yeh, as a female this has been a long learning experience for me. Raised in the deep south, our job is to ease political and social tensions and be as accomodating as possible, literally waiting around to see how we can pitch in and help to advertise our hospitality.
Obviously the hypocrisy came to light a long time ago, but I still see this in myself and often amongst women in the workplace.
We are asked to do more public speaking on behalf of our company. The intentions are good, and I want more women in technology so I'm happy to be a role model though I'm far from perfect, but I won't let it take me away from my job and I've turned down being a public speaker.
I've turned down running a SWE "Society of Women Engineers" Chapter at work.
I turn down running social events on behalf of the company.
My favorite two I've learned to say no to are
"Well I never learned how to write well and you take really good notes, so can you document this meeting and send a summary email out to everyone with the conversation, highlights, and action items"
I'm not a secretary, I'm an engineer, and if you have a PhD from MIT and never learned how to write, and in fact its so difficult you can't take meeting notes or you need meeting notes because you can't remember the takeaway items, then thats your problem/opportunity for growth, not a place where I turn into a secretary.
if I'm going to be writing priorities, deciding what the priorities are based on the conversation, documenting them and communicating them and following up for troubleshooting follow through, then make me your Manager.
The other one is "yeh well this is really complicated. It's kind of a mess. Noones looked at this process in a long time, lots of old documentation. Would be really great if someone could come in a organize all this for us..."
That's the part where I'm supposed to enthusiastically volunteer to reorganize the half assed work of people who never understood APIs, who additionally still work at this company and have not fixed it, who are ok with half assed work, and people who will make condescending comments about the lack of ability to pick up quickly on things as I'm rewriting the mess of documentation left behind.
I used to feel obligated to all of those things. I don't. It's really too easy for people to expect women to come in at tech companies and
1. Be a part time poster child for women in tech including but not limited to taking time away from the team to go to public speaking events and organize work events.
2. Spend your time documenting things that nooone has bothered documenting before
3. Be expected to "show enthusiasm" and "contribute" by basically cleaning out the closet of men who havn't opened the drawer to realize how disorganized things are until they have a new person trying to learn under them.
I don't do any of these things anymore, and I make it clear I am not interested in those things when I am asked. I spend time learning technical work, and continually filter my tasks of extraneous things that are not focused on addressing the core issues of my work.
Your job is to do your job and be good at it, and you will naturally be accomodating by the benefits that brings.
On a personal level,
I've learned the same thing. huge guilt trips from men to hang out and call me a bitch for basically having standards, being an introvert, and not making dating my hobby outside of work. It's expected of me actually still even in tech.
Huge guilt trips from girls who expect me to be an extrovert, or take it personally that I dont want to be constantly social or go shopping or talk about boys with them, again, even in tech.
Women have a lot of pressure to be socially accomodating, and people will have subconscious expectations of you to do be that way inside and outside of work, and not realize how entitled they actually feel in regards to having a say in your own personal life decisions.
I'm 26 now, but I really wish another women would have given me this advice at 20.
Learn to say no. Focus on you and your job. You accomodate so many people when you take care of yourself and are good at your job and genuinely contribute.