Accidentally in Code

Tag: women

Returning To The Stage… After Harrassment

Credit: DeviantArt / Thediamondintherough

I stopped public speaking at the end of 2011. And, 6 months into 2012 I finally wrote about why. I wrote about being more intentional with my time, wanting to focus on more technical talks, and – in the vaguest terms, not really calling it what it was – about being harassed on Twitter as a result of speaking in public.

There was a lovely comment about a talk I gave on that post (thanks, kind stranger), but I had forgotten it was there. Know what I hadn’t forgotten?

this bitch is so dumb

That, I remembered.

I gave more technical talks, internally. Eventually I started going to safer spaces – female space – and talking about women. I introduced other women, women brave enough to speak about their work, their opinions, their experiences.

I, was quiet.

It’s interesting, the use of the word dumb, an ableist epithetic for someone who can’t speak. Who doesn’t have a voice. He used it, to silence mine. To quiet me. There’s a long and proud history of silencing women, that Mary Beard spoke about so eloquently. The refrain goes, that we talk too much, that what we say is driven by emotion and so inherently untrustworthy.

And yet. It is men who have this reaction to women who dare to speak their minds in public. Whether they Tweet it, blog it, or speak it into the microphone. I don’t pretend to understand it, but it seems like it comes from a place of fear – a fear of an equal world, where women have a voice and use it.

Is fear not an emotion?

Not All Women

I went to see a comedy show with a friend. There were four white male comedians. I observed, afterwards, that it would have been nice to see a woman (or person of colour) on stage.

My friend tends to agree with me, but qualifies it, tells me, and I paraphrase here for anonymity, “There was a woman last year. She wasn’t very funny“.

Men are allowed this incredible luxury, that of being individuals, allowed to speak for themselves and not their entire sex. Allowed to represent their own talent, humour, lack thereof. No wider judgement required.

Judgment

Standing up invites a certain amount of judgement. It invites judgement about the delivery, and the content and opinions that are offered. For women though, this judgement on women as an entity is an additional overhead.

Then there is the judgement on their “fuckability” (as with danah boyd). Yes, every so often the male comedian gets heckled for his appearance, usually his hair (or lack thereof) but male politicians, male executives, are above criticism about their physical appearance… in a way that women are not.

As a society, the worth of women is defined so much more by her appearance, and until we allow women to be worthwhile citizens regardless of how well they conform to conventional standards of beauty, this will continue.

Rational Fears

I keep hearing the argument that despite these additional taxes on women who dare to have an opinion in public, women should speak up anyway.

I disagree. I applaud the women who do speak in public, particularly those like Adria Richards who returned after the kinds of harassment (threats to livelihood and to her physical safety) that I have no words strong enough to express my disgust for. They are incredible.

But, when that is the risk, the price, for speaking up in public, I argue that it is rational to refuse to pay it. Amongst feminists in the tech industry that I know on Twitter, a certain level of harassment is expected. It’s appalling, but being appalled doesn’t mean it isn’t normal. Being normal, doesn’t mean that these women get used to it.

Caroline Criado-Perez famously pointed out that “Don’t Feed The Trolls”, that well known refrain, is victim blaming. She is right.

A few days after that first series of tweets, as the loop that played them in my head was starting to slow, there was another one. I decided it was better not to know, than to make a connection. What would I do? The organiser had already demonstrated that they would at best do nothing, and this was probably the result of them having made things worse. After that one, though, I felt physically threatened.

There is a lot of talk about code of conducts, and making sure that women are represented at events, but we are not there yet. And we remain in a place where harassment is normal. Where harassment is expected. If I know that the likely outcome from me speaking my mind in public, online or off, what might my reaction be? To be very careful about what I say, and where. Or to opt out altogether.

Being Brave

Approaching two years later, I finally took a look at my career goals and realised public speaking had to be part of The Plan again. I put together a talk, and submitted it to conferences. It got accepted. I agreed to give it at another event. It was on the plan. It was agreed to. It was happening. But, everything was nicely, abstractly, far away.

It loomed closer and I became more, and more anxious.

this bitch is so dumb

I remembered it, more clearly. I thought about it in a way that I had managed not to, since it happened. I thought about how badly the organiser had handled it, and wished I had stood up for myself more.

But of course I wanted to be nice. Didn’t want it to seem like I wasn’t OK with criticism. Didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it. Didn’t want to seem emotional.

