Member-only story
How I Overcame Sexism Early in my Career
and how you can too!
According to a recent survey, 60% of women in Silicon Valley have been sexually harassed. One of them, Ellen Pao, brought a gender discrimination suit against her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. She lost but hasn’t given up the fight. Ms. Pao is currently writing her memoir addressing sexism in Silicon Valley.
We all know that sexism isn’t limited to Silicon Valley. Our glorious president continues to display how men like him get away with disrespectful behavior towards women. I thought about the times I was victimized by men like him. I also remembered the times that men, unlike Donald and his cohorts, protected me in the workplace and showed me a lot of respect. There are many, many, good men out there.
During my summer break between freshman and sophomore year, I decided to get a job in New York City. That was 1970. The newspapers at that time categorized Help Wanted classifieds as male and female. Typical female jobs were secretarial, bookkeeping, and teaching. There were no programming jobs available for women. Since, I didn’t have teaching credentials or accounting experience, I applied for the secretarial jobs. This meant taking a typing test. I knew how to type and thought that would mean I was qualified to be a secretary. However, each position required a certain speed and accuracy, I failed them all. So a job as a secretary was out.
My father asked his clients if anyone would hire me for the summer. One company, with a computer, hired me as a favor to him. Two programmers at the company, Joe and Norm, men much older than me, chuckled when they heard I was going to be helping them for the summer. Norm wanted little, if anything, to do with me. I reported to Joe who gave me simple requests to code in FORTRAN, the language I knew best. He checked my code thoroughly. Both men were surprised at my abilities. After a week, Joe agreed that I could handle the job and stopped supervising me so closely.
Then came the sexist attitude of the men outside my team. In the morning, they walked into the office and asked me to make coffee if there was none ready. I told them I didn’t drink coffee, nor did I know how to make it. They thought I was joking and sent me to the break room. I did the best I could…
