"I didn't expect you to be a young little girl."
Jun 26, 2022
I am finishing my CS PhD. The overall CS community in the U.S. is dominated by men [1], and our field especially so.
Over the years, I have experienced some unexpected conversations that showed patterns. Summarizing them here in case they might help other minorities navigate similar situations.
Pattern 1: Negative stereotypes
Happened at least 9 times during my PhD.
- Incident: My colleagues (all guys) and I were standing in the hallway at a conference. Strangers walked up, saw me, turned their eyes away, and introduced themselves to each of my guy colleagues while ignoring me. My colleagues introduced me back into their conversation. The strangers said, "Sorry, I thought you were an undergrad." However, they did say Hi to undergrad guys.
- Incident: Someone heard about my research and scheduled a meeting with me. When we met, they said, "I didn't expect you to be a young little girl." These remarks were sometimes meant to be compliments, which nevertheless sounded strange in professional settings. Sometimes, people continued to say, "Your disadvantage is that you are young. It will be hard for you to attract collaborators." The ideal response might be that I will be as young, sharp, and energetic as other fresh PhDs, post-docs, and junior professors.
- Incident: When I was making an important career decision, someone offered the advice, "You are getting old. It's time to sacrifice your career and prioritize family needs." I hope that they give the same advice to my male counterparts at the same frequency. Some others said, "You should tell recruiters you are young so that they don't discriminate against you." Apparently, I was considered as both too young and too old for my job. Such societal expectations are unreasonable. (See also [0].)
These situations happened not only to me. Other minorities in more senior career stages seem to have similar concerns [2][3][4].
Pattern 2: Giving less credit
Happened at least 6 times during my PhD.
- Incident: Someone asked me about my PhD thesis. I answered, but they disagreed. Later, they asked the same question to my advisor, who gave the same answer. This time, they liked the idea.
- Incident: Someone asked me many questions about how much my advisor contributed to my research. "He told you the idea and you implemented it, right?" "Didn't he tell you the algorithm?" "Didn't he have weekly meetings with you?" "Didn't you discuss the algorithm regularly with your advisor?" Luckily, there was a memorable event that proved my contributions, so I referred to it and held my ground.
- Incident: I invented something, the first of its kind. Someone said, "I can easily find others to replace your role and do the same." However, none of the suggested people had any relevant successful track record. One of them had even attempted to solve a similar problem but failed.
These conversations sounded gender-neural, but they happened more often to me than to my male counterparts. Once again, I am not alone here [5][6].
Pattern 3: Patronizing
Happened at least 5 times, 4 during my PhD and 1 before my PhD.
- Incident: Someone offered me a job and said, "This position is very competitive, but I was able to let you join since you are female." I did not like nor agree with what they hinted at. I later declined their "very competitive" offer and instead joined MIT for a PhD.
- Incident: Someone heard about my research plan and said, "The problem you are trying to solve is extremely hard. But don't worry. You are a woman, so you don't need to publish papers to get a decent faculty job." I have several comments. First, their claim about women's jobs was incorrect. Second, people getting decent faculty jobs with a few high-quality papers can be of any gender. It is not good to exaggerate about only one gender. Third, I did solve that "extremely hard" problem and publish my solution in a prestigious conference and journal, in contrast to what they had implied earlier.
Honestly I did not expect such conversations to happen when I finished undergrad. I had expected computer scientists to be always prudent, always objective, and always unbiased. But, as it turned out, some of the people I met weren't.
Solutions?
Before changing how people think in the long term, we need temporary remedies. Here are my preferred solutions:
- "Hack" the first impression. People suggested wearing gender-neural clothing to imply that we are just like everyone else [7]. I suspect it might also help to wear face masks that hide our appearance from strangers. We take off the mask only after people know our professional capabilities, which might help prevent our appearance from distracting the first impression.
- Emphasize technical merits. Another piece of advice I've got is to ignore the gendered part of the conversation and focus on the technical part. If things still don't work out after that, then there's perhaps not much we can do, to begin with.
- Recognize the bias. As researchers, we often incorporate feedback from others. Be aware of gender-biased feedback, recognize their pattern, and tone them down when making decisions.
- Recognize the toxicity and stay strong. Recognize the inappropriate remarks and never allow them to hurt our self-esteem. Do collect undeniable evidence about our technical qualifications.
- Expand our network. Connect with more people so that those who are unbiased and supportive would affect our career more than the unhelpful ones. It may be easier said than done, as some unhelpful people may be in charge of important resources. Luckily, most people I interact with -- my advisor, colleagues, and friends -- have been unbiased and supportive. Some of them have even helped me fight against the unhelpful people.
Disclaimer
This blog post, on its own, is not intended to justify universal conclusions. Each of the above situations happened a single-digit number of times to me. Considering the large number of people I have interacted with over these years, the above incidents came from a small fraction of people.
References
[0] Harvard Business Review, Women in Leadership Face Ageism at Every Age, 2023: https://hbr.org/2023/06/women-in-leadership-face-ageism-at-every-age
[1] 2021 Taulbee Survey - Computing Research Association, https://cra.org/resources/taulbee-survey/
[2] Jean Yang, 2021: "I noticed when I actually get enough sleep and look polished, people will say things like, "Oh you look 23" and do not seem to take me as seriously. The weeks when I look like I haven't slept in a few days, people seem to... just listen to me." https://twitter.com/jeanqasaur/status/1452720878102274048
[3] Irene Zhang, 2021: "I’ve literally wanted to dye my hair pink for a decade but fears about being taken seriously as a CS academic kept me from doing it. So, this is my gift to myself for getting 3 papers into SOSP this year." https://twitter.com/schemeprincess/status/1452335659771961352
[4] Roopsha Samanta, 2020: "Much needed website refresh... I have heard women profs shouldn't smile too much in their photos, but whatever..." https://twitter.com/roopshasamanta/status/1308901793552793611
[5] Talia Ringer, 2022: "I had a morning meeting where senior faculty in my area argued against everything I said about the quals process when I said it, but then when other people said the same things they were like "that's a good idea" so that was not a good start to my day" https://twitter.com/TaliaRinger/status/1540183268430991360
[6] Ross, M.B., Glennon, B.M., Murciano-Goroff, R. et al. Women are Credited Less in Science than are Men. Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04966-w
[7] Jean Yang, 2016, What to Wear for Academic Interviews, or How to Dress Like a Man Without Looking Like a Man, https://medium.com/@jeanqasaur/what-to-wear-for-academic-interviews-or-how-to-dress-like-a-man-without-looking-like-a-man-6b2e5f881043