Dame Wendy Hall The subject of maths is not one I enjoy. I took my maths GCSE so many times you'd think by the time I did pass it would be with an A because I should have memorised it by then. But I scraped a C. Maths and I will never hang out. Who I would like to hang out with is computer scientist Dame Wendy Hall. Why? Well I don't really want to chat maths and computer science with her but Listening to Wendy onDesert Island Discs frankly discuss the sexism she has experienced I realised something that has crept in. Sexism denial. Women who manage to get to a certain point and then are afraid to call sexism out or discuss the sexism they did experience on their career climb. Everyday Sexism is one thing, providing a platform for Everyday Women to vent the harassment and sexism they encounter. But successful women seem to prefer to give the impression they live in a world without sexism.
A while ago I attended a screening of the What I See project, which was a noble cause and a great idea. It was even started by Edwina Dunn because she had noticed that she was still routinely the only woman on various business boards. The other women who had reached high places and been invited on the board seemed reluctant to examine why they might be the only women in their position.
One member of the What I See project panel was Professor Frances Ashcroft, who shared an anecdote regarding a job at Oxford university. She did not get the job because she was a woman, she knows this to be true because she was told so. Professor Ashcroft did eventually get a job at Oxford, and advised her audience not to "whinge" and instead work hard. Even though working hard hadn't been mentioned in her original job rejection.
It is very frustrating for those at the bottom of the career ladder don't think we are not fully happy to put our hands up sometimes and agree that sometimes purely on merit we were not good enough. However, don't tell me that all the times I have seen my ideas repeated verbatim by a man to a positive response is not sexism in action, rather me not working hard enough.
One member of the What I See project panel was Professor Frances Ashcroft, who shared an anecdote regarding a job at Oxford university. She did not get the job because she was a woman, she knows this to be true because she was told so. Professor Ashcroft did eventually get a job at Oxford, and advised her audience not to "whinge" and instead work hard. Even though working hard hadn't been mentioned in her original job rejection.
It is very frustrating for those at the bottom of the career ladder don't think we are not fully happy to put our hands up sometimes and agree that sometimes purely on merit we were not good enough. However, don't tell me that all the times I have seen my ideas repeated verbatim by a man to a positive response is not sexism in action, rather me not working hard enough.
| It was therefore refreshing to hear Dame Wendy Hall discuss an incident in 1977 when she had an interview for a job teaching maths to engineers. The interview panel was all men and at the end of the interview Wendy said she was told by the head of department that: "You haven't got the job, I wanted to give it to you but the rest of the panel didn't because you're a woman". | We won't recognise sexism's impact until women who will talk about how they have beaten it. |
Wendy believes that the panel didn't think that she, as a woman, could control a class of mainly male engineer students. Engineer students are notoriously rowdy. These stories are so vitally important to me and I assume, to everyone. We won't recognise sexism's impact until women who will talk about how they have beaten it, or tackled it.
However various women who have reached their goal appear to be afraid that unless they can present their achievements as hard graft and possibly luck they will be suspect and their peers will think they got special treatment. Rather than the likely story that they had to work twice as hard to receive half the recognition.
Dame Wendy is sadly unusual as someone who is happy to openly concentrate on women's issues and promotion of women's work, as noted in an interview in 2009: "Margaret Thatcher was a classic example...I've worked with women who've said: 'I'm not going to spend my time thinking about women's issues because I'm going to get on with my work', and, actually, every minute I'm standing up talking about women in science or talking to young women, my male colleagues are writing the research papers, getting the grant proposals, getting increases in salary."
If you are afraid to call out sexism once you are in a high position, it means you are suffering from sexism. If Dame Wendy Hall is saying "I still face rooms full of men I can't get in to" then we need to join her and call it out.
Squeamish Kate
However various women who have reached their goal appear to be afraid that unless they can present their achievements as hard graft and possibly luck they will be suspect and their peers will think they got special treatment. Rather than the likely story that they had to work twice as hard to receive half the recognition.
Dame Wendy is sadly unusual as someone who is happy to openly concentrate on women's issues and promotion of women's work, as noted in an interview in 2009: "Margaret Thatcher was a classic example...I've worked with women who've said: 'I'm not going to spend my time thinking about women's issues because I'm going to get on with my work', and, actually, every minute I'm standing up talking about women in science or talking to young women, my male colleagues are writing the research papers, getting the grant proposals, getting increases in salary."
If you are afraid to call out sexism once you are in a high position, it means you are suffering from sexism. If Dame Wendy Hall is saying "I still face rooms full of men I can't get in to" then we need to join her and call it out.
Squeamish Kate
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