Guest Post: The Real Problem Isn't Gender; It's the Modern Media

This guest post by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz was adapted from a comment he wrote on a Facebook post of mine sharing this essay.

While gender in tech is certainly an issue, a lot of the controversy over it is unnecessary. What recently happened with the Google memo is a classic case of Scott Alexander’s Toxoplasma of Rage, one of the most brilliant pieces I have ever read. Read his post. Then read it again.

The stories that go viral are those that maximize anger and foster the most disagreement.

Guy writes a memo with a lot of true statements but an aggressive tone bound to infuriate some people. Within two days, everybody is predictably furious.

My hypothesis is that an overwhelming majority of people actually agree on many of the points of contention--or would agree if they were phrased a little less aggressively, in a tone less likely to create controversy and less likely to go viral.

How many people, for example, agree with the following statement?

"We do not know why CS majors are 80% male. It is possible that, even though millions of women have a passion for computer science, there are, in aggregate, fewer women than men who have this passion. We don't know since computer science is kind of new. And also we don't really understand why female CS majors rose to 40% and then plummeted. Since it is possible that discrimination and stereotypes play a role, we should devote resources to making sure everybody with interest in these high-status jobs has ample opportunity to pursue them. Also, everybody should be judged based on their own interest and aptitude in a job, not how many people of their gender would want that job. Finally, the majority of women in tech--as well as many other high-powered fields--have said they have faced sexism, and we should work really hard to stop that."

This addresses many of the controversies that were raised by the James Damore memo and the responses to it, but is phrased in a way such that few people would find it objectionable. Perhaps we should stop falling for these traps that maximize rage and instead try sober analysis. We may find a surprising amount of consensus.

Lastly, no young person, man or woman, should actually be training for anything--driving cars, teaching kids, diagnosing diseases, or writing programs--because AI will soon do all that for us. ;)

For 352 pages of sober analysis on even more controversial topics, you can check out Seth’s book Everybody Lies.

Why We Need to Talk About the Collaboration Problem

Today I spoke with a Computer Science professor who is finishing a semester of teaching a notoriously challenging advanced undergraduate course.

"I figured out the problem with my female students," he told me. "It's their partners."

All semester, this colleague--let's call him Albus Dumbledore--had been telling me about the strange phenomenon of drama with his female students and their project partners. The course has a significant project component, and successful completion of the project usually depended on both partners pulling their weight. Mediating partner disputes became the responsibility of the instructor. And what the instructor noticed was that an alarming fraction of the disputes seemed to happen when one of the partners was female.

After wondering all semester how bias might contribute to the drama of the female students' partners, Albus had a relevation. The female students complaining about their partners all seemed to have better overall grades than their partners. Not only did the partners have lower GPAs, but many of them were from outside of Computer Science. Albus surmised that these partners were, in fact, probably not pulling their weight, and that the students had every right to complain.

"But why would these strong students choose such bad partners?" he asked.

That female students had bad partners was, to me, not surprising. After all, nobody had asked me to work on any problem set until the second semester of my sophomore year, and a fellow student only asked me after obtaining an unprotected copy of course grades on our department servers and discovering I had the second-highest midterm score in one of our courses. I told Albus about how a friend once confessed to me that before she had gotten to know me, she had forbade her boyfriend from working with me. I told him about how problem set partners often preferred to solve problems for me rather than with me. My best collaboration in college had been with another woman, and she had been so initially skeptical of my abilities that it took me at least half of a semester to win her over with how fast and how correct my code was.

"So it's not by choice," Albus concluded. "What can we do about this?"

Important question. For my first few years of college, the collaboration problem had left me feeling so isolated and so much in doubt of my abilities that I often thought about switching away from Computer Science. If not for a chance encounter with a friend, one year behind me and facing similar problems, I might have left. What began as a quick hello as our paths intersected on the way back from class turned into a long discussion about the difficulties we both had in finding people who would collaborate with us. I had graded this woman's homework in multiple classes, so I knew the problem was not that she was not capable. This was when I began to realize that the problem may not be with me, but with the way people perceived me--and other women.

Years later, when I was starting Graduate Women at MIT, this conversation led me to put together a panel on collaboration--specifically, on collaborating as women in male-dominated fields. I felt so validated when the panelists--three women at various stages in their careers, each at the top of her field--said what I had observed for years, but had never dared to say out loud. It can be hard to collaborate with men, one panelist said: they often talk at you rather than to you because they are socialized to impress women. It can be harder to collaborate with two men, another panelist said: they will often talk only to each other while trying to impress you. (I don't like to make blanket statements about all people of a gender, just like I don't like to make blanket statements of all people from a culture, but these kinds of conversations can be helpful for recognizing patterns.) While much of this advice was unsurprising, and also depressing, it felt incredibly powerful to hear someone else say these statements out loud. Talking about this explicitly seemed like the first step towards solving the problem.

