How do you look for jobs in an industry known for biases against women?
PS – Since I know someone will ask: I’m currently looking for a job as a computer security researcher, open to working in academia, industry, government, wherever as long as it’s interesting. I’m not particularly looking for a job writing (although most readers here know me mostly by my writing!) although if anyone at Boing Boing is interested, I would happily make an exception for you ’cause you’re awesome.
Page 3 of 3 | Previous page
Barefoot Doctoral:
October 11th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
Oh this is so disheartening in some ways. I’m on the perpetual “Solve my two body problem” job hunt. While I agree with you, that this is good advice, the conservative track it advocates gets to me. Why do my male colleagues get to put up pictures on their webpages of themselves hiking with my kids, and I don’t? (Hiking pictures on professional webpages is very common in my field). Why is it that saying “I had a non-recurring medical problem” an acceptable way to explain a dry spell in papers, while “I had a kid and/or a difficult pregnancy/recovery” is not? If I say the former when I mean the latter, why will people feel lied to?
This is not to say that I actually have the courage to talk about my child during a job interview, or put up pictures of him on my webpage. I think women need to own this space and do so. I also don’t think I have the courage to gamble with the prospect of my child having both parents around.
jessamyn:
October 12th, 2012 at 2:27 am
Loved reading this, since I recently went through a job search in nanoscience and was thinking about the same issues. I think it’s worth pointing out too that, should something unseemly happen at an interview, that is (among other things) a convenient signal that maybe this department/office/workplace is one of the places reinforcing bias rather than trying to overcome it. It’s not a fun experience, but if that’s the tone of the job environment, better to find out before you accept a job offer!
Jo:
October 13th, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Forewarned is forearmed. Thankfully, many companies are getting more clued up about the benefits that come with a diverse team – but the steps outlined above could still help you understand what you’re getting yourself in to.
Another great question to ask at interview is what percentage of employees are women and how many board members/senior managers etc there are. Chances are if there are already multiple women in senior roles then the glass ceiling won’t be a problem at that company.
Julia:
October 28th, 2012 at 1:52 am
Speaking of preparing for the bias, bias is not something brought up as “I have a bias against you”. It’s a process of thinking, hidden, like in the experiment (nobody in the experiment justified their decision using the applicant’s gender). I was asked an illegal question once, and it was easy to handle. But bias is more like failing to see a value in one applicant, no matter what, and giving extra credits to another one. Seeing different things in the same resume depending on the name on it. Also, not to forget about conscious discrimination (“J. Smith” doesn’t help here once they figure out), where people are careful not to reveal it. I provide people with links to my blog and code samples, once I decided to check how it worked… I tagged them. It means, I know if the person who received my links or resume with my links (they right on the fist page), visited them. I get something like 80% no visits, and when those same people make excuses or even say “great skills”, I know it’s all passive-aggressive bullshit. They already made a decision based on my name.