Slashdot Mirror
Coping Strategies for Women in IT
Ian Lamont writes "Female workers are losing ground in the IT profession, reports Computerworld, citing statistics which show a sharp drop in the number of female CS grads since the 1980s, and a decline in the percentage of women in the IT profession since 2001. According to the article, causes include pervasive stereotypes and the locker-room atmosphere found in some IT shops — attitudes which some readers may recognize from the comments in a Slashdot thread last week. The IT professionals interviewed in the Computerworld article discuss a variety of strategies for coping. They range from trying to 'out-boy the boys' to watching what you say, as one Sun Microsystems executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"
Hrmmm,
I say we just give any and all female hires shiny new Sig sidearms with a license to shoot anyone (especially upper management) that harasses them. Seriously though, as one who has had to instigate actions against individuals senior to myself for sexual harassment of colleagues, the issue of unwelcome environments is well known. Fortunately, things are getting progressively better as I have been seeing an uptick in the number of seriously qualified individuals who happen to be women among the alpha users of the IT community (PhD candidates in Computer Science). But in the interim, I would discourage women from feeling that they have to "out-boy the boys" as that behavior simply compounds the problem and makes legal issues more complex leading to the likelihood that if problems do arise, everybody gets fired. Besides, the type of person that would engage in locker-room behavior may in fact be encouraged by a woman stooping to that level. I would also encourage women to be as vocal as necessary in meetings and not reserve comments for those times when you think that what you say is representative of genius. Just do your job, be professional, ask questions when necessary and remember that you do not have to tolerate any bullshit that your male colleagues do not have to endure.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Bear in mind also the expectations that most IT people work in. You are expected to put in ridiculous amounts of hours, sometimes be on call 24/7, all for pay that's in many cases only somewhat better than that of a janitor.
No... women are leaving IT in droves because they're taking one look at what kind of career path they can look forward to and saying, "Screw this".
There is a reason why there are so few females in IT. Most realize it's a dead-end profession, filled with nothing but CS dropouts doing nothing more complex than cable-pulling, router rebooting, and windows reinstallations.
It's a good profession for those who obviously drank too much in College, but don't expect to get anywhere.
I've watched a girl get run out our IT dept by a manager with zero social skills. Sometimes, instead of coping strategies, looking at other jobs is probably the better way to go.
Well, I've also noticed that there isn't a good representation of women in garbage collection force either. Oh no, they're also under-represented in the mines!
Won't somebody think of the childr...err...women!
Maybe, just maybe, the different genders gravitate to the fields that they like. Or, gasp, are suited for.
That's not to say that women aren't suited for the IT field. Men and women are different, even if the politically correct people don't want you to believe it. So it makes sense that they just might be predisposed to liking different things...including professions.
But forget that, let's just force the different genders into the professions that politically correct-driven math says that they should be, and not what they want to be in.
I've worked in IT and a number of other 'male dominated jobs' and its interesting to see how those females who are successful actually knuckle down and get on with work - those who sit around and whine about the injustices of the world simply come off as complainers with the "I should get promoted because I'm a....". I've seen it before, females being over looked for a job, then blaming the 'old boys club' when in reality they ignore the fact that 100s of men were looked over for the job as well - are they going to jump up and lay claim because of their hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, car colour or something else stopped them from moving up? Simply expecting to get the job because you happened to get the 'highest qualified' happens to ignore the reality of how people are selected for promotion.
Just as a side note; for females who are reading - want to know how to get on with your male collegues - take the piss, have fun, take the piss out of yourself, go out to the pub and drink with the boys - and maybe realise that if you present yourself as an equal rather than a 'weak and frail women' you might actually get included as 'one of the boys'. Socialising is the key.
I mean, I've worked in female dominated jobs, and believe me - females do not make it easy for males to merge themselves into the company culture. Heck, they're not even nice to their own sex! my sister was in a very similar situation - her rule, never work with females. This is a female who can't stand working with females. I think that speaks volumes.
When there are millions of females 'getting on' in male dominated situations, I think those who do complain have no legs to stand on. Like I've said, I've worked in male dominated jobs, and those females who do knuckle down and work - socialise and act like 'one of the boys' actually enjoy themselves.