In the intervening years, I've collected much more evidence of the problem than I have solutions. It is undeniable that collaborations account for much of people's success in technical settings. Albus talked about how, in his class, the students with subpar partners struggled to complete their projects. A recent study I read* cited female academics' ability to travel for international collaboration as one of the biggest determinants of their success. Yet collaboration seems to remain a problem. At a recent lunch of Women@SCS in my department, I spoke about my experiences with Graduate Women at MIT, including about the collaboration panel, and the student kept returning to the issue of collaborating in a male-dominated field. Students asked about how to find collaborators who would take them seriously. Students asked about what to do in groups when people may not be listening to them. A student asked what to do if she has had so many negative collaboration experiences she is reluctant to collaborate anymore. A student said that she, too, felt like male collaborators were often trying to impress her rather than work with her, but she had thought it was in her head.

After the recent lunch, a student asked me about the benefit of talking explicitly about these issues. Wouldn't it be better, she asked, to not draw attention to gender and wait for the problems to go away? I, too, would love to live in a post-gender world where people can just be people. Unfortunately, it seems that collaboration is a topic we need to address explicitly. Not only do these cross-gender/culture problems not seem to be going away on their own, but they also seem to be increasing certain inequalities. Especially in Computer Science, smart people have done an excellent job of solving many other problems of gender equality. I have full confidence that once we recognize this as a problem, we can find good solutions. I would love to hear your ideas.

* In the process of looking for this citation... Let me know if you have it!

On Wearing Clothes

The author, wearing some clothes.

A few years ago, we organized a professional wardrobe event (video here) as part of one of our Graduate Women at MIT fall conference events. We received a fair amount of criticism from people who felt that fashion was "frivolous" and such an event would tarnish the reputation of the group.

I see where this criticism is coming from, but fashion is far from frivolous--especially for women. Many people have told me that people should not care so much about clothes and only care about what's inside. Most of these people also believe that "not caring about clothes" is communicated by wearing a fairly specific uniform, for instance free t-shirts, non-form-fitting jeans, and very functional shoes. Such uniforms are often not available to women (see "fake geek girl"). In Why So Slow?, on why  psychologist Virginia Valian writes that while men often have a professional uniform available to help them blend in, women tend to be "marked" and stand out no matter what they wear. Especially since clothing serves as a powerful social signal, it's important for women to take charge of what they wear and communicate how they want to be seen. (Many others have written about this. Here's a nice piece.)

In short, it requires a lot of thought to be a woman wearing clothes. Especially since my post on dressing for academic interviews got a lot of interest and discussion, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the positions I've developed about wearing clothes, as a woman in a male-dominated field and in general.

Been building a uniform a button-down shirts and dark pants.

Embrace the uniform at work. Virginia Valian says there is no "uniform" for women, but this does not mean there cannot be a uniform. Adopting a uniform is a bit of a prisoner's dilemma for women: for any individual woman, putting in the effort to dress well and stand out provides benefits but keeps women as a whole in the clothing rat race. But if this fashion editor can wear the same outfit every day, then we should be able to embrace at least the personal uniform. (Friends have pointed out that there is a de facto "uniform" for PhD women in science: ballet flats, jeans, t-shirt, cardigan.) Life has become much easier for me once I picked five outfits to wear to work each week. Life will become even easier once I figure out the Ultimate Outfit to wear every day forever.

From my "boy" phase.

It's fine to look feminine. I see many women in STEM go through the "man" (or, more generously, "androgynous") phase. I've gone through it myself. You cut your hair. You start wearing baggy pants and t-shirts and dressing like a boy. While there's nothing wrong with this, it's also important to realize it is not necessary to do this. I started thinking about why I did this after a friend pointed out my "boy" phase coincided with a period of time in college when I was struggling with not being listened to and hypothesized my gender had something to do with it. With time, I learned that changing my communication patterns, refusing to be ignored, and establishing myself in other ways went a lot further than dressing like a man. (I wrote this fairly controversial piece on changing one's communication patterns for a male-dominated work environment.) Though I still like to dress somewhat androgynously to avoid standing out too much (and was advised to do this especially for first impressions), I'm much more comfortable looking not-like-a-man these days.

A surprisingly functional feminine not-for-work outfit.

Embrace functionality. Much of women's clothing is optimized for being looked at, rather than moving in. While it is certainly possible to wear this kind of clothing as a woman on the go, having shoes you are worried about falling off of and clothes you are worried will become not-clothes without sufficient supervision places a certain amount of cognitive load. Since I'm all about men and women having comparable amounts of cognitive load, here are the ways I've come up with for achieving more parity:

