IT

Lucie

Im a uni student studying ai, i’ve joined some ai student research team over the summer for some experience and money and for no reason i can see me and the other girl in the group have been moved away from programming and onto summary work. During the team meeting today i was asked what i’d been working on that week by the supervisor/lecturer, i described the ai model i’d started since the last meeting, i got asked if i was facing any errors, and i explained that passing the data to the model was giving an error at the moment, and all of a sudden i’m being told thats really simple, its only one line of code, and the guy in my group knows how to do it. I start speaking again but the guy in my group interupts (he loves interupting like dogs love licking their balls, its a short job and only have to meet the guy 4 times but i’ve never gotten through more than 2 sentances in a row without his oh so relevant input) he says my code has that line, i think this lads never seen my code he’s thinking of his own code, so i clarify to the lecturer that no my code doesn’t have that line but if thats the solution to this error then i’ll use it. Then i’m told if im finding the programming hard, i can do a summary of some research articles for him and that itd be a big help to the group. Summarising research articles is a bit of a lackey job but i get that it’s completely necessary and sometimes doing grunt work for the team can be really important, so it’s really not that i mind. It’s that these reports have already been summarised – he asked all us 6 students to summarise them for him 2 weeks ago and show him a presentation about them. AND for some reason, the only other girl in the student team was roped right in there with me on report work, he said you can summarise those 2 reports and emily can do the other 2. I acknowledge i’m not the strongest programmer in the team. I’m most definitely not the weakest though, that much should be clear from how every week i deliver a model, including how this week in the meeting what the guy in my group had done was run the model i made, which isnt much, but he’s still considered by this lecturer to be a better programmer than me and while he is a stronger programmer, he’s consistently performed poorly in this job because of his lack of team working skills making him hard to deal with. I feel shot down even though i’m a solid coder so i think i’ll make my report and do the code too just to be fantastic and maybe prove a lil something to the supervisor

amanda

in a room of male managers and myself as the only female manager discussing the marketing strategy of our small SaaS company (my department and area of expertise), i was told by the owner (who hired and promoted me to mgmt for my expertise) i wasn’t allowed to have an opinion. later that day, one of the male managers (IT) in the meeting barged into my office with a grievance and began his berating diatribe with “listen here, little girl…” i was 35 with a BS, a double minor and 15 years of experience under my belt. and the company is a self-proclaimed christian company. this is just one of thousands of instances of sexism i’ve experienced. i, quite honestly, have lost count. they happen on an almost daily basis, and with 365 days in a year, they add up quickly.

Beatrice

I work in IT, mostly male dominated. Everyone tends to float about to chat and confer about ongoing issues. I was writing an information piece for users about cyber security so asked the security professional (a usual workplace roamer) to check my work for accuracy before it was published to 10,000 people. The next day he was working from home and someone commented ‘probably because you spent yesterday through at his desk distracting him.’ If only I could be useful and informative like my male colleagues, not just a ‘distraction’….

Stacy

When your boss wants you to learn a new system and tells you to ask [insert male coworker name here] to show you how to do something and male coworker proceeds to tell you that it’s too technical for you to understand and he’ll just do it himself. -_-

IT Lady

Had the task of talking to a client about an IT technical matter. Explained I was from the IT department and trying to resolve, and required more information from him. Bloke kept talking about “The IT GUYS will sort it out”. Patiently explained again that this technical problem was what I was trying to sort out, and he did it again. In the end, I said “You do realise that we have a MIXED IT department of both guys AND girls” and he sort of mumbled something, then closed the conversation by repeating “The IT GUYS will sort it out”. FFS it’s hard enough being in a male dominated industry without having to prove that you do actually work in that industry. If a bloke had called this guy, I bet he wouldn’t have had any problems at all.

Helen

I wanted to take a course in Front-end development but I had to pass an entrance test. So, after the test, a female (!) manager contacted me and said “Wow, your result is even better than the results of some men!”. Ukraine.

Sarah

Two recent examples of Every Day Sexism: I walk into Next and ask where the suits are (OK, so not everyone has to wear suits to work nowadays, but some of use do) and they direct me to the men’s department! Can understand why the young, female shop assistant is confused as the men’s department has 20 different suits and the women’s only 2. But honestly, do I look like a man? Or is the assumption that I would only be buying a suit for a man? And, Next, please stock more women’s suits – you used to have loads. Secondly, I ring a company about managed ‘executive’ accommodation when working away from home. The guy on the phone says that that they are all men in the building, except one woman, who is the family nanny. When I say I work in IT He says “Do you work on the helpdesk?” “No,” I tell him, “I work as a senior analyst programmer.” OK, so only one out of 10 IT workers are women, and that’s bad enough, but the assumption seems to be that the women who do work in IT must of course work on the Helpdesk. He can stick his executive accommodation.