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Breaking Gender Cliques at Work?
An anonymous reader asks: "No-one likes finding themselves being the 'odd one out' of a clique, and gender barriers make them harder to break. The question is simple: what can a girl in IT do when she finds herself on the outside of those cliques of boy coworkers? Or inversely, what should groups of boys at work be doing to be more welcoming for that lone girl in the IT office?"
Ugh, there's no need to focus on "gender issues". There are all kinds of "cliques" in this world and they aren't necessarily gender-based. (PS: why "boys" and "girl", is this kindergarden? How about "men" and "women").
Maybe you're just new, or you're smarter than them, or you're a different race, or you speak with an accent, or you have different skills, or maybe, you're just shy. Conversely, they might be scared of you! Sometimes guys in IT just have pretty bad social skills.
The first thing to keep in mind is that YOU are responsible for everything that happens to you. I know, this is kind of a foreign concept in our society, but bear with me here. If you want to be friends with your co-workers, you can. If you don't like your co-workers and you want a different job, you can make that happen too. If you want to change the culture in your office, become the CEO, or anything else, you are capable of it. Once you have this kind of confidence, making friends is easy. No need to blame something outside yourself ("gender clique") when you're perfectly capable of achieving whatever you desire.
I know that's a "big" answer to a "small" question, but there was a point in my life when I had a revelation along those lines and these kinds of "problems" just stopped happening to me.
For a specific answer, the best way to make friends with someone (or a group) is to to treat them like they are your friends and have been for a long time. Pretty easy!
So, let's assume these folks are your best friends. What do you do when you see them, say, together at lunch? You join them. You sit down and act as if it's totally appropriate to sit down and say hello, and you've been doing it for years. You have genuine interest in what they say, and you're eager to learn from them and appreciate whatever differences they have from you. You don't care what gender they are, and if they're cold or unreceptive, it's because you need to be a little more patient or try a little harder.
If for some reason they won't accept you as part of their social group, then that's fine too. You can just do your job the best you can, or better yet, leave and get a better job.
Think of some ideas along these lines, ways you can connect with your co-workers. Write them down, and then tomorrow, put them into action.
As for them, well, if they want advice they can Ask Slashdot themselves. You are the one asking the question.
I would suggest getting a lawyer because you should be able to have several sexual harrassment suits on your hands, you won't need to work there much longer.
This is exactly why I refuse to have anything to do with any of my female coworkers. It is *far* too easy to get slapped with a sexual harassment complaint these days. I've never been hit with one myself (and I think my refuse-to-deal-with-them policy is why I've been safe), but I've seen coworkers hit and fired for it. Simple stuff, like asking if your female coworker would like to go to lunch has been enough to get coworkers written up at companies I've worked for. No guy would hesitate to ask another guy what his lunch plans were, but ask a female and you're heading for trouble.
Is this extreme? Yes, it is. But I like having income. So I simple refuse to have anything to do with female coworkers that isn't directly job related. No friendliness, no joking around, no post-work activities, no weekend/holiday party invitations. Seriously, this is how guys feel comfortable keeping their jobs because the sexual harassment system is completely screwed up.
So to the women asking how they can "fit in", the answer is that you can't. Some group of ultra-feminists with get-em-fired happy lawyers have ruined it for the rest of you. In an office full of men, we're scared to death of you, because even a wrong look can take away our ability to support our families. So please, for everyone's sake, just leave us alone.
hmm ... ok, i'm a female in programming and, as such, generally the only female programmer where i work. i've occasionally worked places where there's been one other female. anyway, i've never noticed any discomfort or "clique-ishness" in getting along, really. just the normal "i'm the new 'guy' and we're all a little shy" thing. since we're all geeks, we all tend to have at least some interests in common and so have things to talk about/bond over. now, when i worked game dev it was less comfortable being the girl, for some reason, but maybe it's just harder being the new guy there and not a gender thing at all. generally (in 'normal' software dev) i've never felt any issues from my coworkers. places where we're likely to not hit it off tend to be around politics and stuff like that, not gender differences.
i will say, though, the one annoying thing i've encountered is management. for some reason every place i've worked where there's been another female programmer, management seems to think the two of us would just LOVE to sit next to each other. every. single. time. "let's put the girls together!!" sheesh. like we'd automagically be bff and braid each other's hair or something. i usually don't even get along all that well with other girls (we don't seem to have much in common), so this chafes.