• Take flats seriously. Many women are taught that heels are the norm and flats are just in-between shoes. I've spent a fair amount of time finding flats that are unapologetically the only shoes I will be wearing. I really like oxfords (I have this pair, this pair, and this pair) and John Fluevog's designs. (I'm wearing a pair of Fluevogs in the photo above. Women have stopped me in the street to ask about them, making references to their quests for functional shoes that look good.)  That said, I also have several pairs of heels I can run in. (I really like the brand Born for this purpose.)
• Embrace pockets. Years ago, a close friend was dating a French billionaire male chauvinist who told her “All ladies must carry a purse.” Easily impressed by money and power, neither of us left the house without a purse for at least a year. One day I woke up and realized it was a lot of work to always have to think about what purse went with my outfit and also to then carry the purse, so I started carrying things in my pockets whenever I could. After carrying my ID, a credit card, and a couple of bills in my front pants pocket for a while, I got a thin wallet insert (by Steward/Stand) for holding my essentials. (For pants, Outlier is really good about pockets. Many standard designer brands, such as 7 for All Mankind, are as well. Also, my dress above has pockets! Check out my friend Elizabeth's Pocketist blog for more pockets.) Sometimes if I don't have pockets I will put my things in my boot or, less reliably, in this garter pocket I acquired for the purpose of holding my things. I highly recommend not being a lady and not carrying a purse.
• Find outwear that actually serve its function. I spent years ogling the raincoats and winter coats of my male friends for how they looked good and actually worked before I found my own versions of coats that don't make me choose between form and function. I've mostly been finding functional items by non-technical brands, but I also have friends who have had success finding fashionable pieces by technical brands. I've spent a lot of time drooling over coats by Nau, designed for this niche, but I haven't yet talked myself into spending money on one.

Look ma, no purse!

Pay attention to range of motion. One time I was at a friend's for dinner when I noticed my friend Caroline behaving differently than normal. She seemed more relaxed--perhaps more confident. Towards the end of the dinner, Caroline explained that she had been trying to adopt more dominant body language. Studies have shown that dominant displays such as spreading one's legs communicate--and help establish--power. Caroline said that she had success with this new body language: at an interview, she had taken care to sit with her legs open and the interviewers kept commenting on how "confident" and "competent" she seemed. Since then, I have also become more conscious of my body language. In doing so, I have noticed how traditionally feminine clothing such as dresses and heels require women to sit and move in certain way. While the movements these clothing items encourage is often associated with femininity and feminine attractiveness, they are not associated with non-sexual forms of power. (It's a whole other long conversation why it's important to have forms of power outside of sexual power.) For these reasons it is important when choosing clothes to consider whether they will permit corporeal assertions of power.

In conclusion, solving the clothing problem is an important step towards gender equality. I once heard that gender equality is when women are allowed to be mediocre--that is, women don't have to be clear standouts to justify why they deserve to be doing something. For clothing, gender equality comes when women aren't "marked," when they can blend in whether they've spent time thinking about their clothes or not. Though we're further from this point than some might think, community thoughtfulness and good discussion can go a long way. Until then, it's important not to dismiss conversations about clothing, as they serve an important function in moving things forward.

What to Wear for Academic Interviews, or How to Dress Like a Man Without Looking Like a Man

Wearing the Computer Science "uniform."

I first became aware of the problem when I took a female faculty interview candidate out to lunch a few years ago.

"Deciding what to wear to interviews is a real challenge," she had told me. "My advisor knows what the male faculty candidates should wear, but for me he had no clue."

Indeed, professional dress is a difficult problem for women, especially those in male-dominated fields. As psychologist Virginia Valian writes in Why So Slow?, men have a professional "uniform," but women are always "marked." While men's clothing is intended to help men blend in, women's clothing is intended to help women stand out.

Stands out in CS.

Unfortunately, standing out does not often help women in science careers. I have heard otherwise well-meaning male faculty members at MIT say the following about female candidates:

"She just doesn't... look like one of us."

"How can you take someone seriously when they are wearing heels?"

And so I came to understand that in order not to have my clothes jeopardize my chances of being taken seriously during my own interviews, I needed to forget how I was taught to "look professional" and instead solve a difficult constraint satisfaction problem. I needed to somehow achieve man-level blending in without looking like I was blatantly cross-dressing (which, I've been told, would also make me stand out). This was a particularly difficult problem for me because I am fairly particular about what is "my style" and my style is not particularly mainstream.

What an MIT professor typically looks like.

Towards solving this problem, I solicited some advice from my professors, who all happened to be male. The advice consisted of confusing heuristics for blending in with men:

"People should remember you, not your clothes."

"Never, under any circumstances, wear a skirt."

"Wear exactly what a man would, but the female version."

What I found more helpful was asking women who had been on the job market (thanks, Claire Le Goues, Raluca Ada Popa, and Franzi Roesner) what they wore. (To my relief, none of them told me to dress like a man--and in fact described outfits that sounded relatively feminine.) Claire taught me about the general idea of coordinated separates. Claire taught me that it's okay to repeat pants. Claire gave tips about modesty (nothing too form-fitting; avoid displaying skin). Claire alleviated many of my concerns by telling me it was all right to wear the "exact same outfit" for every interview. (Thanks, Claire, for being a more senior female academic in Computer Science and also my friend.)

At an event with AtlanticLIVE.

Keynoting a conference in Vegas.

Synthesizing advice from my female colleagues, the advice to dress "the way a man would," and my own fashion inclinations, I put together the following main interviewing outfit: gray blazer (Theory, acquired for under $50 at a thrift store and tailored for under $100), patterned button-down (Brooks Brothers, on sale for under $100--the pattern was also my "flair" item), black theory dress pants ($100ish from the Theory outlet, then tailored for $30ish), and black oxfords. (I had two pairs of oxfords, a beautiful pair by Donna Piu that I never broke in and a pair from Camper that I ended up wearing.) I particularly like oxfords because of how masculine they are. When I sent my groupmate Nadia a photo, she told me I looked like Doctor Who. I liked this outfit so much I continued wearing it for all speaking engagements, to the point when my mother offered to buy me a second shirt. (No shame in wearing the same outfit every day, Mom!)