Don't try to 'feminise' the work place - realise that its rome, and its up to you 'to do as the romans do'
I'm a man, so I don't have first hand experience, but when women try to "out boy the boys", it does not work. It can be disastrous. Ignoring it is also bad, because it seems like approval. It seems like the best way is to address it directly and calmly: "I realize I'm the only woman here, so I need to remind you. Let's keep this environment professional and productive. Save the other stuff for after work with your friends." Women should also go to management as needed. Sexual harassment torts are very very expensive and management will want to head those off.
And this is EXACTLY the kind of attitude that female IT workers encounter on the job. Sure, it's funny on Slashdot, but after months or years of putting up with it... well, let's just say it was old before it started, and thick-skinned barely begins to describe how a woman needs to be to succeed in the techie world.
"you're representing [females] with a capital F"
Then I'd say she has an issue. My personal experience of working with a lot of women (and yes, even more men) is that if people of either gender behave in a straightforward way, they'll be treated by the vast majority of their co-workers in an appropriate manner.
If someone starts to think they're representing more than themselves, maybe they need to look at their own self-image.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I'm a man, have worked in the IT industry as a programmer/analyst and taught courses around the technologies I've used. In my experience women tend to cope better than men in the field. Women are often more level-headed, more organized, methodical and devoted to the cause.
I prefer to have women bosses and administrators.
The largest problem I've seen for women is having families because they are stuck with bearing the kids -- that's when women get taken out of the loop. There are always exceptions but often the women -- having born the kids -- often become comparatively more family-oriented than the man who will keep pushing through the industry and stay on top of things. The IT business moves fast. Having a kid can cause you to effectively be taken out of the race. No matter how much it sucks I've seen it happen a lot.
The biological clock factor doesn't help either because you have a limited time, often which could be peak career time, to have kids.
The IT professionals interviewed in the Computerworld article discuss a variety of strategies for coping.
Typical female stuff.. get together and share tips for "coping". Are we (successful men AND women) supposed to feel sorry for them? Wanna know my strategy for "coping"? I double down, dominate the problem, improve myself, and come out kicking ass. It never occurred to me that I should complain or change the system. I can only change myself, right?
They range from trying to 'out-boy the boys' to watching what you say, as one Sun Microsystems executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'
People like this piss me off. (Some men do it too.) You're NOT representing all females, don't PUT YOURSELF in that role. Maybe other people think that, but WHY DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK? Do your job!
If you have something to say in a meeting, SAY IT.
Another thing that pisses me off: if you want a raise ASK FOR ONE. Don't just assume that you'll get one, and then complain that you didn't.
And hey guess what. Half the guys in the meeting are ALSO WATCHING WHAT THEY SAY. Guess why!
I guess what it comes down to is this: do you think the workplace is like a "locker room" because work is COMPETITIVE, or because of the MEN? What is the correlation? Hmmmmmmmmmm...
I know plenty of successful women (in business, as mothers, and as people in general). They don't whine about this stuff. My philosophy: if at least one person can achieve the goal you want achieve, YOU CAN TOO.
If you want to increase the number of Women in IT I suggest changing your focus. Rather than looking to colleges, try recruiting grade school teachers. They're used to dealing with people who have underdeveloped social skills. At a previous job we had 2 former school teachers they were both able to deal.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
In college I took a few archaeology courses. In all, men were in the minority; in one, I was the only man. How do women make it easier for men in female-dominated fields? What are women doing to increase the participation of men in, say, archaeology? I semi-seriously proposed (to another guy in the department) that we should start a "Society of Men Archaeologists". It would have been way smaller than SWE.
Maybe being the odd man out back then has made me more tolerant today. Or maybe not. Who am I to say?
Anyway, this does not make IT special; it's true in any field with an uneven sex ratio. They're just being sensationalist because they can. You don't see "Coping Strategies for Men in Archaeology" on archaeology websites.
When will people get it through their head that CS and IT are NOT the same thing.
Would you mind PROVIDING any REFERENCES supporting your OUTLANDISH claims?