I took the main thing within my control seriously – how prepared I was. I gave two internal practise talks, both went well. I published my notes on my blog. Denise, of The Eloquent Woman ran two UK events, I attended both (1, 2).

I fixated on what to wear.

I had a one on one coaching session with Denise. We went over my message, tightened it up a bit, put together three points for an introduction. Talked about managing my energy levels (and terror!) as I was speaking later in the day. It was incredibly helpful to talk these things through, and I decided not to worry about my arrival time, meaning that I could wake up naturally and miss rush hour, even if that also meant I missed hearing one of my friends speak.

It went really well. Admittedly, it was a women’s event, a safer audience, but it was the largest talk I have given in a long time. The curse, if not broken completely, has been damaged. I reminded myself, that I can do it.

This bitch is no longer dumb.

April 30, 2014
The Emotional Expectations of Women

Credit: Flickr / fotodispalle

The other day, I made a complaint at a service that I pay an inordinate amount of money for. I don’t think the topic or place of complaint is relevant, so I’ll leave it out. But as I was stressing about this problem, which meant I was unable to use this service without either a large amount of hassle, or paying an extra 5GBP, I mentioned that I should have gone to the other location (run by the same company, where this is not a problem).

Anyway, the guy responds to this by telling me I’ve hurt his feelings. I’m completely thrown by this, and end up paying up the extra money and going away, still annoyed.

I maintain that my complaint was reasonable, and he derailed it by making it not about what was bothering me, but about him. But even if my complaint was unreasonable, how are his feelings relevant – bearing in mind that my way of expressing my complaint was expressed in a moderate tone, free from personal insults.

Because it’s derailing – I’m not supposed to complain anymore, because of HIS feelings.

And yet, women are supposed to be more emotional.

It’s the double standard that is imposed on women – be less emotional, don’t cry, don’t make “emotional” decisions. But make sure you do the emotional labour of considering the feelings of the men around you.

Men don’t have to worry about the feelings of women, because it’s been agreed (somehow) that women shouldn’t have them. But woe betide the woman who hurts the feelings of a man.

I loathe this. I am tired of worrying about the feelings of men, how they will react to things, what kind of trouble they will cause me as a result. Demanding that women somehow be less, and more emotional is not something that we are ever going to win.

April 14, 2014
The Bubble in The Swamp

Credit: Wikipedia

I watched the GitHub fallout the other week, and was particularly stuck by this tweet, apologising for defending the culture to feminists.

Don’t we all do that? Say that where we are is fine, but there are these general problems. I think there are two main reasons for that. 1) It’s politically infeasible not to, 2) we actually believe it.

The first one is self-explanatory. The second more interesting. Because to believe that, it doesn’t actually have to be true. We can rationalise in any of a thousand ways, pretend it’s not really happening, that that particular event wasn’t actually sexist, we just got unlucky. It just happened to be us that got in the firing line. Yet it just happens to be us, or other women (or other marginalised people), a lot. Because if you really believed that where you were was like that, that you had to sprint up a hill whilst guys mosied on past you on the flat, how would you cope? How would you get out of bed every morning and go to work so you could do more, for less than your “peers”?

What I’ve been thinking about most of all lately, is that it just can’t be true. There cannot be some little bubble of paradise in the sexist swamp. It still impinges.

And that is without talking about the extra emotional labour of bubble-maintenance.

The Membrane is Permeable

We’re not in stasis. The bubble is growing. This means people are going to come in. And here’s the thing; a misogynist surrounded by men, is just a man. Usually, of course there’s the odd one who will come out with a level of objectification that even other (non-ally) men will notice. But sometimes, you learn a lot about a guy the first time they encounter a woman at work, especially if there is any kind of disagreement. And there are totally reasonable things to disagree about! Like code standards or design. It happens. It should happen. If we’re all on the same page, then we’re not really challenging ourselves to build something new and awesome.

This is why you want women to interview candidates, not a perfect system as people are on their best behaviour when they interview. But if there is any kind of suggestion that someone has an attitude to that interviewer, I’d suggest having them interview again with another woman.

Just to be clear though, this strategy does not make for an equal experience. Depending on numbers, there may be a significantly higher interview load on the women. And they are much more likely to have bad experiences as interviewers. Not the candidate bombed the interview, although that is never fun. But things like: the candidate hit on her, or patronised her, or just (the classic!) thought she was the recruiter.

