As a female engineer, I am not diversity
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As a female engineer, I am not diversity
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Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#2Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity.
Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted introvert" is one of two things:
1) Ambivert : "a person whose personality has a balance of extrovert and introvert features"
2) Introvert, but not shy : It is a common misconception that introverts are inherently shy. The two are correlated, but not the same thing. You can be introverted and not be shy, either inherently or by learning to overcome shyness. Extra/introversion has more to do with your preferences and where you derive energy from. Shyness is more fear-based, and fear can be overcome.
Anyway that's not really a critical part of your article but I've sort of unintentionally become a Myers-Briggs nerd over the years and enjoy discussing stuff like that :)
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#3Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity. Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted in…
"Ambiverts" are never called this. Extroverts complain about the ambivert's introversion, and introverts praise the ambivert's extroversion. Thus, at least some of the confusion is understandable.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#4If men and women are completely interchangeable, physically and psychologically, then this article makes a lot of sense.
But if women really do have something different (at least on average) to bring to the table, then this women really does add diversity.
The purpose of diversity is not quotas, but differences that work together and add something to the whole.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#5This article is part of the problem. By pointing out that she does not contribute to "diversity" because of her economic and cultural background, the author reinforces the idea that those are the interesting ingredients of this elusive "diversity." She says nothing about her ideas, interests, or opinions. Does she perhaps add to diversity by having original thoughts? Or are her political opinions and taste in music predictable? I'd say this article is evidence that she may in fact possess some intellectual diversity, but that it is something that she herself does not recognize as such.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#6I get the point the author is making, but I'm not 100% sure I agree with how she expressed it. By limiting the definition of diversity/minority, we can probably identify a cohort for any individual where they are in the majority.
Diversity measured across an entire company or large cohort doesn't really show the value of diversity in the first place. For me, the real power of diversity is at a micro-level. The author would absolutely add diversity to a three person team where one member is an Indian woman born, raised, and educated to PhD in India, another is a Croatian man with no formal education beyond secondary school, and the third person was a poor kid from Detroit that scrapped their way through community college and into the job market.
When I'm putting a team together, I try my hardest to create diversity. That doesn't mean running through a checklist of gender, ethnicity, sexual identification, etc. but it does mean looking for people with different points of view, experience, and ways of solving problems.
tl;dr: Diversity == good, agree gender doesn't necessarily mean diversity, diversity is a meaningless term without context.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#7This article is part of the problem. By pointing out that she does not contribute to "diversity" because of her economic and cultural background, the author reinforces the idea that those are the interesting ingredients of this elusive "diversity." She says nothing about her ideas, interests, or opinions. Does she perhaps add to diversity by having original thoughts? Or are her political opinions and taste in music p…
You said (in a much better way) part of what I was trying to say in another post. She reduces herself to bullet points and ignores all of the things that I would consider critical parts of what makes people different. Upon a reread, I think that was her point. Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#8I get the point the author is making, but I'm not 100% sure I agree with how she expressed it. By limiting the definition of diversity/minority, we can probably identify a cohort for any individual where they are in the majority. Diversity measured across an entire company or large cohort doesn't really show the value of diversity in the first place. For me, the real power of diversity is at a micro-level. The author…
I think checklists get favored because they're easy to codify in the form of procedures and business processes. They're also easy to measure and report on.
The broader, more complex concerns you point to are difficult to measure and thus perhaps more likely to be given short shrift.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#9Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity. Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted in…
The whole 'introverted extrovert' (and vice versa) thing is pretty stilly.
In the old days we had a word for people who neither sought nor avoided emotional stimuli: normal.
Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity
#10This article is part of the problem. By pointing out that she does not contribute to "diversity" because of her economic and cultural background, the author reinforces the idea that those are the interesting ingredients of this elusive "diversity." She says nothing about her ideas, interests, or opinions. Does she perhaps add to diversity by having original thoughts? Or are her political opinions and taste in music p…
Exactly. The greatest problem with this article is its underlying assumption that "diversity" is good by itself and that companies should pursue it. The author makes the point that she is not "diverse enough", while ignoring the fundamental issue that measuring "diversity" and showing that it is a goal worth pursuing by itself is non-trivial and problematic. The fact that she is counted as "diversity" while claiming that she isn't is exactly the reason why current societies' and organizations' extreme focus on and overvaluing of diversity is misguided.