We had a new woman in my department. It was even worse b/c she was very attractive. We all wanted to invite her out with us after work, not because we were trying to score with her, but because we wanted her to be part of the team. We never invited her, because we were all worried about sexual harrassment. It is tough to ask a young woman out with us, because we are worried about her taking it the wrong way. She ended up leaving the job after a few months. My advice to a woman who wants to be in the clique, is to initiate friendships. Men in many workplaces are so worried about getting called down to HR (Who hasn't sat through sexual harrassment training) that we ignore women and avoid eye contact...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Yes, I think this is the key point. If a bunch of IT/math/whatever geek guys are all keeping their heads down, not talking, and avoiding eye contact, then they are doing everything in their power to make the girl feel welcome. Seriously. In the limited geek-understanding of social skills, one of the few key points that the smart ones manage to figure out is usually, "Don't stare at her boobs, don't hit on her. If I do that, I'll scare her away and she won't talk to me anymore." Personally, I'm still working on getting my social skills *up to* that level.
I have pretty much never seen a group of guys actively try to exclude a girl. Sure, it happens occasionally. But, it is pretty rare. Girls just seem to have different expectations of socialising from male geeks.
I'm not questioning your anecdotes, but chances are good that there were factors in the SH suits that resulted in firings that you weren't privy to. The guidelines for Harassment at my office are quite clear, and it doesn't take 1337 social skills to be able to follow them, and demonstrate that you followed them. The kind of people crazy enough to file a SH suit over being asked to go for lunch with "the guys" are something of a rarity. People don't deserve to be ostracised because of something someone else did sometime who happened to have the same gender.
What can a lone girl to gain some acceptance? Visit your coworkers (on your team) in their cubes to ask for help, comment on the stuff they have there. Guys have things in their cubes for a reason. Try inviting groups to go for lunch. If you have a boyfriend or husband, mention them every now and then, it'll put you in the safe zone, where they can treat you like one of the guys. When all else fails, just invite yourself along when the cliques gather. People can only resist the instinct to add to the tribe for so long.
As to the converse, people shoudl go out of their way to welcome new hires. Make sure they know where people eat lunch/have coffee and that they should come along. If you're worried about sexual harrassment, approach the new girl in the office in pairs. It's much harder to interpret an invitation to a social occasion as an advance if it comes from a group.
The lawyer thing is actually a pretty serious detriment to male-female interactions at work.
Most IT houses these days have pretty strict sexual harassment rules. Even small computer centers have "Harassment Awareness" training of some kind. The idea that sexual harassment == being sued and/or fired is hammered in to IT workers to the extreme.
Worse, there are no end of horror stories about an innocent comment or action being construted as harassment by overzealous HR departments. How many times have we all heard the old saw about an unscrupulous woman pressing sexual harassment charges? It's mostly urban legend and closet sexism, but the idea is still there.
The net effect is that even very well-adjusted male IT personell are wary of offending a woman, should it result in loss of employment. They'll avoid conversations with women at work, not out of sexism, but out of a sense of personal safety.
The unfortuneate not-so-well-adjusted IT guys are TERRIFIED. The guys who had trouble talking to females in highschool and college suddenly find themselves under threat of legal action when they enter the workplace, as well as ordinary crushing rejection.
If a woman wants to interact with these guys, she's going to have to make the first move.
No, a woman shouldn't have to prove anything upon entering the workplace. Unfortuneately, the climate that's been created by an oversensitivity to sexual harassment means that a woman has a lot to prove. Sad, but true.
She's got to prove that she won't sue someone for a social mistake.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
4) Make sure she makes friends with one older, married person in the team and that they are part of social events. If she's feeling pressured, she'll cling to this person because she knows they don't want to bang her.
You obviously haven't met the older, married people I used to work with. They could out letch out perv and out grope the younger single guys without the slightest bit of problem.
What a joke this is.
You're the only one in the group of your sex. That puts you on the outside, but also gives you the "I'm the only one" power. If you're a guy in a group of women or a girl in a group of men, you're in a good position, if you're not too prudish and antisocial to use it. If you are, tough shit. Life sucks sometimes when your expectations clash with reality, don't it?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Kanga: That's not a fish, that's a bird.
Pooh: Yes, but is it a starling or a mackeral?
If you're a woman in an all guy enviroment, just be the first one to tell an off-color joke. That usually breaks the tension enough that it's pretty easy from there on out.
My biggest complaint with my female co-workers has been a total unwillingness to put in any overtime, work on any extra projects, etc. The usual excuse always has something to do with their kids - picking them up, taking them to practice, etc. Seriously, is it going to kill your husband if he has to be the one to take Suzie to band practice one night out of how many months? Since they don't really carry their share, they are seen as second string contributors by most of my male colleagues. I have to admit that in many ways I seem them in the same light.
