Gender does matter, and it doesn’t matter

Dear Bob …

I have been in IT a very long time and I am a woman.

I agree with you [see “Does gender matter?” Advice Line, 4/12/2008 – Bob] that there are competent, supportive managers of both sexes and evil, incompetent managers of both sexes. However, I do not agree with you that the woman who wrote is filtering all her input by the male/female attribute.

IT has been historically and is still today dominated by males. The relative population of females in IT is not increasing. There are male managers who have never worked with a female in IT unless they did technical writing and/or training or were some kind of junior programmer.

Your comment about managers tending to like people that are like them is very true. Most women in Technology are not like their male managers; they have different interests and often perceive and approach problems differently. I’m not saying better, just differently.

Most male managers are not sexist, at least not consciously. They are many, however, who do discriminate without even realizing it. The interesting or prestigious project usually goes to a male employee who is most like the manager, or plays golf with the manager, etc.

I’ve seen managers who will give a great project to a less capable male employee and not to a more capable female employee. I was previously a consultant for many years. Sometimes during a project this would happen and I would ask the manager why he selected so-and-so to do a task rather than whats-her-name. Many, many times they start blinking and stuttering and I realize that they never thought of the woman. This is subtle, but still a real problem for the woman.

There are many variations on the unconscious discrimination. The only way to combat it is for the women to talk to the manager first and ask for more challenging work, a new project or whatever would advance her career. She also need to ask the manager why she did not get that project when passed over. I using “project” but it could be to do a briefing, or attend a seminar, or something else. There are other approaches like talking more in meetings, volunteering to help, etc.

Each situation is individual, but for a woman to advance in most IT staffs, she has to be better than the men around her and must do something that makes her unforgettable and irreplaceable or she is overlooked. This was true 30 years ago and it is still true today. It is one of the reasons it is hard to get young women to consider IT as a career.

If you think about it, that’s truly sad. When you discriminate, you are limiting the talent available to you.

Thanks for letting me rant.

– Been there a lot

Dear Been there …

Rant away. That’s what I’m here for.

I have no doubt at all that many IT managers, some unconsciously, others because they are “realists” (in their own minds), discriminate against female employees to a greater or lesser extent. Also against older employees, younger employees (depending on the assignment), pimply employees, overweight employees, and still, sadly, African American or Hispanic employees.

Physical appearance creates a set of expectations, for better or worse, because managers are, in addition to their other responsibilities, human beings.

Your advice is good, too — good advice for any IT employee in fact. In order to get ahead you first have to be visible, and your manager has to know about your abilities and ambitions. It isn’t always true that women must be twice as good to receive the same recognition but it’s true often enough to be a real problem.

There are other reasons women are under-represented in IT, I think, that are purely social in nature. At least the way families raise daughters in the United States, there is even less emphasis on analytical thinking than there is for sons. The old stereotypes run deep, resulting in fewer women who aspire to technical careers than men (I’m pretty sure of this, although I’m not familiar with the formal studies).

Which doesn’t excuse the industry from doing everything it can to promote a meritocracy as the most appropriate way to run IT organizations.

None of this changes my advice. The moment you or any other female IT professional falls into a mode of thinking that begins with the assumption of discrimination you risk crippling your own thinking, damaging your ability to interview well in the process. Focus on being the best-qualified candidate, best-qualified employee, most-visible employee (thank you for making that point!) … and for taking whatever prudent steps you can to discover whether the organization you’re talking to is run as a meritocracy or not.

Just because sexism, racism, age-ism and ethnocentrism are real doesn’t mean they’re so pervasive that you have to let them hem you in.

Sometimes you have to be a realist. Other times you’re better off making reality into what you need it to be. Assume things are as they should be, state the assumption as your expectation often enough, and you’ll be surprised how effective you can be at changing things for the better.

– Bob