Last week, a colleague of
mine sent me an email with a YouTube link. It was a webinar she'd attended earlier in the day on Machine Learning. She wanted me to watch a 30 second segment of the video
and let her know if she was just being sensitive. That women even have to worry about this is a blog for a different day.
Read his
comment below & decide for yourself.
Speaker: There is, what's her name. She's been
in Machine Learning with Microsoft for a long time.
What's her name? I love her. Oh, Olivia Klose. She's got an accent.
She's not hard to look at. She does a lot of demos on
Machine Learning specific to Microsoft."
Then he moved right along into
the topic at hand, as if nothing had happened.
I don't know this speaker, I have no ax to
grind. His comment was at best, careless, and at worst a form of
benevolent sexism.
Benevolent sexism is a set
of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing
women in restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling &
tone.
Whatever it was, the feelings it evoked were immediate. They were not at all sensitive. I was as angry as my colleague. HOW DARE HE? Then I reminded myself that I shouldn't be that surprised. Comments like this are something many women in IT
deal with frequently. We're professional, damn good at our job, but then
some guy in a meeting thinks it's appropriate to comment on our looks... as if
that mattered at all. Taking away from the importance of our actual
accomplishments and reducing us a "pretty face". It's something
that really can knock the wind out of our sails. While I know it sounds
complimentary, it isn't. We're there to teach or work, it isn't a beauty
pageant.
Here's the upside. Here’s where I realize
we’re making progress. Where I’m
reminded there are some amazing Women in Tech allies out there, who want to do
the right thing. A lot of men emailed,
DM’d or tweeted their own little “Not cool, man!” thoughts. They’d noticed it
being said and were upset on her behalf.
I reached out
to the moderator of the session. I
included the email I’d been sent, the link to the video and outlined the
insensitive comment. I explained, much
like I did in the paragraph above why exactly this was so bothersome. He reacted as well as I could have
hoped. He immediately pulled the video
down. He’ll be modifying it to exclude
the comments. He asked how I’d like to
handle it. He emailed HQ to explain what
happened and the actions he wanted to take.
He suggested in addition to this blog, that we turn this into a joint
session to teach men in tech the damage that can be caused by comments like
those made by the speaker. Like me, he wanted to turn this into something
positive, into what elementary teachers refer to as “teachable moments”. The best I can hope for is a world where a
professional woman can be described by the quality of her work and not by how
easy she is to look at. Slowly but surely, it's getting better. For now, I’ll
accept this as a step in the right direction.
