Working in "male" role - people's assumptions

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Part of my job as a business telecoms technician/programmer is to talk to customers about their phone systems, usually when they want support because something has gone wrong, or if they want technical advice on upgrading etc.

Once a customer gets used to the fact that a woman could possibly have such a role, we usually get on fine and they usually respect my knowledge and abilities. However there is often ( not always but often, especially with older guys from clearly all-male IT departments in medium sized companies ) a period of irritating misunderstandings before we get to that point in our relationship.

Firstly they tend to think I'm a secretary. Especially if they ring up for my boss and I say he's not in and can I take a message. I try and try to say it in a non-secretary-sounding way but I think just have a female voice is enough. If they give me a message that involves needing technical support, I tell them that I will be able to help them if they give me more detail as to what the problem is. At this point, some of them immediately cotton on and we have a useful conversation. But in many cases they are either reluctant even to divulge to me what the problem is, or they describe it in a patronising way.

For example, someone who works in IT and spends all day using words like "GUI" and "browser" might start like like this:

Them: "Umm? ... Well ... OK, I'll try to explain to you what the problem is. ... Our phone system has a web page you can go to to set up users and things ... that is what we are having a problem with ... "

Me: "OK ... What sort of problem?"

Them: "Do you know what I mean? ... It's like a private internet page ... You can get to it using Internet Explorer but it's not really on the internet ..."

Me: "Yup. The GUI. I wrote it".

The possibility of such come-backs makes it sound like fun - however, it's actually pretty boring after the first few.

Anyone else suffer similarly? I could use some tips.

My best friend did IT, she's frankly one of the best network engineers available and almost didn't complete her studies.. because the male students made her life a living hell being the only female studying it to that level.

I also tried to do the same course but I'm not as thick skinned as she was so I ended up leaving

First of all, it really is "their" problem. They have had decades to get use to women working as doctors and engineers. It is just as awkward, perhaps more so, for guys that sound like gals over the phone. But part of your job is educating them that women can do tech jobs just as well as women, so just be patient with them until they "get it." The slow and patient approach seems to work best (with clever hints along the way). People are very suspicious when making phone calls--NTs expect lies over the phone. So, you need be careful about not setting off their BS detector--unless you want to.

That is absolutely terrible, I feel for both of you.

Actually going so far as to leave - I am upset to hear that. Did you tell anyone in the faculty that that was why you were leaving ? I wonder how many other women start courses like that and don't finish.

As for being thick-skinned, I would not call myself that. What I do have is a strong belief in my own abilities when it comes to technology. So I don't take it personally in that sense. But I do get upset, not at the time but I lie awake feeling angry sometimes, or hopeless.

It's hard to know what's in my head and what's real, when sometimes it's just a tone of voice that makes me know ( or believe ) that this person on the other end of the phone is making sexist assumptions.

I never mention it to my colleagues, and they ( 2 blokes ) would never understand. It's not that they aren't sensitive people - they are very nice people. But they don't have to live with the constant annoyance and confidence-drain of having to fight just to get a customer to take advice from them. They don't have to think about how to answer the phone and not sound like a secretary. It's a whole side of the job that they simply don't have to do.

My niece has a lovely but unusual name, the same name as her paternal grandmother and great-great-grandmother. When she was working tech support for a major computer and software manufacturer, she answered an email, explaining what the customer needed to do in order to correct a problem they were having. Apparently, the customer never looked past her name; he immediately snapped back with an email complaining about foreigners who didn't know English answering tech support questions and suggested -- rudely -- that she should take some ESL courses before continuing her career. My niece, who is not only a native English-speaker but has a college education and is currently a professional writer, was absolutely furious.

The point to this story is, that there are people out there harboring all sorts of biases. All we can really do is grit our teeth, be patient, and not sink their level.

Actually....yes.

And as you said before, it's usually from slightly beyond middle aged men.

I'm in a very scientific field and hold multiple degrees pertaining to that field. I used to participate in multiple online science forums. In one of them, I used my real name, which is unambiguously female.

When discussing subjects, I'd constantly get nitpicked on technicalities or "reminded" of something I didn't need to be reminded of. Those who did this were always men over 35 and laymen at that with no formal training in the fields they were discussing, and frequently wrong about their declarations because they learned a watered down layman's version.

One of the Ph.D'd physicists eventually came out of the wood work and blasted them all for it.

On the forums where I did not use my real name, I was usually assumed to be male, and was never nitpicked or "reminded" of anything.

