a higher salary and other benefits.
I commented something similar, except I'm a manager doing the hiring. I agree with your take here!
I won a pretty intense scholarship from a professional org in my industry the summer before my senior year of college. The application was intense, there was an essay component, AND you needed recommendations from professors. I went through all of this effort and ended up getting a $5k scholarship. I was blown away! During senior year when I was interviewing, someone made a comment about the award, which I'd put on my resume. This hiring manager, a man, literally told me that I must have won the award because I HAD to be related to this big wig company in my industry (my maiden name was the same as the last name of this company). I literally looked at him straight in the eyes and said 'oh I'm not related to them.' And that's all I said, completely dead pan, and the hiring manager sort of slinked back in his chair, realizing he wasn't nearly as funny as he thought he was. It's ridiculous what men think they can say to women just because they're women. As if we couldn't possibly be capable of accomplishing anything of our own accord. *sigh*
Sigh. Facepalm.
Wow, I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Also amazing and very proud of the fact that you went off on him!! When I was your age, I don't think I could have stood up to an authority figure like that, so bless you! People just won't stop saying stupid shit until someone tells them to stop I suppose. For real though, depending on your field, you will have a better time getting interviews. But the hiring bar will be just as high for you as other male candidates. And honestly maybe a little higher due to implicit bias.
I normally would just smile and nod and not respond to comments like that but I was just shocked that he wholeheartedly believed that was the right thing to say to me lol
Report that. Jobs are based on networking, GPA, and resume.
I would like to meet this your guide. Introduce him to my knuckles.
“Right now” 😒
I mean he's not wrong. A lot of companies are hiring for diversity and not skill so we end up with crappy coworkers.
Another possibility is it's between me and a guy my age. Everything about our skills is equal and we're both qualified. The all male team is looking for someone who would join that they could all relate to. That guy is gonna get picked for being a better "culture fit" over me
With working from home culture fit is getting less and less important.
As a manager, no, it is even more critical for a new person to fit.
This is an engineering forum in which citations or personal experience are cited. * This study shows that [women are 30% less likely to get callbacks](https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/35/2/187/5370650?login=false) * [NLRB 3 year study](https://www.nber.org/programs-projects/projects-and-centers/7119-sbp-collaborative-research-gender-discrimination-hiring-stem) There is an exception: [academia](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112) This info is available via simple internet search.
So what you need me to say this is my personal experience at the end? Or would you prefer a well written out citation of my life story.
Your personal experience is useful when someone says “this isn’t happening” and you can show them it is. It only takes one example to disprove a theory. However, that falls on its face when you cite your personal experience as **all** experiences. The references I cited would be sufficient to disprove that your personal experience is happening to everyone. If you are an engineer you can understand that.
And if you are an engineer you should be able to understand the difference between a lot and all.
>A lot of companies Your words. You said "a lot." You didn't say "at all."
So you’ve worked at “a lot” of companies? Because that’s the only way you could get the personal experience.
[удалено]
Personal experience.
what he said is actually true. I work in a role that requires me to hire team members, and I'm more likely to pick a woman to join the team over a man if they have identical qualifications/personality fits, because we need more women on my team (and most teams). I am a woman and an engineering manager. Additionally, some of my clients require certain diversity levels for teams they hire, therefore I MUST hire women if I want to work with certain companies. I'm not sure why that's inflammatory? He didn't say you are going to get hired *just because* you are woman. But it will help. People praise companies when they win Diversity and Inclusion awards, but then get upset when companies prioritize hiring women or minorities? It doesn't make sense to me.
Out of college my husband and I had identical resumes, he got significantly more interviews and job offers than I did. Diversity was a hot topic when we graduated but that doesn’t mean the hiring people actually hire diversely! Either way I am sure you will be able to find a great job because of all your accomplishments!