Dear Mom: What’s It Like to Be the Only Woman in the Room?
Meditations on tech across generations
Dear Mom,
I never really thought that gender discrimination would play a part in my life. I grew up in the ‘90s, taking it for granted that women worked and led and contributed to the world in powerful ways. No one ever told me I couldn’t do anything because of my gender. It felt irrelevant.
But as I eased my way into the workforce, I saw that wasn’t exactly true. As a technology journalist, I’ve grown accustomed to walking into a conference or an office and being one of a handful of women. I interview male CEOs and chief scientists before a female PR handler walks me to the door. That is overwhelmingly the way of Silicon Valley.
It’s easy to hide from those ugly gender ratios when I get to return to a media organization — places where women have made greater headway. But every so often I glimpse that same ugliness. High-up editors, and the executives above them, are almost exclusively male. A faint glass ceiling glimmers, its jagged edges poking at all the women who seek to move past it.
A few years ago I worked in a newsroom I had looked up to for years. But when I sat in on its innermost workings, that ugliness emerged. Interruptions and belittlement won ears while thoughtful conversation got shoved out of the way. The system served the loudest men, and few of the women.
It was a disheartening discovery that a place like that could exist in my lifetime. There was no harassment or overt decision that women shouldn’t hold positions of power (which they did). It was something subtler — a culture that rewarded masculine behavior and silenced women. And, as a result, it tended to be men who floated to the top of the organization.
Throughout the years, you’ve hinted at your own stories; stories of extreme ignorance and misogyny you experienced in the energy industry in the ‘80s. Mom, just how hard was it to be the only woman in the room? And what will it take for neither of us to have to have this conversation again?
Love,
Signe