Stereotype Threat

There’s an amazing book about Stereotype threat, called Whistling Vivaldi (Amazon). But here’s an extremely short summary of the problem I’m talking about. When society sends so many messages telling certain groups people they don’t belong in certain places, anything that reminds them of that actually reduces their performance.

A big issue for me is when I feel that someone (a man) is patronising me. It gives me massive stereotype threat and makes me really stressed. I don’t mean answering questions and being helpful. I mean things like jumping in before I’ve asked a question, second guessing everything I do, assuming that I don’t know anything about something I’m an expert on…

And can we talk here about the trope “oh that guy, he’s a jerk to everyone“. Firstly – are you sure? Does he seem just a little more vicious/entitled/whatever when it comes to women? Or anyone he perceives to be an easier target (see also: interns, other marginalised groups). Second, stereotype threat. Does his behaviour re-enforce the message of not being welcome?

Behaviours that have traditionally been gendered are disproportionately upsetting to women, even when they are inflicted by an equal-opportunity jackass.

Participating in the Outside World

For women on the internet speaking her mind, rape threats are an expected response. Going out in the world, and to conferences, personal safety is a major concern.

Personally, I choose to take these risks (within reason), especially speaking up online because I don’t seem to get anywhere near as much grief as many of my friends do. But I understand women who make the decision that either of those tradeoffs are not worthwhile, or pick their battles. I stay as far away as I can from the atheist community, for example.

The Padlock is Sturdier

In the tech industry, we can joke about golden handcuffs (stock options that vest over time) and gilded cages (the perks that render us unfit for for the adult world).

But for guys venturing out into the swamp, looking for a change of scene, their restruction in this regard is what are they willing to watch? And, as most men live in blissful oblivion of the issues that women and other marginalized groups face, this doesn’t seem like a huge hardship.

For women it’s harder. Better the devil you know. At least they haven’t … yet. Who knows if it will be better elsewhere.

Here is a good article from a man talking about male privilege in technology, some points of which are very relevant to this.

April 2, 2014
Why Are We Still Geeks – Panel at GHC

Credit: Flickr / Fortune Live Media

Marie Klawe

Been worried about image in the media for 20 years. Been working on it, but no progress. But “if you don’t even try, you definitely won’t succeed”. Had many failures, but getting closer to success.

There used to be very few female lawyers and doctors, now it’s 50%. Still not reaching power – see the low number of female deans of med schools. In the 1970s, there were TV shows with male and female factors, and male and female lawyers – e.g. LA Law. They were portrayed as people making a difference, with interesting jobs and personal lives. They were attractive, and empathetic. Women flooded into these professions, and girls doing well thought about law and medicine as their careers.

Now it’s forensic shows.

Being a doctors or a lawyers isn’t really as interesting, not as interesting as CS. High levels of debt, long time to qualify, and lousy pay. There are more opportunities in CS than forensics.

Media portrayal dramatically affects high school students. It really matters. Even if you really like CS, other people have the image that it is boring and uncreative – that matters.

This underrepresentation is not just technical women, but women in general. The Gina Davis studies found that men are the main characters, and women are dressed sexily. Also technical men – see NCIS are portrayed as having no social like. They are OK-looking, but dress nerdy. Big Bang Theory – love the show, but it’s doing a terrible disservice to science and engineering. In Friends, Chandler had a job so boring that none could remember what it was. It was “data processor”, essentially CS. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is great with computers, but also really weird.

Mid-1990s, met a NBC exec for saturday night movie series. Told him that they needed movies and series showing women as engineering, empathetic and doing interesting things with their lives.

Raised money for a pilot, wrote it, working with a CS person turned screenwriter. They were jumping out of helicopters, no connection. Saw it wasn’t going anywhere.

Mentions a TV series showing computer scientists doing interesting fun things. Email from Bob Quin – Rush. Startup in Sillicon Valley. Loved it, sent it to 20 people. Brad Weshler Co-CEO of IMAX, passed it on again – loved it. Went nowhere, have to get a channel to pick it up.

It will eventually happen. People now realise that tech is changing the world.

Megan Smith and people at Google are doing things, but personally out of ideas.

Tried hard! Emailed with James Cameron. But getting nowhere.

Brenda Laural

Founder of Purple Moon – amazing woman, my favourite panelist this year.

The Star Trek reboot. Hated turning women from competent into a “wimpy slut”.

