Have you experienced any discrimination at work because of your gender?

Yes I have several times.

One instance is being the only woman on a business trip. Discussions during dinner evolved to crude sexist conversations that are not appropriate at any time. I excused myself from dinner and left. The next day the travel team changed and everyone focused only on what we were sent to do.

Back in the day of Sun systems I was sent to training in Denver. I was the only woman in the room. The instructor every day commented on my appearance or focused on me the entire time. I politely followed the course material for the week and sent a complaint to Sun about the instructor.

I have so many examples it is hard to pull them all here. In every case I focused on my work product, gave stellar work results, and moved on. In cases where I felt it was appropriate to include our Human Resources department or file complaints, I did so. Determining when it is "appropriate" has been entirely something I set based on the impact of my ability to do my job, or the behavior impacting others in the future.

This is an "open wound" topic in culture today. How does an individual define discrimination. Is it enough to identify and react or do we actually need to educate and make ourselves anti-discriminatory

Engineering is a male dominated field. Women have made great strides in the industry and through groups like Engineering Girl we band together to encourage more young women to be confident and enter into this line of work.

Despite this there are still groups which rally against cultural change. Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers fought against the cultural values, which placed women in positions of homemaker, nurse, or secretary. Now women are CEO's, Engineers, and Doctors, yet there are still groups which want to take us back to housewife/ homemaker roles.

Yes, at some point in time you will be faced with that individual or maybe a group of individuals who want to make you feel you don't belong. Are threatened by your position or knowledge. But now is the time to "RISE UP"!

Do we make every situation a platform? No, we don't. Gauge your environment and the person(s) you are dealing with. Can the situation be resolved with a conversation or enlightened words? Is it something that can be mediated between yourself and the individual/group? Or is the situation egregis and far reaching within the company? Then maybe a political platform is needed. But corporations are making outwardly political statements that they do not discriminate on the basis of age, race, gender, religion, or any other factors.

How to deal with the situation is never easy. Is the person someone you can talk to? If not, involve your supervisor or manager. If you are not comfortable there, reach out to your human resources partner. Large corporations may have support teams for various groups. Communicating and making the situation known is important, but realize that the person on the other side may not be consciously aware of an act that you find discriminatory.

America is full of diverse cultures, and opinions on economic and social norms. We must learn how to respect each other. Understand when a statement or action is driven by a cultural stance which is no longer tolerated, and change the world.

I would say that I have not experienced discrimination due to my gender but I have experienced very uncomfortable situations that I feel I have to deal with because I'm female. For example, my role does require a decent amount of travel, sometimes alone but usually with a colleague or in the case of trade shows a group of employees. One situation that I find very uncomfortable is hitting the pool with coworkers. As a woman, it's very uncomfortable, at least for me, for my coworkers to see me in a swimming suit, basically half naked. I get this feeling of "how can they take me seriously when they have seen me half naked." Due to this I usually do not partake. I'll hang out at the pool and be social but typically don't get in. I usually don't even bring my suit on business trips.

Another uncomfortable situation I have found myself in is entertaining customers when they travel to visit us. Typically, this is over dinner or a fun event/activity that our company sets up for them. I have had a couple of instances where the customers have a few adult beverages and act unprofessionally or inappropriately towards me because I am female. The first time it happened, I was very caught off guard and very concerned about saying something because I didn't want to ruin the relationship between my company and that customer. However, in seeking guidance from other females at my company, I have come to realize that if that customer thinks their behavior is acceptable, we don't want or need their business anyways. It's best to address the behavior politely but firmly.

Yes, I have experienced discrimination at work and school because of my gender. I knew I was going into a male dominated profession, so my approach was to do a great job and let my work speak for itself. Sometimes it was obvious because I was there to hear the conversation, sometimes I would learn about it second hand. Luckily I have always been able to find a group of men that did not care I was a female. It was only a few sprinkled here and there. If it occurred in person, I knew it was a reflection of the person speaking, and they needed to be educated. So I would make sure they knew and saw my good work. I would specifically ask for feedback from them. Eventually, I knew I had broken through, when he was talking to a group and was referring to a completed design definition and kept saying 'she' instead of 'he.' It is real. It still exists. My personal approach is to prove through my good work that I am a good engineer, regardless of gender.