Outfit is versatile; good also for cutting cake.

Following Claire's advice, for the second day of two-day interviews I wore a different button-down shirt with a sweater. Starting around this time, I have begun acquiring a collection of button-down shirts and pullover sweaters. I particularly like the men's section of Uniqlo; the men's section of J. Crew is pretty good too. I like buying men's clothes because it allows me to have clothes that fit me like the clothes of my male colleagues fit them. (In fact, I am pretty sure a male professor was wearing the exact same shirt as me at a retreat I went on.) I also have a couple of shirts and a cardigan from Everlane. (It's definitely not necessary to go as far as to buy exclusively men's clothing, but I found this to better suit my preferences.)

My other professional outfit.

In figuring out what to wear for interviews, I also acquired a more out-there outfit that I also wear for professional situations, but was never brave enough to wear for an interview. The outfit centers around a pair of black Rebecca Taylor pants that are what I consider to be a sartorial parody of men's suit pants (photo here). (I acquired them from Nordstrom Rack online for ~$100 and had them tailored for something under $100). I wear them with a loose-fitting silk button-down (I have one from Everlane and one from a thrift store from the 80s) and pointy John Fluevog flats. (The pants need to be paired with something more feminine than oxfords. John Fluevog is, by the way, a great shoe designer if you want interesting, functional shoes with an edge. Unfortunately, the shoes are usually a bit too aggressively stylish for a job interview.)

Looking professorly with my former professor.

Here's a summary of the main advice points:

• What you wear matters.
• Male mentors don't always give the most helpful fashion advice.
• It's possible to wear clothes you like that are also professional, even if you are a woman.

Of course, there are more ideal worlds in which things are less gendered and/or people accept people who have different fashion orientations. (And one would hope that the dismissals of these women's appearance doesn't completely invalidate their professional achievements.) Until then, it remains a fun game for women in male-dominated fields to navigate the narrow space of fashion choices available to us. Would love to hear what other women do.

Technical Privilege Reading List

People have been asking about the books I mentioned during last Friday's Challenging Technical Privilege Symposium at MIT. (The symposium was fantastic. So many people came and asked great questions. The video should be up soon!) Below I list the books I mentioned, along with some other books for people interested in the topic. Enjoy. (These are heavy topics, but these books are well-written, engaging, and provide actionable solutions.)

Essential Reading

• The Curse of the Good Girl (Rachel Simmons, 2010). About how we socialize girls to self-censor. An important read for parents and educators of girls, and also for everyone else to understand why women behave more conservatively than men. (The question of whether this is a "curse" is up for discussion, but it certainly holds women back in a man's world.)
• Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work (Deborah Tannen, 2001). Georgetown sociolinguist talks about the "cultural" differences between the way men and women speak and how this affects workplace dynamics--and evaluations. She observes, for instance, that men aim to achieve dominance in conversations, while women aim to prevent their conversation partner from being subordinate. Men assert facts; women give compliments. Because of these dynamics, observers will agree that men "win" workplace conversations.
• Unlocking the Clubhouse (Jane Margolis and Alan Fisher, 2003). Talks about the authors' research about why women tended to shy away from studying computer science and why women leave. They give concrete explanations for how women are socialized to have less interest: for instance, in families the computer will much more likely be in a son's room than a daughter's room. They also talk about phenomena such as how women cite poor performance as the reason they leave computer science, but in fact they are doing better than men who stay. (Curse of the Good Girl!)
• Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (Virginia Valian, 1999). I learned so much from this book! It is full of useful facts and explanations. Psychology professor Valian talks about studies that show there is bias against women: for instance, when people are shown resumes with women's names, the resumes need 1.5x the achievements to be assigned the same title. She talks about everything from work to clothing (how men have a uniform whereas all women are "marked") to physical traits (hypermasculinity is associated with competence, whereas hyperfemininity is associated with incompetence) to misconceptions about gender and emotional stability (people talk about women's monthly cycles, but men have both a daily and a yearly cycle). Understanding these gender biases and difference is an important first step towards improvement.

Other Reading

• Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest are Leaving the Workplace and How You Can Help them Stay (Freada Kapor Klein, 2007). Talks about the obstacles that minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged people face in the workplace. A great read for allies and bystanders.
• Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls (Rachel Simmons, revised 2011). Simmons writes about how because girls are not allowed to exhibit aggression in the same way boys are, they silently censor each other. This can be emotionally damaging to women and also leads to self-censorship down the road. I found this to be a good read for understanding why women tend to be less bold than men.
• The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us (Robert H. Frank, 1996). An interesting explanation for the growing income equality in the United States. Good for thinking about things like institutional elitism.

A related thing I also mentioned is the Representation Project's movie The Mask You Live In, coming out in 2015, about American constructions of masculinity and how it's limiting to men. I highly recommend watching the trailer!