Then when they get passed over for promotions, plum assignments, etc. they get bitter and resentful. Since I've always been willing to do what needs doing to get the job done, I get a lot of respect from my male counterparts and superiors. If something's broken, I'm staying until it's fixed. I work pretty hard to make sure that nothing's going to be broken, but hey, stuff happens. Patches don't always perform as expected. Maybe the router needs to be rebooted. It doesn't really matter what the problem is, but if it's genuinely mission critical, I'm not going home until it's back on line.
Because of this, I'm a frequent recipient of bonuses, very positive performance appraisals, interesting projects, etc. I've had to deal with some female colleagues who were unhappy because they got passed over and I didn't. They would have liked to be able to file a complaint with HR that they were being discriminated against because of gender, but since so many of the things they wanted went to me, they could not. I actually got into a shouting match with one of them because I got an assignement she wanted. She made some accusations about favoritism and had no idea that her turning into a pumpkin promptly at 3pm, no matter what else was happening, was costing her. She thought that it was because I went outside and smoked with all the guys. That had very little to do with it. I got invited to go out and smoke with the guys precisely because I was "one of the team" and not "one of the candya$$&$". I tried to explain to her that if she'd just stick around or work an overtime assignment once in a while, it would go a long way toward smoothing things over for her, but she didn't want to hear it.
Instead of her own bad behvior, she made a bunch of accusations that ended up with her getting fired. She complained that I was getting favorable treatment when she was just a competent (which she wasn't - she made a lot of high profile mistakes including knocking out our external connection), doing the same work (which she wasn't - system operator vs. network administrator), and doing just as good a job (which she wasn't - HR said that the performance reviews were "no comparision"). After a few interviews with our co-workers, HR decided that she was the one with the problem and asked me if I'd like to file a complaint about her creating a hostile work environment (the whole incident where she cornered me in the women's bathroom and screamed at me - so loudly and so long that several other employees came into the restroom to find out what was going on). After consulting with my boss, I decided that it was probably best that I file the complaint. You cannot imagine how surprised she was when she was the one that got fired. Sadly, it only got worse from there because I started getting threatening phone calls from her husband. I called the police, filed a complaint, and they got arrested.
Frankly, a lot of the women I work with really make me angry because they give the rest of us a bad name. They want all the gravy, but they don't want to pay the dues to get it.
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
I have a wonderful and, thus far, apparently foolproof system: I'm from another culture.
Them: "We think you interacted inappropriately with that female."
Me: "In my culture, that's entirely appropriate. Is this a race thing? Are you singling out my very respectful 'English' behavior as inappropriate in your American workplace?"
Them: "Oh, shit. We could get sued for that, couldn't we? Pretend we said nothing."
It's much like patent law. Companies patent stupid crap they don't really need to patent simply so that when the next company sues them, they have something they could counter sue over and they know they'll both agree to back off in exchange for shared patents.
As I am of a different race, so long as I'm basically polite, cases where fear-of-getting-sued prompts people to freak out over my being male and talking to females can be just as quickly quashed by their equally over inflated fear of an English employee suing over cultural insensitivity and racism.
99% of sexual harassment stupidity isn't motivated by actual lawsuits so much as fear of lawsuits. If I genuinely commit sexual harassment, I expect to get disciplined for it. On the other hand, if people want to freak out about possibilities, I'll give them other possibilities that are just as scary to push them back the other way.
As a woman in IT, i can't say I've had any trouble with male "cliques". I'm also surprised by those stories about sexual harassment accusations which is something I've never encountered or even heard of over here in Europe.
/msgs to do so as opposed to suffering the humiliation of having a girl tell them how to debug their C progams in public. Approximately the same thing happens in the workplace. The main problem with people not talking about your skills publicly is that, this way, you're getting little public credit for your achievements.
One thing that is true is that guys usually view their female co-workers as less competent. They go to great lengths to explain simple things to you over and over again as if they doubted your ability to comprehend basic technical matters. In general, males also tend to be over-helpful, trying to do things for you they assume to be too complicated for a woman. "This part is tricky, it needs to be written in assembley language, we'll give it to someone else" combined with a knowing smile isn't something most male programmers would hear very often.
My usual reaction to this is to turn down the entire contract offer.
On a positive note though, once you've worked together for some time, respect for your abilities does eventually turn in. However, it is rarely shown in public. It's more like <whisper>hey, you're good</whisper>. I'm a long time regular on various technical IRC channels, and while guys on those channels do seek my help with tricky problems, they mainly use private
I'm a female geek who is used to working in a mostly male environment. And it has never been a problem. Parent is absolutely right - girls who want to work in IT have to recognise that most guys AREN'T intending sexual harassment, it's just a joke. And when a guy is out of line I tell him to his face, and he apologises, and that's the end of it.
