Crosspost: https://lemmy.ml/post/37870
Wait for some of them to transition
First semester of my cs degree, it was around 50/50. After 3 semesters very few women were left. Spoiler: it was not because they could not handle the courses.
It was another time, but the first field my mother went into was IT. She dropped her punch cards on her way to the computer and had to explain to the teacher that she would need time to put them back in order. His reaction?
“Women have no business in my class, go do the nursing program instead.”
The takeover of a what was once a female-dominated sector was in full swing at that point. A damn shame. Did she stick it out?
I had a shitty old (late 60s) boss in 2008 who once interviewed a female engineer straight out of college.
Most interviews he gave took like 25-30 minutes. He spent an hour and a half alone in the conference room with this young woman.
After she left he said something to the team like “Sure wouldn’t mind seeing her around the office every day eh? We’re not hiring her of course. Women don’t have the head for this work.”
This same guy had me block all news sites except Fox News (I was the IT director). He was fine with his employees reading the news as long as it was Fox (I ended up teaching a couple of my coworkers how to use proxies).
I was one of three women in my year who graduated in CS at my university. I did most of my course work at home…trying to be one of the guys and make sure kindness wouldn’t be considered flirting made for a weird 4 years. No horror stories to tell though , just plenty of awkwardness.
Simply get a boyfriend instead
Some of the ugliest sexism I’ve seen was at the CS faculty in my university. The courses are packed with niceguys and kneejerk anti-feminists.
We had one of our lectors straight up tell us in front of full class (18 ppl: 16 guys and 2 gals), that we are going to use our diplomas as a hot pot stand. And we are here just for show, to hook up with smart guys. Yes, those were his exact words.
Nothing in me or the other girl suggested that we were attending lections to flirt with someone. Especially knowing that both of us were quite diligent students.
He also was very open and proud about him being sexist. It’s still baffling to me that people like that exist, succeed, and have a bloody confidence to take pride in their shittiness.
I don’t know where this was, but in most places this would be grounds for a serious report. It’s unacceptable for a person in a position of power to act like that.
Sadly, considering where I lived (not US, and not EU), I strongly believe that nobody would give a damn about the report.
I used to work at Google and one of the engineers I worked with showed up to interview a guy from eastern Europe (like 15 years ago).
He looked at her and immediately said “I thought this was going to be a technical interview.”
That was the extent of his Google interview, didn’t even get the cafeteria lunch.
I gather that guy would fit in a lot better with the Google of today sadly.
Just wait for them to buy programming socks
Nothing is wrong with programming socks. But that will be a sure sign of women in the room.