The Problem with "Mansplaining"

The "mansplaining" meme, which captures the phenomenon of men being patronizing to women in conversation, is trending on the internet. There is a Tumblr here; a Hillary Clinton meme there. While it is good that women are speaking out about sexism, there are some issues with using the term "mansplaining." Not only does it distract from the real problems, it also perpetuates behaviors that prevent progress. Allow me to mansplain.

The term "mansplaining" conflates two issues: that men tend to explain things in a manner that may be interpreted as patronizing and that people explain things to women with the assumption that they are ignorant. The first can largely be explained by conversational differences between men and women: in Talking from 9 to 5, Georgetown sociolinguist Deborah Tannen discusses how in conversations, (American) men tend to seek a dominant position, while women tend to prevent the other person from taking a subordinate position. Men also often use knowledge (for instance, statistics about sports teams) to establish this dominance. It is no wonder, then, that conversations between men and women often end up having the man explaining things in a condescending manner to women. Rather than mocking men, it is more productive to create awareness of these conversational differences. Men can use this awareness to be more careful when talking to women (or anyone else from a culture where establishing dominance is not the norm) and women can use this awareness to perceive the situation differently (for instance, be less offended or intimidated) when talking to men.

Because it brings in stereotypes about men vs. women, the "mansplaining" distracts from the real issue: that people are often condescending to women. In Why So Slow?, psychologist Virginia Valian explains that this often because of statistical bias. Using heuristics to make snap judgments is how we are able to effectively deal with overwhelming amounts of input. Using these same heuristics is often why people (men and women) assume women are less capable. Especially in technical fields, there are fewer capable women. Thus, given any specific woman, she is more likely to be ignorant than knowledgeable. Thus a reasonable snap judgment is to assume that a woman knows less than she does. Fortunately, we can second-guess our snap judgments. Awareness can again mitigate this problem: if we know we are likely to make a snap judgment that is wrong, we can be conscious of these situations and adjust our judgments accordingly. In overcoming snap judgments, it also helps to focus on specific attributes of a person instead of whether they are a man or a woman.

The term "mansplaining" perpetuates this gender-based statistical bias by focusing attention on the male gender rather than the behavior. The fact that this term exists makes it more likely that people will assume someone is "mansplaining" simply because he is a man. This is not productive for men who may be trying to overcome "mansplaining" tendencies. It increases the chances that the other person will dismiss what the "mansplainer" is saying outright, giving him less opportunity to practice having conversations with people who may not be accustomed to his dominance-seeking style of speaking. Also, the term "mansplaining" distracts from the fact that women can be sexist and condescending as well.

The "mansplaining" meme has been useful for raising awareness both about the tendency of men to come off as patronizing and the tendency of people to be condescending to women. But it distracts from the real problems and perpetuates gender-based bias. To work towards a solution for productive cross-gender conversation, we should focus on specific behaviors rather than gender stereotypes and on listening rather than on pointing fingers.

Why Do Women Want to "Have It All?"

Last week, former State Department director Anne-Marie Slaughter's Atlantic piece "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" spurred a flurry of internet discussion: there was a nice response on why "having it all" is the wrong thing to be striving for (see the Salon response) amidst many other responses (see the NYT summary and Joanne Wilson's response).  This discussion brings up the valid point that the set of desires of "elite women*" may be unsatisfiable.  The main problem is that the outdated expectation for a woman to pair with a socially "stronger" man does not necessarily create professionally supportive relationships for ambitious women.

The assumption that the man needs to be professionally superior leads to situations in which the woman will spend more time thinking about the family.  A mentor once made the provocative statement that that if I did a startup, I would no longer be able to find a man who I respected.  When I asked why, he said that I am "biologically wired" to look for a "stronger man."  After a fair bit of self-reflection, reading about evolutionary biology, and talking to both men and women, I concluded that this "stronger man" business is based on societal constructs left over from a time when society did not allow women to provide for themselves.  I have encountered quite a few men whom I respect who have also said they are willing to make significant sacrifices towards having a family, including staying home if necessary.  I am not saying that ambitious women can only be with less ambitious men, but they should be aware of the topography of the choice space and the tradeoffs that different choices entail.

Professionally ambitious women must also make a choice about what they want to optimize: it is likely that women seeking both "power coupledom" and supportive relationship will be disappointed.  It seems that part of the desire to be part of a "power couple" is based on expectations from the days when a women did not work and a woman's success was based on how "well" she married.  In those days, ambitious men did not expect to find equally successful women: they looked for a supportive woman.  Women should be able (and allowed by society) to make this choice as well.  Women should realize that while it may be the ideal to find a successful man who is also has the bandwidth to be supportive (professionally, emotionally, etc.), this is unlikely as the selection pool can become quite small.  We can be quite happy, however, if we choose to optimize for one or the other with no illusions about what we are giving up.

It is important for a woman to realize that if she wants a "stronger" man, she should have expectations about the tradeoffs she is making.  This does not mean, however, that all women with careers must make these tradeoffs.  We have been given one view of what it means to "have it all" and it is our responsibility to question and redefine this for ourselves.