I also had an experience when I was a teenager. I am entirely self taught with computers and networking, html..which you generally had to be at that point in time as they did not teach it in the schools, and I responded to a job about setting up a medium sized business for internet/intranet. This is when you actually had to call about jobs. A man answered the phone and the conversation generally went like this.

Me: I'm responding to the ad for the networking position.
Guy: Uhhh....this is for networking computers together. You know how to do that?
Me: Yeah.
Guy: Well I'm not really sure you understand what the position implies.
Me: You want someone to setup your company's network.

After some back and forth he just said I didn't "sound" qualified and hung up, meaning I didn't "sound" like a guy, meaning I "sounded" like a girl, and thus couldn't possibly know what I was talking about.

I should mention that even though I was often the only girl in most of my science/degree required courses, I was always treated the same as everyone else by my instructors and classmates.

If anyone ever made any reference to my sex, it was an instructor saying how nice it was to see a woman interested in the field and many of them wondered why more women weren't interested in the field.

A few years ago I worked in a place that sold car parts. It was a small company and sometimes I was the only one there. People would come in or call and their first reaction to me being female was almost always "is there some man around who could assist me?" and occasionally "do you know anything about cars?"

If I said no to the first question, most of them turned around and prepared to leave or asked when there would be a man around. I started changing my response from a plain "no" to "no, but I should be able to help you. What parts are you looking for?" I often had to specifically clarify that I knew a lot about cars and car parts and that it was a part of my job to sell them and that I would most likely be able to assist them if they just told me what they needed.

Sometimes they'd leave anyway and come back another time looking for a male employee. Most of the time people would eventually tell me what they needed though and I was able to get it for them. Sometimes they'd explain the problem or the part on real simple terms instead of just telling me the name of the part they needed and sometimes they offered to go with me to the back to help me identify what the part they needed looked like.

I usually just tried to make it clear that I knew what I was doing and surprised them with knowledge about car parts, but it did get tiresome to get the same initial reaction and prejudice with every customer. I'm glad I didn't choose the career path I had been aiming for, which was in the car/mechanic industry. I would have gotten fed up with people's gender attitude and assumptions.

The bias is even worse and more blatant if you are one of the few girls working on a real IT job on a trading floor full of cavemen. Most of them hold college degrees from Ivy League schools but are not smart enough to see past someone's gender. It explains why most of the girls working on the floor are pretty, young and mostly working on ornamental jobs. Makes me so mad to see them accepting the BS they are handed out daily in hopes of getting a better opportunity.

I received this same attitude, working at a Radio Shack! People would come in and immediately seek out the nearest male to help them select stuff. I had to be aggressive by pouncing on customers as they walked in the door, and asking them if they needed help. Still they would look around for a guy. I learned, from another associate, to say "Why not give me a chance? Maybe I can help you." It was infuriating, though. All associates go through the exact same training, and you had to answer multiple choice questions about products and how they worked, to keep your job. So, what difference could it make if a male or female sold you what you needed?

Oh lord, I used to get this all the time. My ex-husband and I owned a small software business. I even got this attitude from programmers I was interviewing for a job with us! I'm not a programmer myself but I understand enough about it to ask meaningful questions during interviews. I can't tell you how many times I asked a technical question and the applicant would hesitate and glance at my husband before answering, as if to verify that I really would understand their answer. And this happened with both male and female applicants for programmer positions.

It's kind of the same; but i'm a mechanic and they're like 'hey, is the boss in?' - like i'm a secretary instead of a mechanic! & the women are worse for it than the men!

I've never understood why more women aren't mechanics, to be honest, because I've been able to do some repairs much easier than my mechanic because my hands are small enough to fit up into spaces he can't reach without removing many parts, or using special tools to reach in there.

Not in a work environment, but for a few years I was part of an industrial/darkwave band. Not a lot of women play that genre of music; the other members were both guys (bassist and guitarist/co-vocalist; I was the other vocalist and played the keyboards). Despite the fact that I hauled gear, did my own set up and helped with the guys, and that I was responsible for our sound set up and sound check, people acted like I was some kind of groupie. Members of other bands (all male) would say to the guys, "Is it just the two of you?" when I was standing right there. They were always astounded when I said, "And me!" One time I just lost my temper entirely, let out a scream of rage, and stormed off.

