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My 2 cents (not a woman): - It may be bad in technology, but it's much worse in some other industries. (Like Finance) - There are companies that are known for making a stand on discrimination and other similar issues. She should actively seek one of these out, rather than try to change the culture in a place that isn't.
Well that's your problem right there. She hasn't figured out how to play the game. The way you have framed the problem, it will never be solved. She will never stop being a woman, and if that is the only thing you see holding her back, there will never be a solution.
There are many disadvantages within IT, and being female is just one of them. How about being black? Being from not-Harvard-MIT-Stanford? Being 65? Being 15? Not having a CS degree? Not having any degree? Not being able to speak English clearly? All these things will hold you back. It sucks and it needs to change, but it's a separate issue from helping your wife succeed.
She needs to strategize, play hardball, and burn the motherf*ers to the ground. They have to be beaten at their own game, and it's not a technical one. All's fair in love & war.
My 2 cents (not a woman): - It may be bad in technology, but it's much worse in some other industries. (Like Finance) - There are companies that are known for making a stand on discrimination and other similar issues. She should actively seek one of these out, rather than try to change the culture in a place that isn't.
Making a stand on this situation may lead to retaliation from the team.
My 2 cents (not a woman): - It may be bad in technology, but it's much worse in some other industries. (Like Finance) - There are companies that are known for making a stand on discrimination and other similar issues. She should actively seek one of these out, rather than try to change the culture in a place that isn't.
Making a stand on this situation may lead to retaliation from the team.
This is why I say find the right culture, don't try to change the existing one.
Are there any team members that are supportive of her? Does she enjoy the work in general, how many instances are there where she has been discredited/ignored etc? Is it escalating?
Is this an issue that is inherent in culture of this specific workplace. Would moving to a new place of work solve this issue or do you feel that developing strategies in general would help her to deal with these kind of issues at whatever workplace she moves to.
If she intends to work in this industry long term then for her own peace of mind she needs to define a way of working through these issues that sits well with her and doesn't allow these individual instances to build into long term unhappiness.
Some things in the workplace are just general friction, adversity, we all have things to overcome associated with age, race, gender, background. We often only see our own struggles, or our eyes get opened to those faced by people close to us.
Although some issues can start small and escalate into big conflicts with a specific person or management style.
It's important that we identify these small instances, note them objectively (emotion removed) and then move on.
In the past I've dealt with similar issues by switching to presenting project ideas solely in document form, or passing them on to supportive team members to deliver. If those ideas get adopted at a later stage, then that's great, what matters most for team progress is that the best ideas get implemented regardless of who they come from.
If what matters to your wife is that her contribution is recognised then she needs to put strategies in place that will enable her to record her own contributions. It's unfortunate that she can't rely on her team to do that fairly, however she shouldn't let it ruin her enjoyment of her role entirely.
I think as a partner, you can act as a sounding board for her frustrations - possibly what she needs to say that she can't say in the workplace. Remind her though that she isn't the only one experiencing this and that it's not unique to her i.e to not take it personally.
"I've lost the count of how many times she told me about
how she explained something to the team, with everyone
bashing her, and after a few weeks, someone else (a guy)
explaining the same thing and everyone praising the guy."
Getting an idea accepted is also as much about delivery as it is about timing. The reason I point this out is because at work I generally am a lot better at having a longer view strategy wise than most of my colleagues and this is something I find that women are also good at (and also the reason why people compare Warren Buffett's investing strategy to that typically employed by women). If you are too early with an idea and people are ready for it, then you should come to terms with the fact that you may need to present it many times over until people either come around to the idea or the timing is eventually right to present it.
She needs to stop feeling like a victim and start thinking about persuasion and why her ideas are failing to gain acceptance. It's not her gender but may be related to her gender with respect to delivery. Change the delivery deliberately.
First off, here's a simple litmus test for "is X a misogynistic industry?". Does X have 50% women working in it? If not, and there's no actual genetic reason (e.g. this is an industry of literal sperm donors), then it is VERY likely to have a strong misogynistic component. Is there a company with software engineers where 50% of them are women? Never heard of such a thing. Is there a company with software engineers and no misogynists? Never heard of that either, at least not if the company has more than 10 employees.
Second, for all of you who jumped in with "it's a mistake to jump to the assumption that it's just because of gender" - wrong. You pick the highest-order factor first, and only then do you go to lower-order factors.
Third, yes, America is far better than many other countries at gender equality, but it is merely wretched instead of abysmal. I expect roughly 50% participation in most job markets.
You can't sugar-coat and actually confront what needs to change. If sexism is the #1 factor, you fucking deal with that right up front. Humans aren't exactly the rational actors they think they are, so your ideas get less shrift than if they were presented by a man. It's bloody easy to try this, present the same ideas but by a man. Do you get the same rejection? Probably not.
Also, sometimes you need to fire people. You find the key movers that are misogynists (everyone knows who they are, it's not a surprise), and you fire them. Doesn't matter how good they are, they are preventing you from having access to 50% of the human race.
I feel for your wife, and this is a tough situation, and there are no good answers. Most people don't want to be the person that causes change, because that person typically gets all the pain and no benefit. But things need to change, and some of the comments you've received are appalling, the kind of comment that 50 years from now people are going to look at and say "how could people ever think that way?" In text books.
I wish I had some better answers. I've been struggling with this for a while. For specific cases, often the answer is to go somewhere else. If you can't go somewhere else, then if possible change laterally to a different boss who is both powerful in the company and willing to help promote/push your wife's agenda. While the tone of a company can be misogynistic, it's often just a few people, so you need to either avoid them or work around them, or counteract them.