From Anonymous

Today, my boyfriend told me his workplace was changing one of the women’s bathrooms to become a men’s bathroom. We both did an undergrad in engineering. They found when doing a survey that they have only hired 15% of the company as women, and the statistic seems to be unchanging. Male ‘friends’ I’m talking to don’t seem to understand why I’m upset, or where the sexism is coming from. They think I’m overreacting for being upset about this. If you don’t understand why I’m upset-I’m upset because this bias happens due to the world men have created in this field, how off-putting it can be for a women to deal with comments like these and situations like no longer having a bathroom. This is not okay.

From Anonymous

I’ve scored 9A’s/straight A’s during my O-level and was accepted to a full scholarship foundation and degree program in Medical. Graduated with 3.85 cumulative GPA and am now working as a Doctor in my own private clinic. I’ve managed to do all this because I didn’t get worked up about stupid things like politics and feminism. Instead, I studied and had fun in life.

So, I encourage all Women to please, stop focusing on all those stupid things that you see on the internet and grow up. Also please, stop studying Gender Studies or Arts, they are bad and are a waste of your parent’s money

From Anonymous

Just graduated college and moved out to Boston. Went to a search agency to find a job. One other person(male) sitting in lobby besides me(female).  When called to meet with the recruiter, I’m asked to take a typing test, but the male is not. I said no thank you, I’m not here for that kind of job. This was 1982, had no idea that sexism was alive and well, was a rude awakening.

Faculty

From Naomi Rachel

I teach Writing For Science and Society – an advanced course for upper division students who are majoring in the sciences, engineering and computer science. I always have far more male students in my classes. They were assigned to review an article published in “The New Yorker” by Carolyn Kormann. ( It’s a wonderful article on frugal science titled “Through The Looking Glass”)  The majority of my male students referred to the author as “he” although the author’s name was on the top of the assignment sheet. None of my female students thought Carolyn was a man’s name.

Assumptions

From: Anonymous 

I am a student in a Digital Design university program. A particular professor I have a class with is an affiliate professor in his first semester teaching. He is a Creative Director at a local design firm, thus an expert in the field. There is a system in our program where exceptional work from previous semesters is available to be shown as examples in future classes. All of the examples from last semester happened to be female students. (Although the files where only labeled with their last name, so you wouldn’t be able to tell their gender until opening their presentation where their full name is stated.) When showing the examples, he would assume that each was designed by a male student, starting by saying “So this guy… Oh actually it’s a female student named ____.”

I have seen some lists include the design field with STEM fields, so I’m not sure if this is appropriate for this blog. But I think this really highlights the misconception that women and men design differently or better than one or the other. I think he assumed exemplary work chosen would be designed by men and didn’t think anything of it when he realized he made the same mistake three times in a row.

Apparently this is how women become big in my field…

From Anonymous

I work in a visual cognition lab. We were talking about a female postdoc in the lab becoming “a big professor” in the field someday and the (older, male) PI immediately started telling us about another woman in the field who is currently “a big professor” in the sense that she’s pregnant. Because what do you call a woman who’s big in a STEM field? Pregnant! Our PI is a very funny man.

From Naomi Rachel

Last spring at The Conference of World Affairs, three female NASA scientists talked about their hate mail and death threats related to their work on global warming. I was horrified and amazed. Then I encountered similar hatred for a minor issue. We are avid backpackers and visit Canyonlands and Arches National Parks several times a year. Last Spring, I noted that the new superintendent at Canyonlands had many of the educational signs about the importance of biological soil crust removed. Arches had signage that Canyonlands did not and as a result, people were walking off trail and creating mini dust storms by trampling the soil crust. I wrote a letter to the superintendent but he did not respond. Last Fall Break we were there again and saw more damage. This time I decided to write a letter to the editor and submit it to several publications in Utah. I  received a great deal of hate mail. I was accused of being ” an over educated liberal female” and some writers even checked out my university courses and commented on them.  I was amazed because my topic was benign and certainly not as controversial or important as global warming. I am convinced that if my name had not identified me as a female with a PhD, my pro education, mild comments would not have elicited such negative responses.

From Anonymous

Here is a nice story. Our department is hiring and a name (Prof X) made it to the almost-short list. One reason Prof X made it to the list is because she is female, and we have to have some candidates in under-represented groups on the short list that goes up the chain, and we have special money to hire females. The people on the committee knew that Prof X is female, but her name is not an American one, so one really cannot guess that Prof X is female. The almost-short list went out to the faculty for comments. There were a couple of emails back to the committee praising Prof X and “his” high-quality and important research. It was clear from the letters that the writers did not know X is female – and they were completely judging “his” research. I think this shows the importance of giving candidates from under-represented groups some visibility, and for having incentive-programs for hiring minorities, while keeping their affirmative action information confidential during discussions.

Undergrad Thermodynamics

From Georgia P. Burdell

A year ago, I took an undergraduate thermodynamics course which was taught by a woman. She had what most would call a successful life: she had a PhD in mechanical engineering, could speak four languages, was a great professor working at one of the top engineering schools in the US, and was raising a family to boot.

While teaching one day, she offhandedly mentioned how she used to work in a car garage when she was a teenager. At this point most of the guys in the class began to laugh. She stopped and asked, “What’s so funny?”

There was silence, followed by one brave (foolish?) voice which replied, “Well, you’re a girl.”

“And?” she asked.

“Well, it’s just girls don’t work in garages.” Oh, of course. How obvious. The idea of this woman having worked in a garage was laughably impossible, inappropriate, or at the very least, surprising.

I don’t remember how she countered his reply as I was in shock over how collective and “obvious” this reaction had been. Are females pursuing STEM careers just as laughable to them?

From Anonymous

I’m in high school, and love coding and computer programming. I want to major in CS when I go to college.

I also love to write, though, and I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo for the past three years.

Once, I asked my friend to look over a chapter I had written and give me some feedback. He was very helpful, and I’m grateful for that, but a few minutes later, he says,

“I don’t think you should do Computer Science. Do something you’ll actually be good at, like writing.”