When I started my first job after college as a software engineer in IT in 1995, I started in a new recruit program and was placed on a team after the program. The team initially told me they did not want a girl on the team and tried to trade me for another male recruit. The team said they had just finished dealing with an issue of harassment and had let go of the woman who was harassed, not the male who harassed her because the male was too critical to the project and they did not want to deal with another issue. The recruit program refused their request, and I just put my head down, worked hard, and eventually earned the respect of the team by becoming critical myself. A few years later, the team lead apologized to me.

A year or so later, my manager called me into her office to give me a warning that I was a distraction for one of the male engineers and he was critical to a project. She asked me to stop distracting him and that he had been labeled a "player" in the group. I am not sure if I was the only one given the warning or not. At this point in time, I had spoken to this male maybe twice for less than five minutes total. I don't think my dress could have been the concern, I wore the standard khaki pants and the team polo shirt, just like everyone else. Never figured out why I was singled out.

In the late 1990s, there was a male engineer who would stand behind my cubicle looking into the doorway watching me work. From this angle, I did not see him. Another co-worker asked him what he was doing and he promptly left. This happened a few more times and my team lead reported him to security. Security caught him doing the same thing, and escorted him out of the building and he was let go. I was told of all this later, I was lucky to have co-workers watching out for me.

In 2005, I was a software development team lead, one of the higher ranked engineers. My group held an after work end of the year holiday party every year for the last 5 years or so. I usually helped organize the pot luck, reserve the space nearby, helped cleanup, that sort of thing. I was beginning to do the same that year. Our group had grown to maybe 100 or so employees, probably 6-8 of them female. I am not sure of the exact numbers. Then, one of the managers came over to my desk and asked if I would be offended if they un-invited spouses this year, just employees would be invited because the group had gotten much bigger. I said no of course not. I was not married and had always gone alone every year anyway so I didn't understand why they asked me. I figured they were asking around. Then a few hours later I received an email with the party announcement that was sent to the entire org. It said "Sorry ladies, Men only this year." I promptly forwarded the email to our director and to HR. Nothing was done. All the other women in the group came to me very confused. I was very vocal in the group that this was unacceptable and we are employees, not spouses. Afterwards, the other managers, and I thought my friends, came to me and said I should just come to the party, but stated that I may be offended by their behavior because they were going to "party". I left the company a few months later.

This was some time ago now, but I could go back even to college days where an Electrical Engineering professor told me and the 3 other women in front of the entire class that he would never pass a female in his class. Women cannot be engineers, he said. The university did nothing when the women reported it. The only option was to drop the class and hope for another professor the next semester and delay graduating, which the 3 others did. Or stick it out knowing I would get a bad grade, which I did. I passed but barely. Comparing tests with fellow students, I received much lower marks for the same answers. Reporting that to the department did not change anything.

Those are incidents that have stuck with me. Anything more recent would be much less drastic. Our company is much more inclusive now.

While I have not noticed direct discrimination due to my gender, I have definitely felt not quite included at times. I did an internship once where almost everyone in the office was male (only the office assistant and one woman engineer) and the youngest person was at least 5 years older than me. A lot of their discussions were about their kids and sports, which I could not relate to one bit. I especially did not like how most of my colleagues referred to their partners as “the wife.” There was something about that that made me uncomfortable. It was only one internship though, so I learned from that experience that the culture fit of the company was not for me.

I was lucky to not have to deal with discrimination in school. During my undergrad, we all watched and analyzed some videos of previous students where the female team members were stuck doing the more administrative/write ups and the male team members were doing the more technical work. I think it set up a good tone throughout my undergrad that everyone should watch out for small things like that and a much more even workload split across team members. So I recommend looking out for this on your team projects too! It can sometimes start as really subtle. But if you are always doing the more administrative work on the team, you will not get as much experience doing the more technical work.

Now that I am in grad school, I am studying Environmental Engineering, which is majorly women at my school. I haven’t felt the discrimination in my department, but one of my lab mates joined my group after sexism in her previous group in a different department. My advisor is great and really encourages young women engineers. There are supportive people in most workplaces/schools if you do feel discrimination. It just may take some work to find them. A lot of schools and workplaces also have groups that you can join as a support network as well.

I’ve worked as an engineer across three continents and various countries and on the most part have had a cordial work relationship with colleagues. However, in a few instances, I’ve come across individuals who still view engineering as a male domain and a field which is too demanding for a woman. In one experience when I first started my career, one manager refused to provide work tools that were standard and were pertinent to our team’s day-to-day job description which included the need to occasionally work remotely at a client site, or be on call, i.e., basic mobile device and access to laptop and related apps. The manager felt they were doing me a favor because I had a young family to take care of and they did not want my work disturbing my family time citing that if I am home I have to be catering to my family.

