In academia, in the 60s, women were not taken seriously and were told to go home and do womanly job of raising kids. This doesn’t happen anymore. The law prevents it from happening. We are not told to go home and raise children. BUT we are never taken as seriously as a white men colleague who is not as smart or hardworking. We don’t get believed if our words are contradicted by men. Our bosses, maybe unconsciously, don’t take our word but always question our goals and propositions for next steps. They ask as to do what the “white male colleague” do for identifying something scientific, because that technique seems to be great. Sure I don’t get told to go home and raise kids, but what is worse for me is that I get exposed to hardcore deep sexism that is hard to show or prove. It isn’t as obviously done as in the 60s.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, these are not only eye opening but also revealing the hardcore truth that sexism in 21st century is not that different from the 60s, especially when it comes to men asking for sexual advances from women. Absolutely barfing: “Like, for example, if you were going to try and get me to leave my wife, you would really, really have to convince me.”
Additionally, I believe you were authentic to yourself and you did the right thing by not trying to stay in. Once you know you don’t belong in somewhere, all the cells in your body ring alarm tones to inform you that this isn’t the right place. I am going through this type of realization that I am no longer authentic to myself by staying in academia, I have been doing my postdoc for 6 years too many; so this essay just hit very close to me (🙂 completely different scales I know).
Fabulous, thank you very much - While I am past the age-time in my life of enduring the misogynist, predatory, ignorant world of "men at work", I have beautiful young women in my family for whom I wish the kind of courage you have written about. Don't second Guess the word courage...My 13 year old great-niece lives in a different reality than I did when I was that age and thankfully so. And as she struggles with inner turmoil meets outer triggers, she has a amazing mother (my niece) whom trusts her wholly and and she Trusts unconditionally. I see the generational change up close and personal. So, thank you for your COURAGE in telling us the story...carry on..
This is so insightful, re-read so many lines and sections. I'm actually grateful, I think, when one of these guys says what they are thinking out loud, because it gives something concrete to what we know is going on unsaid. The sanitary box cleaner - he clearly hates and/or is scared of women. He would never think himself a misogynist I'm sure, but he's unwittingly told us in that anecdote what he is. And that will be there behind all his seemingly friendly interactions with women. I suspect the only difference in 2023 is he may be wouldn't say this in public - but he'd still think it, and treat us, however subtly, as messy and other.
Wow. I relate to this so much. If this is happening at such scale - Silicon Valley - the world’s richest people, imagine how often this happens in the daily lives of American women. I wish men could live one day in our shoes in how it feels to be treated in corporate America. It makes me SO ANGRY they will never know.
This article brought back so many memories: attending a seminar at Harvard Biz School where the moderator trash talked his wife on stage and no one said anything, having gross old men talk about women’s bodies at work and no one saying anything, taking sales meetings with creeps, never knowing if a meeting with a male was going to be a creep.
Sorry you had to go through all of this. It sucks!!!
Your superb, detailed narration of in, out of the SV felt like I was watching a movie that keeps me in suspense. It looked like the deep state in a political inner circle trying to woo voters with the never-seen-before packages. The politics behind the scenes are intriguing, the domineering men salivating for the educated, career-wise women with stable income, the YOLLO life you can only imagine in your dreams.... At that moment, every man can declare that he is divorced, single, or even never married. The SV can , on the dark side, resemble a jungle. There is the prey and the preyed. I enjoyed your post 📫
Gosh, it's really no surprise that so many women are suffering from menstrual and hormonal disorders when you consider how much we need to disconnect from our own bodies in order to live in this world. Thanks for your frank sharing on this important subject
This was awesome, Rachel. The idea that things, this world, turns on power and position and seeks often to merely intimidate. Contrast that with inherent life carrying, holding, nurturing strength and power of a woman. This seems a natural, a spiritual order. Which is why the initial is but an imposter. It's not a material order, but a spiritual one. I'm sorry you endured those difficult experiences and situations. You possess serious inner strength. Wise choices, serious wonderful news for you, Rachel!
So good. It is amazing the things women have to put up with. I wish I had been brave enough to speak up against the boss who constantly hit on me. It was so damn uncomfortable and he likely has no idea that how he behaved was inappropriate.
Great article! I have not won something and felt like a failure, but I did fail at something and ended up feeling like a winner. Getting funding in graduate school for my possibly too ambitious project. At least that’s what my committee told me. Not basic research flavored enough to be basic research, not clearly applicable enough to get funded as engineering. I put myself in a strange position straddling biochemistry and bioengineering. My PI at the time said why don’t you give up on that and work on this grant we have that’s pretty derivative and already funded etc. That project ended up getting scooped anyway, which would have been year 4 of my PhD so feels like I made the right call. Not to mention everything happening not with federal grant funding. Dodged a bullet! In the time I would’ve spent, I got a job, I got married, I’ve been able to travel, and started actually saving a good amount to catch up on retirement and stuff that I missed out on by starting college late and taking a graduate school detour. Not bad for where I came from, putting myself through school. Admittedly feel a little lost, looking for the right next chapter. Congrats on starting yours and I wish you the best.