My friend Yao inspired this post with the following comment:"I wonder why women always think they must be the ones to give up their career for kids and not their husbands."

* I acknowledge that these discussions are highly heteronormative and have a relatively small target demographic.  Everything I say probably applies only to young, urban, highly-educated, heterosexual American women.

Ramping up the Graduate Women at MIT blog

Graduate Women at MIT now has a new blogging initiative. If you have been following my blog to hear about gender/women in science issues, please follow the GWAMIT blog as well!

Implicit Bias and Affirmative Action

A few weeks ago, the MIT Tech ran an opinion piece "It's good to be king" ("Innate ability may explain gender gaps") raising questions about the "deeply suspicious" nature of the "subtle bias" used to justify measures taken to increase participation of women in the sciences at MIT. This well-written piece argued that the gender-dependence of intelligence variability may explain the gaps of women in the sciences. The Tech ran a subsequent counterpoint "Intelligence variability is not gender-dependent" that argues against the intelligence variability claim, pointing out that this is not true across cultures.

I am glad that The Tech is taking on this interesting question and would encourage them to dig a bit deeper into the literature of and issues surrounding gender inequity in the sciences. I wrote a Letter to the Editor that ran yesterday about how in the argument about affirmative action, it is important to consider the (often implicit) biases that the action is intended to counteract.

Grad Women @ MIT: Reflections from the First Full Year

My main non-research interest at MIT has been Graduate Women at MIT, which I helped found in fall 2009. Last year I was involved with establishing GWAMIT with the MIT administration and leading the Spring Kick-off, our first week of programming demonstrating the tone and content we envisioned for future events. My main GWAMIT projects this year have been co-chairing the planning committee for the inaugural Spring Empowerment Conference, developing the organization structure, and growing the GWAMIT web presence (on the website, blog, Facebook, and Twitter).

GWAMIT has had amazing growth this last year and a half: we went from having a leadership structure of three people (Kay Furman, Megan Brewster, and me) to a leadership structure that includes an Executive Board, a General Board of over 30 departmental representatives, and active planning committees for each of the flagship events (the mentoring program, leadership conference, and empowerment conference)--you may read some of our personal mission statements here. We have now become a centralized point of contact for MIT's graduate women, with over 650 members on our weekly digest, over 50 mentoring groups in the mentoring program, and 250 unique attendees at each of the conferences, which have had five events each. The GWAMIT community includes not just graduate women but also undergrads, postdocs, alumni, faculty, and staff--some of whom are men and some of whom are affiliated with other area universities. In this first full year of programming, we have raised over $20K from generous MIT and external sources.

I have compiled the following advice for people starting a student organization or similar kind of group.

Be concrete. In the beginning, we had to justify why we wanted to start GWAMIT, how GWAMIT planned to be different from existing campus resources and departmental women's groups, and how we were going to achieve these goals. To answer these questions we did detailed research on statistics about women at MIT, existing resources, and potential sources of funding. We described our plans in terms of concrete details, complete with timelines and budgets. Having concrete data helped address most questions.

Dream big, but have realistic plans. From the beginning, we had the ambitious goal of launching all three flagship programs. We understood, however, that with limited funding and human resources we would have to keep the programs at a manageable scale. Thanks to Kay's realism, our initial plans for the programs required a minimal budget and were only intended to serve a group size that could be handled even if we did not recruit more members immediately. Knowing our vision allowed us to scale up each of the program when the funding and enthusiasm poured in, but having the bare-bones backup plan allowed us to launch in the first place.

Execute as soon as possible. Before we had funding or members during our first full semester of operation, I pushed to have the Spring Kick-off. We bootstrapped our funding by laying out possible sources of funding and approached each potential funder with our funding plan and how they would fit in. We recruited our initial planning committee of members who were passionate about helping out and believed in the cause. The Spring Kick-off was a success, with five catered events, including a keynote on implicit bias and a panel on collaboration from the perspectives of academic women. Having the kick-off was beneficial because 1) it showed our funders and constituents we were serious, 2) it demonstrated to everyone what GWAMIT's niche would be at MIT, and 3) it spread the word about the organization and got people onto our mailing lists. The momentum from the Spring Kick-off helped us recruit members for flagship planning and helped us establish the credibility to get additional funding. Execution is the best way to be organized and to be concrete.

Leverage collaborations. When it was just Kay, Megan, and me, we leveraged each others' strengths and interests and also the strengths and interests of our collaborators. Each of us had different areas we were more interested in pursuing (mentoring, empowerment, establishing internal MIT relations, establishing external relations, etc.) and we worked together to allow each of us to pursue our interests while making sure the big picture still made sense. We could have a distributed execution model because we trusted each other to make the right decisions without having all three of us present at all meetings or for all small decisions. Leveraging our collaborations outside GWAMIT was also incredibly helpful: for example, for the Spring Kick-off we had events with external collaborators such as keynote speaker Freada Klein, workplace diversity expert, and internal collaborators such as MIT Ombuds, who helped us lead a workshop on navigating difficult situations. We have, individually and as a group, learned the advantage of being organized and communicating to collaborators how they can help us.