The way I dealt with this was:

1. I took a day to think through things then requested a meeting to discuss this action and its impact on me as an engineer.
2. I reframed the conversation to focus on fair treatment and respect and away from discrimination and protected classes.
3. During the meeting I reminded him that I was working on the team because I had qualified as a trained engineer and earned a position like any other team member, that I was cognizant of the expectations that came with my position, and that I was fully capable of managing my work time balance and that when the organization hired me, no part of the contract referenced separate work arrangements or expectations because of family.
4. I pointed out that many of my male colleagues had families to take care of but they were not being subjected to the same stereotyping.

I left the meeting with the tools required for me to do my work as well as got added to the travel and on-call roster.

Often discrimination is rooted in bias and stereotypical social norms and expectations. I would say just by choosing to study engineering, chances are you are breaking out of the expected mould. The sense of personal satisfaction, growth as an individual and success I’ve had in my career trump any discrimination or bias I’ve experienced along the way. Also knowing what to tackle and what to ignore and maintaining a sense of humor can go a long way in managing some of the challenges one might face because of bias. Keeping a sense of perspective and having candid conversations with colleagues also helps.

Some progress has been made on issues of gender equity in the workplace and most modern workplaces have adopted good human resource practices with lots of mandatory staff training. However, humans have quirks and you cannot rule out that you will still meet conscious or unconscious bias in the workplace which affect your pay, promotion opportunity, project allocation. Be ready to have those difficult conversations if that occurs and if there’s a need to escalate an issue there should be a way of doing so. Go on and occupy the space you get into.

In my experience there have been small issues or conflicts that have come up at work that were related to my gender. For example, having my idea repeated by another colleague without giving me any credit in meetings, being talked over or interrupted more than my fellow colleagues, and even being given a pink hard hat when everyone else had a white one (I didn't mind because I am proud of being a girl/like wearing pink, but it still seemed odd at the time!). I have combatted this by founding a women's group at my site and seeking out sponsors (male sponsors too!) to advocate for the group, hiring more women into my team and encouraging others to reflect on their hiring practices, seeking out male and female mentors to talk to about my career, and empowering fellow allies to talk about gender equality to bring issues that arise to the forefront. In my experience, the most powerful thing you can do is build up a network of allies and sponsors to make it better for you and others - most of my colleagues and mentors (men & women & everyone in between) have been extremely supportive and eager to learn, improve and support others!

I unfortunately have experienced discrimination in the workplace but things are getting better from when I first started my career 15 years ago. Unfortunately, things still happen but often it is because of unconscious bias and people not being aware what is appropriate and what isn't. When someone says something that's discriminatory or offensive, I try to assume positive intent and say something along the lines of "I know you probably didn't mean anything by this but when you say X others might find it offensive so you might want to consider that in the future." I've also heard people ask others to explain why something is funny if they are trying to make a joke at the expense of a minority group.

The other thing I experienced after becoming a mom and returning to the workplace was being questioned about my hours in the office as if having a baby would change my dedication to my work. If anyone ever questions your dedication to the job, you should reframe the question to ask "is there something you think I should be doing that isn't getting completed?" This changes the question to an answer that provides feedback that is actionable (or removes the question altogether) rather than a complaint that falls in that gray space depending on context.

All of this said, there will always be challenges in the workplace whether a minority or not. I encourage everyone, especially women, to find mentors and people they can trust to use as a sounding board and help navigate tough situations. It takes a village, so start yours early. Then you will have a cheering section for all your successes as well.

Yes I have.  There are a lot of scenarios from blatant to not-so-obvious.  I've had everything from a male in the field working for me who refused to talk directly to me, to those who constantly say I'm defensive when I'm consistently asked to prove my methods or re-confirm my theories over and over even with a proven track record.  Recently, I had one say I was being "controlling" which is a word men use when describing strong women who do their job.  He said I had to "fix" it even though I am the one tasked with implementing a policy driven by others.  Women working with other women can also be super critical and competitive by gender.

My advice is to not assume everyone is treating you unfairly even if it crosses your thoughts.  Stay professional, on target, and feel free to question why someone is treating you a certain way.