Yikes! A room full of men!

Those who are inconsiderate enough to be younger than me are comfortable sharing their hopes and youthful certainty with strangers through social media.  I am one of those strangers – an Instagram novice who follows various individuals and organizations that fall broadly under the category of ‘STEMgirls’.

From various STEMgirl posts, a peculiar repetition of sentiment has become apparent.  A significant minority of my virtual friends have expressed how challenging it is to be the only woman in the room.

I have tried to understand this sentiment, although the underlying message eludes me. But to live is to learn, so I’ve spent some time contemplating the matter.

I’ve asked myself if I should feel awkward when I am the only woman in the room?  Am I abnormal in that I failed to experience suitable discomfort during the decades of my career?  Do I need therapy to make me feel appropriately discombobulated?

Perhaps while I sat in conference rooms in the past, I should have been apprehensive of male conspiracies.  Perhaps men colluded behind my back to hide my calculator and have a giggle about it.  Perhaps, unknown to me, men made puerile faces while I was distracted by the contents of my handbag. Perhaps men fed me coffee so that I would have to visit the site’s port-a-potty.  Wait! This particular evil actually happened!

Or perhaps such male machinations are a figment of my imagination.

Whatever my opinion, the fact remains that young women in STEM are wary of the men they work with.  I wonder whether the origin of their guardedness lies with men or with women, with the young or with the old. Did they imbibe that fear from tales of my generation or was it derived from their own experiences?

Perhaps it was naïve of me, in my progress through life, to presume that the natural consequence of choosing a male-dominated profession was that I would often be the only female in the room.  Perhaps it was naive of me to anticipate that a room full of men would be a room full of decent human beings.  Perhaps it was naïve of me to presume that the meeting agenda was the real agenda of the meeting.

When in a room full of men, I presume we are a group of individuals gathered together to achieve a common goal.  I presume that, allowing for common human frailties, we will work together to achieve our objective.  I do not anticipate harm in that room.  I believe in my safety.  I expect respect.

What’s the alternative?  Should I judge men by their gender?  Should I presuppose male antipathy towards me because of an accident of birth? Should I pre-judge my male clients and colleagues, and conclude they are biased?  Clearly the answer is no.  Prejudice does as much harm to the instigator as the object of that prejudice.  I choose not to poison myself in that way.

That choice is not always easy or intuitive, and I have not always been consistent in that choice.  Experience sometimes leads me to abandon it, but it is too worthy a choice to fully renounce.

I do not ignore the fact that women have been overtly disrespected, spat at, and physically attacked in business meetings.  The worst of these horrors capture our attention because, thankfully, they are rare events.  Individual men commit these wrongdoings, and those individuals are contemptible.  However, there is no male conspiracy.  The majority of men in the room refrain from, or deflect, or act to protect against such spiteful behaviors.  To judge an entire gender by the actions of a few is to demean half the human population and yourself.

A STEMgirl wants to be respected as a professional, judged by her performance, and seen as competent in her field.  In the workplace, she wants to be seen as a pragmatic, useful person first, and a female second.  If this is to be, then she must extend the same courtesy to her peers. 

Younger sisters, when you enter a conference room, your first thought must not be that it is a room full of men.  It should be that it is a room full of unique people who bring their individual talents to the purpose at hand.  In the working environment, the people in the room are professionals first, and men second.

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