Allow people to pursue their passions. GWAMIT has only been able to execute programming at such a large scale because so many members people who propose and execute ideas. The planning committees, and also the executive board, operates in a democratic way. The committee structure is in place only to make sure the planning is on task: event leads who propose an idea or take on someone else's idea is responsible for developing event content. This has led to innovative content like the online personal branding workshop (Empowerment Conference '11) and innovative event structures like the keynote that was half Q&A (Leadership Conference '10). Event leads have done fantastic jobs in executing events, in large part because, as one former event lead puts it, they are driven to contribute not for the credit but out of personal interest.

Actively manage your image. There are two ways we have been managing our image: through our online presence and through our programming.

We had a GWAMIT website and logo before we had members. On our website we had our mission, proposed events, a list of MIT and Boston area resources we had compiled, and an events calendar. Having a professional online image was something tangible that could demonstrate to our funders, supporters, and future members that we we meant business--and also what that business was. Managing our online image gave us agency in shaping people's views of us: when deciding what to think of GWAMIT, they could get the information directly from us and how we present ourselves.

GWAMIT's brand also includes our event content and execution. We choose event content that is innovative, provocative, and non-overlapping with existing resources. We also pay attention to advertising, putting effort into designing and disseminating our posters (see the Empowerment Conference '11 keynote poster here). At the events, we greet attendees, set the mood by playing music, and have high-quality catering at events we choose to cater. We also bring the GWAMIT banner and also tablecloths and flowers when relevant. People have come to associate GWAMIT with not just a set of ideas, but also a style. This style gives people a good idea of to expect with us and also, we hope, inspires people to join us.

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Of course, the primary legacy of any group depends on its sustainability. Looking forward, it will be important to establish sustainable organization and funding structures and ways of passing on experience from GWAMIT leaders. I also have post on the GWAMIT blog about specific areas of interest for next year.

I am lucky to be working with such brilliant, driven, and effective colleagues in such a supportive environment, within GWAMIT and at MIT. I am excited for what is to come.

Interested in getting involved with GWAMIT? Feel free to e-mail me (jeanyang [at] mit).

Grad Women @ MIT Empowerment Conference

I have been organizing the Graduate Women @ MIT Empowerment Conference, happening Wednesday-Friday this week. Events include a keynote by Cindy Gallop (who has branded herself as herself and gone on to change the world however she wants to), a Power Couples Panel, and a panel on the relevance of modern feminism (titled "I'm not a feminist, but..." to appeal to those who don't yet identify as feminists). There are also workshops on communications and online personal branding.

The conference website is here and there is a Facebook event here.

Articles about Women and the Workplace

One week away and I've collected so many articles about women in my inbox!

Women in Science

• Gender stop-gaps - a Nature article about the under-representation of women in academic science and the measures being taken/advised to address it, including growing the applicant pool, providing a more family-friendly environment, and increasing mentoring. This article also cites organizational changes as important: for instance, a researcher noticed that in smaller biotech startups with flat organization structures, women were as likely as men to hold a patent, while at universities and larger companies men patented significantly more.
  
• NCWIT Report Examines Women's Declining Participating in Tech - a blog post describing a report about the attrition of women in IT careers compared to the past and compared to the numbers of women who pursue tech-related fields in college. The report also describes barriers to participation and how to address them, recommending an "ecosystem of reform."
• Daring to Discuss Women's Potential in Science - a New York Times article about a proposed law that would require the White House science adviser to oversee workshops promoting gender equity. In this piece Tierney raises the question of whether bias exists. This point is not the most relevant to raise, as the existence of differences does not invalidate the need for equity. Rather, learning about differences can educate us about how to provide equal opportunities and make progress in a way that allows people with different cultural backgrounds and strengths to contribute. This Jezebel post makes some good criticisms of the article.

More general

• Dressed to Distract - New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd discusses the firing of Debrahlee Lorezana from Citigroup, for the reason that her looks and dress were "too distracting" for her male coworkers and supervisors. Dowd points out that while this is usually the other way around (beautiful people get what they want), women are often punished professionally for being too beautiful. Dowd writes, "A male friend once told me he was looking for an unattractive personal assistant so he wouldn’t be tempted. And when I was hiring a Grace Kelly blonde as a researcher a few years ago, a male colleague asked me not to because it would be 'too distracting' to him; two girlfriends cautioned me not to because it would be depressing... for me to work with someone so good looking."
• In Sweden, the Men Can Have It All - a New York Times pieces about gender equity in Sweden, where women have equal rights at work and men have equal rights at home--85% of Swedish men take parental leave. This is part of the women around the world series.
  
• A short history of "feminist" anti-feminists - a nice Slate piece about "the early sisters of Sarah Palin," women who claim to be feminists but organize in opposition to the feminist movement. And (yes!) the article cites Camille Paglia ("I'm not soft and silly like all the other women") as the "iconic leader" of a group of contemporary anti-feminists including Christina Hoff-Summers ("why can't a woman be more like a man?").