Discovering this essay a year later. There were so many perfectly written statements in this piece that I deeply relate to.
“yet again a truth that seemed to me so cosmically misguided that either they or I truly must be going insane.” THIS
I just hit my 13th year in SF. I have found that I must keep my integrity very close, always my guide. Because as you said, I’m constantly confronted by success equating to “right” and “real”.
At my last startup, some male VPs were asking me about the cost of my daycare — I was 34 so ya know, exactly the age in this city to have an infant — and when I said it was expensive, $3,500 per month they remarked that that was cheap. I said it wasn’t cheap on top of my $2,500 rent for a studio, to which they replied “that’s not bad though.” I was/am a single mother, who was lucky enough to have a coparent that pays half daycare but I received no child support or alimony. But I was so clearly in a different world than these people.
I was laid off from that company during COVID, and indirectly I suspect confessing to a coworker that all I really wanted was to meet someone new and move to Hawaii and have more children, start a big family, didn’t do me any favors. Just like you referenced, I used up all of my savings paying rent and unsponsored health insurance for me and my kid, went into $10k credit card debt and deferment on my student loans. I nearly moved back to Georgia to live with my dad, but finally after nearly 6 months unemployed I got with my current startup.
Last year I was asked by one of those VPs why I didn’t exercise my options when I was let go. I didn’t say, “because I didn’t have thousands of extra dollars right after being fired you idiot,” I answered something even truer: “because it isn’t blessed.” (That company was mostly a lie riding high and I wanted no stain from its success.)
More recently, I had to trust my integrity against “success” when I did a final interview for a Principal PM position and their VP of Product was so awful to me, that I nearly ended the interview midway through. It would have been a higher level, more money, much more name brand prestige. But my mantra these days is “doubt no intuition.” (8 weeks later my current startup created a Principal position so I could be promoted into it.)
Anyway, I’m so glad this essay found me. I haven’t exited SF yet, custody got me tied here, but I fantasize about leaving all the time.
In academia, in the 60s, women were not taken seriously and were told to go home and do womanly job of raising kids. This doesn’t happen anymore. The law prevents it from happening. We are not told to go home and raise children. BUT we are never taken as seriously as a white men colleague who is not as smart or hardworking. We don’t get believed if our words are contradicted by men. Our bosses, maybe unconsciously, don’t take our word but always question our goals and propositions for next steps. They ask as to do what the “white male colleague” do for identifying something scientific, because that technique seems to be great. Sure I don’t get told to go home and raise kids, but what is worse for me is that I get exposed to hardcore deep sexism that is hard to show or prove. It isn’t as obviously done as in the 60s.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, these are not only eye opening but also revealing the hardcore truth that sexism in 21st century is not that different from the 60s, especially when it comes to men asking for sexual advances from women. Absolutely barfing: “Like, for example, if you were going to try and get me to leave my wife, you would really, really have to convince me.”
Additionally, I believe you were authentic to yourself and you did the right thing by not trying to stay in. Once you know you don’t belong in somewhere, all the cells in your body ring alarm tones to inform you that this isn’t the right place. I am going through this type of realization that I am no longer authentic to myself by staying in academia, I have been doing my postdoc for 6 years too many; so this essay just hit very close to me (🙂 completely different scales I know).
Jaw dropping. Name and shame. All the best on your maternity leave.
Magnificent piece. Be you.
Fabulous, thank you very much - While I am past the age-time in my life of enduring the misogynist, predatory, ignorant world of "men at work", I have beautiful young women in my family for whom I wish the kind of courage you have written about. Don't second Guess the word courage...My 13 year old great-niece lives in a different reality than I did when I was that age and thankfully so. And as she struggles with inner turmoil meets outer triggers, she has a amazing mother (my niece) whom trusts her wholly and and she Trusts unconditionally. I see the generational change up close and personal. So, thank you for your COURAGE in telling us the story...carry on..
This is so insightful, re-read so many lines and sections. I'm actually grateful, I think, when one of these guys says what they are thinking out loud, because it gives something concrete to what we know is going on unsaid. The sanitary box cleaner - he clearly hates and/or is scared of women. He would never think himself a misogynist I'm sure, but he's unwittingly told us in that anecdote what he is. And that will be there behind all his seemingly friendly interactions with women. I suspect the only difference in 2023 is he may be wouldn't say this in public - but he'd still think it, and treat us, however subtly, as messy and other.