;)
I actually agree that excessive feminism is making things hard for both genders. A girl who really wants to fit in with the guys has to be willing to BE one of the guys - turn a blind eye to the less attractive parts of male culture, or laugh along (some of it really is funny, you know). Don't be ashamed of being a woman, but don't flaunt it either (skirts are okay, low necklines are just cruel to single guys). Eventually you'll have the guys asking you for advice on other women
It probably helps that I'm married, and was already engaged when I started working as a UNIX admin - no guy with half a brain cracks on to a girl with a diamond ring on that finger.
It doesn't matter if you have all your conversations recorded by company email or witnesses. The whole he said she said can be a bunch of lies designed to get her ahead or revenge on you for something. All she has to do is create/imagine a scenario were it is likley something could have happened or been said.
Men in a work enviroment shouldn't do anything to invite the women in that enviroment into thier Click. All they should do is make sure she/they aren't automaticly excluded or made to feel too uncomfortable if they attempt to join in. By all means tear down the barriers but don't feel obligated to go any further then that.
This is a total and utter red herring. Your gender is irrelevant. I've seen males and females not fitting in, because they didn't fit in. This is an issue of culture.
Because it shouldn't be. Do your thing, be yourself. Computer nerditry is predominantly male, but being a geek is a gender-neutral lifestyle. There will always be some work environments that are better able to handle the "not like us" members of the team, whether gender-wise, or age-wise, or race-wise. What i've seen, though, is that teams that treat women poorly treat almost everyone poorly, and it's usually a sign to get the hell out.
It's not like there is some magic bullet for female geeks. A woman in IT may just as likely be a fish out of water with the Cosmo-reading stereotype that is outlined by our esteemed cohorts here, and totally able to relate to the dorkiness of whatever band of computer misfits might be around. It's not like every woman born onto this planet is replete with all of the social graces just because she's female. So, be a dork. Or dorque.
If you're looking for other women in computer-related fields to chat with, try Systers, Linuxchix, search meetup, whatever. Practice talking to other tech people like colleagues, regardless of gender, and it will become easier to interact with your coworkers. And there are thousands of conversation topics for IT people that have nothing to do with ribaldry or innuendo. Don't become the office cruise director, the instigator of dumb things like "let's celebrate birthdays each month", or crochet cozies for the headsets (unless they're amigurumi). I'm guessing those sorts of things don't come naturally to you anyway. I'd want to punch someone who wanted to make a thing out of celebrating birthdays and it showed up on my calendar. Spontaneous confectionary combustion is another matter.
For the posters here who complain about being afraid of being hauled to HR for naughty jokes, you should be. It's a workplace, not a locker room. Remember the locker room? Where the football player peed on you and laughed? Yeah. Keep your lame jokes for some other time.
So, essentially, meet them halfway. Be friendly, start conversations, don't judge their social shortcomings. Don't act like a victim, and don't take any crap either. It's a big world out there, there are a lot of jobs, there are a lot of assholes, and there are a lot of good people. The good ones will make you want to stay at a job that essentially sucks and the assholes will drive you out of your dream job. The trick is to know which is which, and not lose sight of what got you into IT in the first place. One batch of self-involved coworkers does not a career make.
Good luck
--mandi
my birthday is in october. i put it on your calendar
However, I did work at a place where two of the female workers constantly made comments about the men's "physical attributes" and was told that, "there's nothing we can do about it." When one of the male workers said, "So if she can go around to the men and say 'Nice ass', does that mean I can go to her and say, 'Nice tits?'" He was immediately reprimanded and was forced to go to sensitivity training.
Wow. Too bad you aren't still there. I'd get a lawyer. There wouldn't be a lawyer that wouldn't just jump up and shout at that case. The publicity, the novelty, the huge potential for settlement, big money.
With just a touch of documentation, it'd be huge. You'd make a huge point about double standards, how such policies can be nothing more than reverse discrimination, and so on. Oh, and if the company was big, hello payday.
Of course, you forever would be known as that guy.I know what you mean. I'm honestly the only dude in my department (well, aside from the token gay dude, but he's more of a girl than some of the girls there, and proud of it).
... well, not doing your job.
How do I deal?
They're coworkers. I involve myself in the dynamics of the job and the personalities of my coworkers. Anything less is
If the problem is the respect of your peers, demand their respect. If you're unsure about something, think it through and try to get the right answer for yourself before asking for help (don't take hours to do it). Get things done both quickly and right.
No, I'm not assuming these things need to be said to women. It's how I learned to earn my coworkers' respect.
Also, -1 Flamebait to this article for assuming that being the 'only one' is a girl-only problem. Any new job comes with that feeling. It's just amplified when you're outside of your gender pool. Get over it, and get to work.
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