I knew exactly how she felt

[shermarama]

(Because of course having broken the oh-I-haven't-posted-anything-for-ages barrier I can now stick something short up without having to think about all the other things I was going to put up)

“I’m so glad to meet an engineer,” she enthused, “all the other women I talked to here were in marketing or law or something. I thought it was meant to be

Comments

[katstevens]

When I was in sixth form and thinking of applying to Imperial to do CompSci, I stayed overnight in their halls on a 2-day WISE course thing. It was enjoyable enough (if a bit threadbare) and made me feel better about studying CompSci in general, but as pretty much everyone else on the course was incredibly posh and wanted to do medicine, it 100% firmed up my opinion that I did not want to go to Imperial.

[shermarama]

If 'incredibly posh' put you off Imperial, why not Oxford? Perhaps I got it wrong by going for an interview at St. Hilda's, but nowhere else has anyone ever told me to 'oh, go on, say something. Your accent is so quaint!'

[x_mass]

ack its sad you didn't try Oxbridge and afaik other colleges such as wadem are much better

[shermarama]

I did try Oxbridge, as in I had interviews at a couple of colleges, but didn't get any offers. And then I went to Durham, and transferred to Sussex after a year because I was fed up of being one of the Novelty Non-Posh.

oops wasn't logged in

[x_mass]

I can understand contextual meetings
I am dyke I like to meet other women who also fancy women thats why i go to for example dyke bars
If i was working in the tech industry it might useful to meet other engineers who get classified based on their gender because of the powerful effects of that classification - but ultimately thats about politics
I like hack spaces - I like the cultural spaces - so I spend time there and try to get them going - but I would only meet about gender related issues in a hack space if there was sexism going on and even then I doubt it would be a single gender meeting
the reason I like you isn't because your a woman
ok it has a bit to do with you being a tall powerful cute woman but afaik you're str8 so blah
Your interests in music and tech and engineering is actually why i kept chatting to you etc
I assume that true for most people if they think about it, but then my assumptions about others not reliable

Re: oops wasn't logged in

[shermarama]

Yeah, I mean I can see there are reasons to meet other women specifically in some circumstances, but - and I'm not saying this is anyone else's experience, only my own, and maybe I'm just too thick-skinned to notice or something - I've never felt I've suffered from ill effects of gender classification while working in science and engineering. So I can't really bond with anyone over it.

And of course I have no problem with being friends with someone who happens to be the same gender while being interested in the same things as me... it's just that I don't count being the same gender as in interest in itself, whereas I wonder if it is more of one for some women.
(Incidentally, I'm bi. I suppose it isn't something that comes up much these days.)

[feanelwa]

I think WISE type events are very variable. We have some really good ones where we are all engineers and scientists and talk about how we could change things for the better and inspire each other. And then it all turns into talk about babies and maternity leave and I sit there feeling like I'm not a real woman anymore because I'm sitting in a WISE meeting and I have nothing to contribute. I've met some really good people through it though. I think the Sheffield one is helped by us having such an enormous engineering faculty that can fill a room with the 10% of engineers who are women.

And then there was my mentor who came out with this gem:
"You're really lucky to not have any ties so you can go anywhere"
Yes, she knew I got widowed. To my credit I did not hit her, nor throw food.

[shermarama]

I can see the bonus of the networking opportunities in a situation like that, when it's a handy way to pull a cross-section from a large and diverse group. I think that's just not been my experience whenever I've gone to these things myself. And also, as someone who doesn't think I've had problems with sexism myself, I'd find it hard to discuss what could be done differently.