women

[spacefem]

there's a thread in a women in engineering forum where a young woman had to deal with some creepy bs, and now she's asking where do you draw the line and talk to HR or supervisors about it.

a lot of women are telling her to just deal. don't report it, keep your head down.

I'll admit that I never reported anything to HR. And maybe that's okay, because I never dealt with anything serious or unsafe. I put it this way: There were just comments from guys that I wish they hadn't said. They made me feel isolated, or made me question whether I deserved to be there, and probably affected my ability to do my best work.

I kept my head down and never said anything. It took me years before I'd even confront the person SAYING it. After 5-10 years, I finally had my talking points and could call them out. Until then I just laughed along or go along because I wanted to be the team player who just got along. Or maybe I didn't know what to say. And I definitely never went to a supervisor or got help dealing with the issues.

Here's the problem: I'm in a much more successful place. I got the big jobs. I got the promotions.

And now those 20-something engineers are all working for me, and they're working in that same environment that I "survived".

I'm now looking every young woman in the eye.

I hope they're not dealing with the crap that I let slide.

But I also know that I let it slide. I didn't do anything.

When you're 23, you're not imagining yourself at 43. You're not thinking of the next woman or what she'd say if you had to break the news... "I could have spoken up but I didn't and now you're in this same position."

I wouldn't have stopped EVERYTHING. I wouldn't have changed the whole world. I might have made a tiny improvement.

But tiny improvements add up.

I'm now in a position where I know my talking points, I have my title, and nobody gives me any shit.

But I spent years without all that. Did I do enough with that time? When I saw and heard EVERYTHING?

It's in the past.

Comments

[low_delta]

Every time you say something, it makes a difference. But if the person you say it to refuses to hear it, it doesn't have much effect. I think when the people in power use their power, that's when it's possible to have a real effect. But it's still incremental change that's been building over the years.