Start at home, looking at the GHC 2012 image – there are power and racial issues there. Changes it up to put the Black woman in the centre, speaking, and gives the Asian woman Glass so “she has something to look at” (original shows her staring into space).

We are responsible for our own representation – likes the way we look.

Put out and hold up our self-representation. Deny power to the spectacle (how we look, speaks).

There’s an inverse relationship between family income and desire for a Louis Vuitton bag amongst high school girls.

Do great work and get noticed for it. Self promotion is good.

Taking action – Wikipedia Storming (FemTechNet).

Kim Surkan

Hard not to feel disempowered when talking about women in the media. Unclothed. Objectified.

Feminist Media Studies is growing. Media consumption is growing. Average is now >7 hours a day (much of it while multitasking).

Stereotypes affect perceptions and performance. Self-fulfilling prophecies.

Easier to protest a bad image, than an image that isn’t there.

So much time on the TV/internet, that the space between lived reality and media is blurred. Result is decreased self-esteem.

“Stepping out into your world, found your world is troubled” – on women in CS. BS levels in CS are declining.

Women in the 1940s were part of the war effort, lots of women working at Bletchley Park.

There is and extreme culture of sexism and anti-Feminism in CS, especially in gaming. The shift from geek to bro, supposed to appeal to younger men, it seems sexier. Women are 5% of people starting tech companies, the rise of frat culture in Silicon Valley. Recruitment materials alienate women, and hackathons, like TC disrupt.

When women complain, they become the targets of hate speech. E.g. Anita Sarkesian, and Adria Richards.

Women are reluctant role models, like Marissa Mayer.

The backlash effect is harnessed to benefit, but why do women need to turn to kickstarted to start their companies?

March 28, 2014
Crisis of Conscience

Credit: Flickr / Jessica Garro

At some point, my doubts about whether it was the Right thing to do, to encourage high school girls to go into Computer Science crystallised, and I accepted – I just cannot do it anymore. I cannot tell them that it is a good idea, that they will be treated well, that there are plentiful opportunities for women. The data suggests that having a Bad Time is statistically… at least not unlikely.

This was probably around the time I got really fed up of people in the industry pointing to schools as the problem.

University students I’m more conflicted about. The closer to graduation, the more committed they are. Prep them as they go into the Real World. Earlier… I don’t know. I found watching, even from afar, a girl switch into, and then be driven out of CS heartbreaking.

Because I don’t need to talk to her to have a good idea of what happened.

I’ve heard the same stories, again and again, I’ve told them too. It is hard. The diminishing remarks (see this thread on Quota), being patronised – when will it stop? Personally, I’m still waiting. Feeling other. Being sidelined, marginalised, left out.

So more and more I’m focused on the women who are still here. I reach out to them (usually via Twitter), especially if I have some inkling they are having a Bad Time. I encourage them to go after opportunities, or to be selfish and focus on looking after themselves, and cheer them on when they succeed. And I get all of these things back from this network, too.

I got some interesting advice the other day, which was that when (the assumption was when) I have kids, I’ll be too busy to care, or to notice the micro-aggressions, outright aggressions, and other BS. Which is an interesting perspective, but one that I’ll leave others to explore.

But one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, is where is the middle ground between doing all the things, and Fuck you, I got mine? There is an emotional toll to noticing, a time-tax on needing to act, that maybe we can’t always afford. Not-noticing something can be an act of self-preservation, not malice. Although denying someone else’s observations is invariably unhelpful and often harmful, where does denying our own fall?

I’ve been spending much more time talking to men lately, and I’ve discovered that they are often awful to each other, too. I basically had no idea of this, and my unproven theory is: most guys being jerks comes from insecurity, they pick the easiest target, women are (in general) easier targets than other men.

Also, the men who are the targets (for the most part) don’t have the added burden of stereotype threat that women face. The guy is just a jerk, whereas for women there is always the possibility that he is a jerk and a misogynist.

Now, not noticing, makes so much more sense to me. Not only as a way of self-protection, but also because it is less glaring.

All I’m concluding is: I can’t judge people for their (non-harmful) protective methods (I wish I was better at them) and I’m no longer so surprised when other women haven’t noticed things. And I can’t sell this industry to any more high school girls.

March 19, 2014
My Completely Unscientific GitHub Survey
I was a software engineer without a GitHub account. I know, shocking, because everyone is supposed to have one – and actually the reason why I had to get resulted in me receiving a set of questions which assumed I would have a GitHub account, but Twitter account was optional.