Can be very different--if I remember the studies at my alma mater, they found that more women were in tech before the dot.com bubble burst, and the burst had a disproportionate effect, because a larger percentage of the women in tech were interested in it because it was a good thing to do from a career-planning standpoint, while the guys tended to be in it because they loved (or liked) doing it. What stayed fairly stable, I think, was the number of interdisciplinary female students--women in other fields (usually hard sciences) who wanted to have the comp sci background that would be useful for them in their disciplines.
...remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say
Shouldn't meeting be like this? Otherwise they go on for hours and hours without much being accomplished. Also, if you think your corp hired someone mediocre when they hired you, you really got more to worry about...
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
My wife is a software engineer, and a very good one. She hates working with most women, and this is why she's told me as such:
1) They're catty.
2) They often use the power of the pussy to get out of doing real work.
3) Many of them are there just because someone pushed them into working in IT.
4) Did I mention that many of them are extremely insecure and often viciously attack other women far worse than the men would ever even conceive of doing?
All of the women around me are the "intelligent, strong, independent women" that feminists talk about. Growing up around them, and then being exposed to almost nothing but "normal women" at a liberal arts college made me realize that the personality difference is hard-wired. They're not what women generally are, and that's ok. However, that realization made me have to face the fact that most women should be nowhere near anything technical, anymore than most men should be around a daycare job.
Call me a misogynist if you want, but clearly I am not afraid to simultaneously hold "retrograde views" on women, while being happily married to a woman who has several years on me professionally and makes more than I do at this point. The truth is, if you need to cope with your job, you have no business being there. Either it's the wrong environment or the wrong profession, and for most women, it's the latter.
are the root of much sexism from IT men. Yes there are other causes, like general asshattery, but I'd say insecurity leads the pack. Of course, the other causes tend to focus the attentions of the incompetent/insecure on sexism as an outlet for their aggression. Be professional, seek support, and generally outshine your pale movenist shig cow-orker. Make sure that management knows things go better when you're involved, but don't be the source of that awareness. Be nonchalant and modest about your abilities and let the jackasses hang themselves. That being said, don't stay in an intolerable situation that has no remedy.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
While someone may truly be offended at such humor or ridicule depending on the circumstances, what is commonly ignored is that men do this to each other constantly. You are not getting special treatment because you are female, we are in fact showing acceptance by treating you as "one of the guys". If you don't like it then we end up pampering, which ironically also gets us yelled at for not treating females as "one of the guys". Which honestly is just a small part of the whole men never understanding women and vice-versa problem which is as we know, one of those age old dilemmas.
Disclaimer: There is of course a percentage that is completely and utterly sexual harassment, and it is a very bad thing. However, I am addressing the portion that is mislabeled.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
to leave. I have an engineering degree and am/was good a programming, design, etc. I programed on some open source projects under a male pseudonym so I wouldn't have to be treated like "whoa! a cool geek chick" but as a person. I quit in a large part because of the gender dynamics... you can see in these comments that the men who are appearing to be "supportive" of women in IT are still emphasizing the women who are able to outshine boys, are hot, etc. Even through my degree I felt like 24/7 I had to prove I had a right to be there. Sometimes the gender environment is more than competitive like this, it is hostile and abusive. I could only take it for so long, I quit, I am much happier than I was then. I love tech stuff, I miss it, I still program, I still do little things now and then, I am still good at it, it is just that I don't want to be fighting my whole life.
You can say all the biological determinism (yeah right, men are biologically programmed to be in IT... ugh) stuff you want, the reality is there is a major social bias. Some of it is the whole environment from top to bottom, the solution isn't just to have some postercard companies hiring 20% female workers, it require a much larger shift than that, a shift in people's willingness to engage with a gender analysis. Like, even if you are "a nice guy" or you "support women in IT", maybe you have certain behaviours and ways of organizing/managing/participating that alienate women and you need to address them personally. Maybe you need to criticize your male peers when you are talking in the washroom (er. locker room) What do you expect of your women co-workers? There are lots of men who are completely incompetent in IT but manage to have full financially rewarding careers in it, is that true for women?
I don't know how to bring it about but it requires men from all levels of the workplace to be able to critique themselves and the work environment and be willing to change, not just get all confused when they see the stats. It isn't really a discussion if it's a problem, or why it's a problem. We, as women in tech, are telling you there is a major problem and there are many many eloquent papers/reports/studies/etc. that explain what that problem is and that suggest some strategies to approach it. Men can call us whiners for pointing it out, or they swallow their ego and start trying to address the issues.