Wow. I relate to this so much. If this is happening at such scale - Silicon Valley - the world’s richest people, imagine how often this happens in the daily lives of American women. I wish men could live one day in our shoes in how it feels to be treated in corporate America. It makes me SO ANGRY they will never know.
This article brought back so many memories: attending a seminar at Harvard Biz School where the moderator trash talked his wife on stage and no one said anything, having gross old men talk about women’s bodies at work and no one saying anything, taking sales meetings with creeps, never knowing if a meeting with a male was going to be a creep.
Sorry you had to go through all of this. It sucks!!!
Congratulations on your maternity leave and new baby!
Can this be required reading at MBA programs?
Your superb, detailed narration of in, out of the SV felt like I was watching a movie that keeps me in suspense. It looked like the deep state in a political inner circle trying to woo voters with the never-seen-before packages. The politics behind the scenes are intriguing, the domineering men salivating for the educated, career-wise women with stable income, the YOLLO life you can only imagine in your dreams.... At that moment, every man can declare that he is divorced, single, or even never married. The SV can , on the dark side, resemble a jungle. There is the prey and the preyed. I enjoyed your post 📫
Gosh, it's really no surprise that so many women are suffering from menstrual and hormonal disorders when you consider how much we need to disconnect from our own bodies in order to live in this world. Thanks for your frank sharing on this important subject
This was awesome, Rachel. The idea that things, this world, turns on power and position and seeks often to merely intimidate. Contrast that with inherent life carrying, holding, nurturing strength and power of a woman. This seems a natural, a spiritual order. Which is why the initial is but an imposter. It's not a material order, but a spiritual one. I'm sorry you endured those difficult experiences and situations. You possess serious inner strength. Wise choices, serious wonderful news for you, Rachel!
So good. It is amazing the things women have to put up with. I wish I had been brave enough to speak up against the boss who constantly hit on me. It was so damn uncomfortable and he likely has no idea that how he behaved was inappropriate.
Wishing you a smooth delivery and magical beginnings with your new babe. We’ll see you when you get back 🧡
Amazing, Thank you .
Great article! I have not won something and felt like a failure, but I did fail at something and ended up feeling like a winner. Getting funding in graduate school for my possibly too ambitious project. At least that’s what my committee told me. Not basic research flavored enough to be basic research, not clearly applicable enough to get funded as engineering. I put myself in a strange position straddling biochemistry and bioengineering. My PI at the time said why don’t you give up on that and work on this grant we have that’s pretty derivative and already funded etc. That project ended up getting scooped anyway, which would have been year 4 of my PhD so feels like I made the right call. Not to mention everything happening not with federal grant funding. Dodged a bullet! In the time I would’ve spent, I got a job, I got married, I’ve been able to travel, and started actually saving a good amount to catch up on retirement and stuff that I missed out on by starting college late and taking a graduate school detour. Not bad for where I came from, putting myself through school. Admittedly feel a little lost, looking for the right next chapter. Congrats on starting yours and I wish you the best.
Discovering this essay a year later. There were so many perfectly written statements in this piece that I deeply relate to.
“yet again a truth that seemed to me so cosmically misguided that either they or I truly must be going insane.” THIS
I just hit my 13th year in SF. I have found that I must keep my integrity very close, always my guide. Because as you said, I’m constantly confronted by success equating to “right” and “real”.
At my last startup, some male VPs were asking me about the cost of my daycare — I was 34 so ya know, exactly the age in this city to have an infant — and when I said it was expensive, $3,500 per month they remarked that that was cheap. I said it wasn’t cheap on top of my $2,500 rent for a studio, to which they replied “that’s not bad though.” I was/am a single mother, who was lucky enough to have a coparent that pays half daycare but I received no child support or alimony. But I was so clearly in a different world than these people.
I was laid off from that company during COVID, and indirectly I suspect confessing to a coworker that all I really wanted was to meet someone new and move to Hawaii and have more children, start a big family, didn’t do me any favors. Just like you referenced, I used up all of my savings paying rent and unsponsored health insurance for me and my kid, went into $10k credit card debt and deferment on my student loans. I nearly moved back to Georgia to live with my dad, but finally after nearly 6 months unemployed I got with my current startup.
Last year I was asked by one of those VPs why I didn’t exercise my options when I was let go. I didn’t say, “because I didn’t have thousands of extra dollars right after being fired you idiot,” I answered something even truer: “because it isn’t blessed.” (That company was mostly a lie riding high and I wanted no stain from its success.)
More recently, I had to trust my integrity against “success” when I did a final interview for a Principal PM position and their VP of Product was so awful to me, that I nearly ended the interview midway through. It would have been a higher level, more money, much more name brand prestige. But my mantra these days is “doubt no intuition.” (8 weeks later my current startup created a Principal position so I could be promoted into it.)
Anyway, I’m so glad this essay found me. I haven’t exited SF yet, custody got me tied here, but I fantasize about leaving all the time.