I didn’t have a GitHub account because I had never felt any need for one, and my reaction to needing one was slight panic, because I had this impression that it was a space where women got harassed. Of course, this is a statement that could be applied to The Internet in general, and I Internet a lot. Or Twitter, and I tweet a lot. But those things I would feel a sense of loss to do without.

Also, I really had my fill of men patronising me and assuming I didn’t know what I was talking about during University, and it’s not like this experience has stopped since then. I don’t need to put myself in a position for men to make me feel like I shouldn’t be an engineer. The voice in my head is doing a perfectly adequate job, and does not need a chorus line.

Anyway, I thought about why I had GitHub pegged as a Bad Space, and I came up with three main things:
- The general hostility in Open Source to women (and other minorities) [here is a good recent article that touches on that].
- This pull request (I never read the comments. I am well trained to Internet. Turns out my imagination filled in the blanks, possibly worse than what was there).
- The rug. Since got rid of, which is a start.
And so I tweeted.

Pleased to say that I got replies from 6 women saying that their experience has been fine.

Which is obviously completely unscientific, and not a representative sample. But it was enough to quash the feeling of dread I had. So hey, now I have a GitHub account.
March 5, 2014
On The Miseries of Technical Women: Dating

Credit: DeviantArt / lelfling

So Much In Common

Recurring theme where a guy who works in tech meets a technical woman and thinks “Wow! We have the same kind of job! We have so much in common!” Which I guess when you have just 20% women might be a special occasion for them… but by this metric I am surrounded by men I have “so much in common” with all day, every day. The baseline of “so much in common” is much higher for me, and even more so when I spend a lot of time feeling other. Because if doing the same kind of job was all that is required to have “so much in common”, surely I wouldn’t so often feel so alone.

Independent Woman

Some men don’t like women who earn more than them [marital problems in marriages where the woman earns more, 3 men talk about their experiences, young high-earning women share their dating experiences]. They also feel worse about themselves when their partners succeed [source]. So it turns out, that the dating pool is somewhat reduced for the woman who rocks at her job and makes good money doing so. And these guys with that attitude, you could say no great loss. But… I suspect there are a large number who are very nice and it’s all fine as long as they are never challenged on the money issue. Which in this industry, it’s really likely they will be.

See also: the divorce curse of the Best Actress Oscar winners.

No-one’s Magic Pixie

This is the video game trop, essentially of the “magic pixie” who comes and leads our (nerdy) male protagonist to fun and adventure.

These are the guys who put their lives on hold waiting for a girlfriend, a magic pixie, to rescue them from the humdrum of their lives. Who make, or offer, grand gestures on her account, but don’t do these brave things on their own.

It’s hard work, being a magic pixie, being the side-kick when someone else is the star. I want to be the star of my own life, and people can join me for adventures, and welcome, but I’m not running some rehabilitation program for those who don’t get out enough. There’s a huge difference between “take me with you” and “let’s go together”.

We talk about flexible work in tech, and it’s true, sometimes I can bunk off early and go do something fun. But flexible does’t mean undemanding. Sometimes I also need to have really late meetings, or take a trip, or stay late to fix something because I’m on a deadline. This is not, in my opinion, a career that is compatible when someone else’s wants and needs always have to subsume my own.

February 14, 2014
Walking The Line

Credit: Flickr / Justin Gaynor

I’ve been thinking, and worrying, and talking with other women about the how hard it can be to walk the line between being a bitch, and being a pushover, for a long time.

It took me a long time to realise, that this line isn’t just a line we walk because it is there, isn’t just our problem. It is a line that other people draw for us. And it’s difficult because they draw it in different places, and in different widths.

Take a statement like, “No, I think that is a bad idea.”

The woman making it is a pushover when… they get ignored.

The woman making it is a bitch when… the person whose idea it is views it as an attack.

The woman making it is a human when… it is viewed as the start of a dialog, because a smart, reasonable person wouldn’t object without good reason.

For the most part, men have wider lines drawn for them. The presumed competence means they are less likely to be pushed around. There is no concept of being a bitch, they are allowed to be less “emotionally aware”, which broadens the line on the other side.

Then take those situations where you’re expected to drink the coolaid. Is a man more likely to just be seen as having a healthy skepticism? Being “incurably honest”?