It could be that women are not 'losing ground' so much as 'wising up' to the fact that a career in IT sucks. You are expected to be God all the time, yet work, paradoxically, ungodlike hours. You are responsible for everything working correctly to the second. If it doesn't, the company stops working and starts bitching. You never have enough time to do excellent quality work, so you settle for what works and just gets you by. You have impossible deadlines set by people who have no idea what it takes because it 'sounds simple.' You work with end users who, by and large, have no idea what they are doing computer wise, couldn't care less, and blame you for having to do difficult things like, umm, reboot. Plus an IT career rarely leads to promotion to the Board Room or excellent salaries. Face it, many times being in IT is like being a Technological Janitor.
It could be that women, even if they are attracted to technology, see what a terrible quality of life is to be had in IT and opt out. Women don't go into IT because they are too smart to fall for it.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
You are WRONG!
Many primates and mammals ahve genetic bias for toy selection. Its not society.
IQ is genetic and above IQ 125 females are scarce.
Also Alexander & Hines (2002) gave 44 vervet monkeys of each sex six toys to play with; two male-typical (a toy car and ball), two female-typical (a doll and pot) and two sex-neutral (a book and stuffed animal). Male ververts were more likely than females to engage the car and ball while females were more likely to play with the doll and pot. No difference was found in the neutral toys. Neonatal androgen exposure has been linked to play preferences in rats, rhesus monkeys, and human females, as well as vervet monkeys. HUMANS.
Because of political correct uneducated people like you, the president of harvard was FIRED for merely mentioning the fact that girls are genetically wired to play with dolls. He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls.
By raw percentages, the worst advanced coders are female.
Its simple biology. Read the "Bell Curve" for thousands (yes thousands) of reference citations.
The brains are different (lateralization of hemispheres). In fact from over twenty feet away, with over 95% precision anyone can trivially tell if a brain sliced in half sideways is female or male. The difference is truly visible from over twenty feet away.
Females are different. Get over it.
Here's a hint: Very few people actually want to work in mines. People do so because it's a living, and only people who are physically able to handle it can and do make a career out of it. My point is that there's a difference between women not working in mines where they're physically predisposed to having a hard time and women not working at a particular desk job because their coworkers are assholes. The former makes sense and cannot be changed and the latter is an unfortunate and unnecessary loss to the economy.
Because the lifting requirement is there for a reason? That's like saying, "Math is hard, and removing math from the curriculum would give us more electrical engineers!" The people you graduate will no longer be qualified electrical engineers. If you can do the job without lifting heavy weights, the requirement shouldn't be there. If you can't do the job without lifting heavy weights, the requirement shouldn't be compromised. I don't know which of those was the case in the changing of the fire department requirements.
The more important question is, should we be concerned that part of the "job requirement" for being a woman in engineering or IT is being treated with disrespect or even outright contempt, or should we just consider it "part of the job" like getting dirty in a coal mine? Yes, there are jobs that have hard physical requirements, and no modifications to the job description will change that. The analogous problem in an air conditioned office building with comfortable chairs is a very solvable one, though. Working with people who have no clue how to treat their coworkers is not an endemic feature of the job the same way hauling rocks is a core part of what a coal miner does. Claiming otherwise is simply giving people a pass for acting inappropriately in the workplace.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
If women and men are truly equal, then we can stop worrying about parity between the sexes in any given profession. Much like the failed and misguided notion of affirmative action, to keep track of, and actually worry about, the amount of females vs. males in a given profession is disingenuous and misleading.
For instance, how come we aren't worried about a lack of female lion tamers? A lack of asian sports car drivers? A lack of male midwives?
If we are going to be a truly egalitarian society, we need to stop separating people out into groups based on something as silly and inconsequential as what sex organs somebody has. What's next, an article decrying the lack of green-eyed, brown-haired bellhops?
