Another round of research from the “lean in” crowd.
This concludes that women “don’t know” that minimum qualifications aren’t minimum, and that breaking the rules (as in, applying for jobs where minimum requirements are not met) is what we need.
Except I’ve always done that and known that.
Some people, not all, but more than you’d imagine, don’t realise that they react differently to different sorts of people for the same behaviour. I can’t say it’s a “man”/”woman” thing because that’s not been my experience. A lot of times, it’s women enforcing the ideas.
When I apply to Campus Madrid to host talk I’m more than qualified to give, which I know has a lot of interest, in a venue advertised for as being open to anyone in the startup community, I was almost asked to provide enough papers for a job application. And I was turned down and told that only people involved with groups already presenting on campus were allowed to speak.
That info does not appear anywhere on their site, so I assumed it was a polite way of saying no to me.
When I tweeted about looking for a venue, I got a few high profile retweets and replies. Then Campus reached out this time asking for me to apply again.
I explained to them I wasn’t already a member of a group speaking at campus. This didn’t seem like it was a block. They replied, “please, apply and we’ll work it out”.
Rules are entirely discretionary.
In another instance, I saw an email for a remote working product designer on a product that seemed ideal for me. The application process was really user unfreindly and the video attachment function wouldn’t allow me to upload a 1 minute video recorded on an 18 month old android. So I emailed in the video.
Breaking the rules. Showing initiative and creative problem-solving. Pointing out a usability problem in a low key way.
Of course, I got lectured by email that they wanted someone “smart enough” to work out how to edit their video before uploading.
Maybe they really wanted someone with a bar of problem-solving so low that editing a video instead of fixing an application form is the best they can do.
but..maybe not, eh?
Some people are just held to different standards, depending on who the gatekeeper is and what their biases are.
I don’t know why it is I run against this more frequently from women than men, but I suspect that experiencing bias against you in one dimension of your life may provide a moral licensing effect. They might think “I’m from marginalised group X so I can’t be part of the problem and I would know problematic behaviour if I saw it.”What bothers me is wondering to what extent I manifest this behaviour as well.
It also might be that guys are just happy to break up the sausage fest that they are less picky about who applies, while women benefit from being the only or one of a few girls on the team, so don’t want to give out those spots too easily.
Either way, the solution isn’t having guts and speaking up and leaning in. I’ve been doing all those things since I was a teen.
We live in this weird world where people tell us what we need to be to become palatable (I’m sure this applies to men in different ways, drop a comment if you have examples). Then that those things make us unfit to progress.