But a woman… it’s so easy for her to be a bitch. We have to take care of the lines we draw for each other, and the lines that other people have drawn, that we try to walk between. Figure out where they are, and choose those people that make the lines as wide as possible. Walking a tighrope is hard. An invisible one, impossible.

One of the takeaways I took from The Male Factor is that I should feel OK with 20% of men thinking I’m a bitch, because 20% of them are prone to find women to be attacking them in some way. So I tell myself that too much below 20% and I’m pandering to them. More than that, and I might actually be kind of a jerk. This has been a liberating attitude to take. I know, trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity [Colin Powell], but having a metric is comforting.

January 29, 2014
5 Tips When Applying to Opportunities For Women in STEM

Credit: DeviantArt / unicorn-skydancer08

I’ve now reviewed a bunch of applications, for a number of different events. I’ve run the sessions that come afterwards deciding on who gets what, and as a result there are some mistakes that I’ve seen over and over again.

I’m sure some women get rejected when they have a lot to offer, and part of the reason is that messaging around these things is hard. Trying to balance the message to universities and supervisors that there is an academic benefit to such events, but academics are not the only thing applicants are evaluated on. Students don’t know what they should be highlighting, they are pressed for time, and getting recommendation letters can be stressful. Good educators and supervisors see helping their students get opportunities as part of their job. But there is little incentive in academia to be a good educator or supervisor (researcher – yes).

1. Get To The Point.

At any point, at work or not, I have a number of different things pulling at my attention. I carve out time for these things because I think they are important, but the less time I take on your application, the more I like you.

I’m not reading everything in depth, so break up large blocks of text into headings. Use bullet points. Make it easy for me to pull out the relevant information and make a judgement.

Customise your materials. Delete stuff that is irrelevant to this (proficiency with Microsoft Word, for example). This isn’t a job application, so delete the “objective” that says you are looking for one. Highlight and expand on your relevant achievements – the event you organised for women at your university, the article or profile in the publication.

2. Talk About Women.

This is an event for women, so I need you to tell me what you would get and give to an event for women. Great academic work is insufficient, and what do you mean by “networking” anyway? What I want to know is, how will your work, and your life, be better because of this opportunity? Are you the only woman in most of your classes and feeling isolated? Are you trying to start up a women’s group, but don’t know where to start? Finally, but most importantly, what have you done for the women around you?

3. Show Me the Multiplier.

There are limited resources this kind of thing, and so what I want to see is how the benefit extends beyond just you. What do you want to take back when you leave? How are you going to share the things that you learn? What are you going to do differently?

1x – I want to come and learn and network.

xx – I have been working on [great idea] but so far my reach is [limiting factors, numbers]. I hope to leave this event with ideas to increase the scope of this project, and engage more women in it, ideally so we can expand it to other [universities/regions].

4. Have a Passion Rather Than a Life Plan.

Basically I’m just bored of reading undergraduates who have never even interned anywhere writing about they want to go into academia. Is this a decision that has been critically evaluated, or just a default through not knowing anywhere else? Do people say this because they think they have to know what they want to do?

Personally, I don’t care. I don’t know what I want to do in 5 years, and don’t expect anyone else to, either. In this industry, I’m uninterested by passion for a career path, and much more positive about passion for a theme.

I’m really interested in the pervasiveness of computers, and as we move from computers taking up whole rooms and buildings to being attached to every day devices and even clothing, technology approaches invisible, and yet is ever more important. As I progress in my career, I want to explore the kind of experiences we can create around that, and the very real implications of privacy and security.

I think we have only just started to explore the possibilities of large data sets and what they can tell us about disease, language, and the nature of the universe. Specifically, I’m interested in [topic], but longer term I’m interested in increasing the availability of this kind of analysis through creating and sharing tools for handling and visualising large data sets, and through education of scientists in other fields.

5. Be Careful Who Your Letters of Recommendation Come From.

Academic supervisor is fine, but do they know anything of your work for women? Or have you been deliberately concealing a lot of it because they would see it as a lack of commitment to your research? Is there someone who could better speak to that?

Once you’ve picked your person, it’s fine – helpful, actually – to highlight some achievements and talking points for them. Emphasise that this is a women’s event, and so talking up your academic work should be some, but not all of the letter.

Personally, I ignore any comments in the letter that are historically gendered. Few things bore me more than men describing women they work with as “shy”. Not everyone does, though, so if you suspect the person you are asking is somewhat sexist, even if benevolently so, you might be better served to find someone else.

January 15, 2014