Luckily, my bandmates were awesome and did not think this constant dismissal of me was funny. The guitarist/vocalist once told a guy, "Don't let her hear you say that; she'll kick your ass." Not true, as I am a pacifist, but it sounded good...and when dressed for a show, I pretty much looked like I could and would kick asses. The bassist was ticked off by the sexism, too -- he'd be like, "You see three instruments up there, and three people in front of you, but you assume she's not in the band? Why?" Obviously, people with breasts and a vagina can't play industrial, epecially if that person happens to be a petite woman with a feminine appearance. (There's only so much combat boots, cargo pants, and a t-shirt can do...I still looked like a girl. A girl who could kick ass, but a girl nonetheless.)

If I went shopping for equipment, the store employees always addressed the guys. When I was buying a mic, the bassist was with me and he said, "Dude, she's buying it. Talk to her." The clerk actually said, "Do you think she knows what she's talking about?" OMFG! I said, "I have ears, and hell yes, I know what I'm talking about. Right now I'm talking about walking the f**k out of here and giving my business to someone else." And I did.

It's beyond me why people think that being female prevents us from doing things like being a mechanic or a programmer or an IT expert or an industrial musician!

Awesome!

Second that for Rose_in_Winter's comment. I wish I could've seen you play, i've been in a band myself but only for fun but still felt the effect of having to prove yourself all the time - that you're serious, are actually a musician & belong there as much as anyone does.

It's crap that there is this invisible setting for 'default human being' that actually reads 'dude'. To be fair to the guys, it's often a certain type of dude that lots of them don't fit either, but being non-dude rules you out at the first hurdle & as others have said, means you have to fight to be considered equal. Equal, huh, i'm superior in some ways in my chosen areas ! (That wasn't meant as arrogant, just statistically-speaking that has to be true, plus several science degrees and a tonne of experience and I get to solve problems at work nobody else does, so yeah, just being damn straight.)

Some guys say they feel it when they go into female areas, like nursing or being the only hands-on dad at the toddler group. However, how to cope when you're patronised or belittled for having a wrong (non-male) appearance, voice or name ?

i) Change gender (disguise or surgical solution) (rather extreme)
ii) Use gender-neutral or male name on tinternet (only useful for non-gendered discussions)
iii) Or deal with people by working your way down the list :
- First assume they will let you help if they're just reassured that you really aren't the tealady who has wandered into the tech support helpline, so give them a bit of an explanation about how you can help, or put their problem into hyper-tech-speak so they have the evidence that you /= tealady;
- if that doesn't work, repeat loop for as long as both of you can endure;
- mention your job title in the offer of help, ..."I am the specialist xyz..." ;
- if you can be bothered, offer to get male colleague who is less experienced than you and tell them this (female doing urinary catheterisation truthfully told one chap who wanted a male to do this that the only ones available were doctors who were inexperienced and would hurt a lot more than she would. He chose her in the end...);
- if someone is disrespectful to the point of bigotry, you have the right to complain. Don't take s**t.
iv) A stern persona can help focus the attention (of you and others) and can bring more respect. Not fair or logical, but useful. Think teachers not smiling in front of a difficult class!
v) Don't get disheartened, it's not your problem to stop people being idiots or bigots. Deal with people as individuals & enjoy interacting with the decent ones.

Some of that was tongue-in-cheek, but it can work...so can we...very well in fact.

I tell my boyfriend these things exist within the IT and Engineering fields he does not believe me. But thank you for reinforcing that this is still out there.

Thankfully more women are coming into the IT field as it expands into knowledge management (records management) and data, which is going to help diversify the workplace and probably get rid of some of these stereotypes. These two areas, statistical analysis and information science are dominated by women, so it is kind of forcing diversity out of necessity in a way by expanding what IT departments do. In addition to that the number of programmers, engineers and business analysts who are women is expanding as well.

Thankfully my IT department is not like this, we have women who are programmers, project managers and business analysts already, in addition to the data and knowledge management folks. But I know these issues persist within the IT field. I had to tell my partner alot of women don't pursue engineering or computer science because the departments are often hostile to women and misogyny is common, and that this persists in some workplaces.

Professional change is slow, and the tech areas are changing slower than medicine and law. If you wanted your daughter to be career oriented and smart you pushed her to do law school or medical school, not engineering. I am a non-practicing lawyer myself who has a pretty wide skillset, so I am only in IT because of the expansion. I only got into the field through non-conventional means, as a subject matter expert in knowledge management, and being a glorified librarian is not out of role for a woman in IT.

Last edited by starygrrl on 04 Jan 2011, 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.