CRA-W Grad Cohort 2010

April 22-24 I was in Seattle for the Computing Research Association's Grad Cohort for Women. For the last ten years, the CRA has annually been sponsoring graduate women in computer science in their first through third years from across US and Canadian institutions to convene.

Initially skeptical of women-only conferences ("I don't need a special conference to network and discuss research"), I signed up for this upon my friend Oshani's recommendation. CRA-W Grad Cohort turned out to be a highly positive experience. One of the senior women sums it up well in an explanation to a male colleague: "Imagine if you went to work every day and there were only women. Imagine if you went to a conference, excited to discuss your research ideas, and there were only women around. Wouldn't you be excited to encounter another man?"

The program was informative and thought-provoking: there were helpful sessions and panels on topics such as presentation skills and interdisciplinary research. There was also a session on touchier subjects such as how to deal with small-scale harassment and how to identify and handle bias. Additionally, there was a poster session where the second-years presented their research. The program also made good use of the meal times to allow graduate women to network with other women (graduate students and professors) in the same area and at the same point of the academic progression.

It was incredible to be surrounded by and discuss research with so many women in computer science. (It was also somewhat overwhelming because I had never imagined there to be so many women in CS!) The dance party that took place the evening of the first day was also one of my most fun activities in recent times. I highly recommend attending this meeting*!

* There is also the Grace Hopper Celebration for women in CS in the fall.

Grad Women @ MIT Keynote: The Evolution of Bias

I'm excited for Dr. Freada Klein's keynote talk for the Graduate Women at MIT spring kick-off. Description of the talk, "The Evolution of Bias," is as follows:

Though women have been a part of the work force for decades, they still face bias, implicit and explicit, in the workplace. Freada will describe how these biases have changed as a result of research and policy over the years, focusing on the most recent research on implicit biases.

There will be refreshments and an opportunity for mingling and discussion following Freada's talk.

The talk will be 5:30-6:30 (with reception following) in 46-3002.

Freada's husband Mitch Kapor is tweeting to advertise the talk.

The gender gap in Silicon Valley

Thanks to Clarissa for sending this.

A recent NY Times article Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley discusses the (sometimes surprisingly overt) sexism and other factors that are responsible for women creating only 8% of venture-backed start-ups and being 6% of the chief executives at the top 100 tech companies.

Fryer-Levitt math gender gap study

Thanks to Jie Tang for sending this.

Economists Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt have a 2009 study, "An Empirical Analysis of the Gender Gap in Mathematics," in which they analyze the gender gap in the US, explore causes, and discuss cross-country data which shows that countries with same-sex schooling don't have this gap. Paper here; abstract excerpt below:

We document and analyze the emergence of a substantial gender gap in mathematics in the early years of schooling... in the United States. There are no mean differences between boys and girls upon entry to school, but girls lose more than two-tenths of a standard deviation relative to boys over the first six years of school... We explore a wide range of possible explanations in the U.S. data, including less investment by girls in math, low parental expectations, and biased tests, but find little support for any of these theories... The cross-country data reveal that girls do not lag boys in math in countries with same-sex schooling, raising an intriguing question as to whether this relationship is causal.

I am not surprised. Since traditional gender roles are so ingrained in our consciousness, it is natural that young men and women would look to them in determining acceptable behavior*. Having young women hold back in math causes a feedback loop that makes it increasingly difficult for young women to develop their mathematical ability: as fewer women become good at math, 1) people become less accustomed to seeing women who are good at math, making it difficult for women to proves themselves w.r.t. math and 2) women with mathematical talent are less likely to develop it, since they are not expecting to be good.

These findings corroborate the hypothesis that the US gender gap in math is largely due to cultural factors. (See my other link.) They also fit with my personal experiences: one of the biggest social challenges I faced in leaving my all-girls high school for a coed college environment was having people treat me like I shouldn't know what I'm doing when it comes to math. This was not only frustrating but also harmful to my self-confidence--it probably caused some amount of deadweight loss in my mathematical development.

Shifting current gender roles could go a long way in bridging the gender gap.

* I am curious to see studies analyzing how other traits associated with masculinity (physical strength, debate ability) fare under an analogous analysis.

Gender imbalance among Harvard's CS undergrads

I was recently interviewed for this Harvard Crimson article about the dearth of female undergraduates concentrating in computer science at Harvard. While the article misrepresents some details about me, it gets it right that a large factor in the skewed ratio is the male dominance in terms of both numbers and culture (which manifests in things like problem set groups).

Computer engineer Barbie

My friend Rishabh's dreams have come true. Computer engineer Barbie is here by popular vote. Mattel even worked with the Society of Women Engineers to make sure that she is wearing the appropriate "geek chic" attire. Bravo, Barbie.

Graduate Women at MIT gets some press

I have been involved in starting Graduate Women at MIT, an institute-wide women's group. We got some press in the MIT Tech today, which provides an exciting start to our kick-off spring.

Next Barbie: computer engineer

I'm really amused by this Barbie vote for the next Barbie: will she be an environmentalist, surgeon, architect, news anchor, or computer engineer? It's especially amusing(/terrible) is that Barbie seems to adopt a new career only every few years.