Women: You're not representing anyone but yourself. Men really don't look at one woman and judge your entire sex based on that one person. That is a misconception you have, its all in your head. Get over yourselves. Just do your job to the best of your ability. Same goes for all you "i'm being held back by my race" people. Maybe if you concentrated on your job and improving your skills, and spent less time worrying about abstract concepts like whether you are being viewed as a representative of your demographic, you'd find more people around you concentrate on your job and your skills.
Where are all the albino theatre ticket takers, anyway?!?!
One thing I really like about IT is the refusal of most geeks to put up with this kind of navel gazing bullshit. People who're always on about "power struggles" and "ignorant of diversity" never make good programmers, because computers aren't likely to be bullied into behaving like the whipped men in their lives.
When I read "I've struggled with gender politics" what I see is "I'm a lousy programmer and people keep treating me like a lousy programmer because I'm a woman."
I am not an american, so I am just noting my observation, and I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions etc etc.
Most women in america do not know how not to be b*tchy. They have grown up where on an
average men will never say no to them for anything, even if they are act so totally stupid and wrong, just becos if the guy does not open the car door, no favours at night.
So guys keep saying yes for most part for anything that they can allow, and women grow up thinking that they are so always right and they are so special, even if she's just a minimum wage waitress as long as she's okay looking.
So, except such a woman to be a total ass when she's in a discussion where data is to be compared, and decisions to be based on facts. She will resent being told that she might not be right. ofcourse it can only be because she's a woman and the other is a man. Such people will not go far in terms of being appreciated, with their big chips on their shoulders.
see all those ads in tvs where the guy is a bumbling idiot and the woman, with a smug smile and a smirk on her face, is the 'always right'? Some women take that attitude a bit too far and think workplace is like that too.
That's mostly the problem with women and any non-kitty-party profession.
No, it doesn't apply equally both ways, and a lot of it has to do with how we got here.
Back when the world was separated into "men's work" and "women's work", it was so because the general view was that women were not as capable as men. Those things that were classified as "men's work" from hunting to warmaking to running a business to performing surgery to studying math were seen not just as things a man should do, but as things that women were simply incapable of doing as well as a man. Whereas those things that were "women's work" were never seen as things that a man couldn't do. Men could clean and cook and knit they just wouldn't because that was "women's work" and the man should be using his superior capacities for grander pursuits like killing people from the next country over.
So a man going into a woman-dominated field has to fight against the social stigma of going outside their gender-role. A woman not only has to fight the social stigma, they also have to fight the thinking behind that stigma which is that they aren't as capable of doing "manly" things. And if you've read any slashdot threads on this kind of subject before, you can easily see that this way of thinking is alive and well.
There are of course exceptions. I think nursing was one of those areas where men were not just seen as outside their role (they should be the doctor, of course, with the subservient female nurse to assist them), but also as lacking the nurturing and compassionate instincts for the job.
I really couldn't tell you where archaeology falls into this, or why there was a predominance of women. I'm also not saying by any means that you shouldn't try to increase male enrollment or that your SMA organization is ill-conceived. I'm just saying that there is a very real and valid reason why getting women into male-dominated fields is seen as both more important and more challenging than getting men into woman-dominated fields.
The enemies of Democracy are
A lot of this crap about being "predisposed" to one field or another is complete hooey to me. We, as in the slashdot community, should pull our collective heads out of asses and STOP applying our own personal experiences to a large subset of people. SOME women are predisposed to IT Jobs just as SOME men are. Gender, I would wager and heavily, has little or nothing to do with it and social norms has a much larger role.
A woman's brain is just as capable of making an IT-Type decision as a man's brain; let's stop pointing to one individual and going "See, she's can't do it therefore no woman can" we just look stupid.
the unfriendly comments aren't evidence of sexism. its evidence of the anger created by reverse sexism. don't get hung up on the term ok, u know very well what it means. when people feel targeted unfairly they do get angry. women get angry when they think men are out to get them, well guess what, men feel angry and insulted when articles are put out assuming every mans a sexist pig and that women should live their lives and view everything through a prism of assumed sexism. it is pretty progressive as it is, with lax work place environments with people trained as logical thinkers. such people probably don't like to be looked at as assumed bigots. being angry at agendas which breed disharmony brings up the comments and jokes. the evidence is not what you think it is. it is friendly to all that suffer its burdens. many in it are just unfriendly to those who have gender agendas and seek conflict and unfairness for their own side.
And, frankly, little boys are socialized to think technology=cool much more than little girls are. We are a product of our upbringing to some extent.
That is the problem. Our society encourages the girls to play with barbie, dolls, and tea pots while the boy gets lego bricks, plastic water guns, and skateboards. Until it is solved at that level, issues like this will always come up.
My wife is a stay-at-home mom.
I have, by far, the easier job.
What bugs her the most is when some woman that makes her job a higher priority than her children patronizes her and says, "I wish I could stay home with my children." As if financial discipline and and 24/7 parenting are easier than luxury and day care.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Actually,
It is a large group of women as a class are making more than the same class of men.
That does point to some kind of discriminatory mechanism. Perhaps automatic raises for women while men still have to ask. I know schools are somehow discouraging males or at least providing a lot more encouragement and support for females.
It is a tragedy in the making. And it hurts women too (well straight ones) since women still seem to require that the guy they marry is taller and makes more money than they do so a lot of them are staying single longer and competing over a smaller pool of qualifying males.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I have been a programmer (NOT a lousy one!) for about 11 years now, and am a woman. I am not so arrogant as to call myself a "guru" or whatever (because there is always someone else out there to learn something from), but I certainly feel that I am a good programmer - and so do all of my clients - many of whom have been with me since my start into programming - although I think my code & applications prove that point more than me just saying so - I feel my work speaks volumes for itself. HOWEVER, regardless of how good a programmer I am, I absolutely have been the vicitim of gender politics, quite often throughout my career, and most recently just in this past month on at least two seperate occasions by tech-Y's (males)!! While both of these recent situations have not actually happened inside of the office atmosphere, or with people that I work with on a daily basis, other incidents certainly have been in office or co-worker situations.
I was out at a bar, with two other tech-Y's, sitting having a drink after we ate... A guy came up and started talking to us, and while we were talking, he mentioned that he was a computer programmer. I leaned forward and replied that all (3) of us were also "computer people" - myself & my boyfriend being programmers, and my other friend is a network guy... When I mentioned the programming part, he immediately asked specifically what I did... When I gave him my reply - he LAUGHED AT ME - and said "oh - I'm sorry!!", and then moved on to ask my boyfriend what he programmed in... My boyfriend gave him pretty much the same exact response as I did - and to my utter amazement, he was like "oh wow - that's cool!"...
UMMMMM - How is it that he feels sorry for me and laughs at me, yet a guy tells him he does the same exact thing like 2 seconds later, and all the sudden it's "wow" & "cool"??!!!! That seems to me to be another excellent example of the kind of gender BS that DOES affect the IT industry.... That guy has no freaking idea what my level of expertise is (and neither do you) - yet he still treated me like I was someone to feel sorry for or be laughed at, just because I'm female... and funnily enough, I've got about 6 years more experience than my boyfriend in the industry - I was actually the one who got my boyfriend programming by mentoring & teaching him - so I really feel this guy's reaction to me was pretty degrading & couldn't understand how it could have changed so radically when he got the same answer from a guy...
In another situation recently, a customer was having issues reaching our server network, and it was due to their own ISP's network having some issues... I was attemping to speak with some guy over the phone at the ISP about the problem, he first asked me if he could speak with someone technical - I replied that I was the tech person, that I was the correct person to be speaking with... I tried to start explaining that there seemed to be an issue within their network, but the guy started telling me that there was no problem in their network, and that our own servers were down (they certainly were not - I am 110% positive of this)... I was trying to explain what was being returned with the trace routes that I had just run from multiple networks back to them and that each showed problems within their network - however in the middle of this conversation, the guy starting YELLLING at the top of his voice on the phone to me to "get your tech people on this because you don't know what your talking about and your servers are down", and then basically hung up on me... All this after I ALREADY told him that our servers were CERTAINLY not down and that I WAS the tech person, I defenitely felt that his rudeness to me was based on the fact that in his mind, I was just a stupid girl who had no clue, and I couldn't know what I was talking about - I mean how dare I say there was a problem in his network!!?? I MUST be wrong!!
While neither of these people made any direct mention of their disdain for me as being because I was a female, I do