Girls, Driving, Coding, Colours

(po polsku: Dziewczyny, samochody, programowanie i kolory)

In the first couple of posts I mentioned a few unpleasant professional life stories in which I had to face some openly expressed opinions on women’s intellectual potential. I considered those memories lost in the ash heap of history and safely distant, belonging in the “bad stuff turned good anecdotes” drawer.

Up until last week.

At this point I am the only girl at the team. I miss a girl to talk to not only because there is nobody I can complain to about the female ailments. After 4 years of education in a completely feminine environment (28 beatiful, ambitious adolescent girls in one classroom) and another 5 in the world of testosterone, I am a eulogist of (relative) balance.

Back to the main thread. We’re at a project meeting. All urgent questions have been discussed, so things get a little bit more relaxed. For some reason, we started talking about Dr. Form, well known to both the regular Poznań University (UAM) and the University of Technology (PP) students. Then the PP people told us about Ms. Font. Reportedly, in many cases she was not competent enough to discuss the actual contents of students’ theses, so she questioned the choice of font. We spent a while basking in self-rightousness, but then the leader of the project decided to cut in, saying “well, she’s a woman, she discusses what she knows best”. Mind you, I am giving the lightest possible version of what he said, because I really do not want to accuse people of things they did not say. I think that in fact it was a bit more harsh.

Again: I am the only girl on the team, and the only girl on the (inter-team) project. The author of those surprising words had stated before that he was really glad with my work so far. I reacted immediately, saying it was a bit too much, but – and unfortunately it’s been happening a lot to me recently – I felt more agitated with every passing minute. None of my colleagues decided to protest against putting things this way.

So I was walking home, trying to figure things out. The statemets made were as follows:
- Justyna is a good employee
- Justyna is a woman
- Justyna does not know shit about colours
- Women are only good at picking up colours
———————————————–
???

I finally decided that, provided the author of the aforementioned words had no reason to lie on his assessment of my work, the only non-contradictory interpretation is that a woman with a scientific mind is not treated as a woman at all. This actually is an interpretation which some people tried to force on me with good intentions – “come on, he treats you like a teammate, and not like any woman”. Uplifting indeed. Firstly, I know plenty of girls with scientific minds, and secondly, those who think in a more “soft” manner do not come down to the one doubtful skill (no offence to professional decorators – I envy you). Among my girlfriends there are laywers, artists, translators, journalists… For Pete’s sake.

I took time digesting it. After a few years with a really difficult boss I had decided not to spent a minute more in a place where the employee is treated with no respect by definition. Having considered more and less radical solutions, I went for the simplest one, that is a normal converstation. I learned that the opinion expressed concerned one person only and not women in general, even if pronounced in a slighly ambiguous manner. Fair enough.

This made me think, though. There is this class of natural language statements like “I like dogs better than cats” that lack quantification, and only last week it stroke me that people can interpret them differently. So, be so kind as to tell me…

Finished? So, what’s the deal with a sentence like ”Men are better drivers than women“? I have always treated them as beginning with the universal (“for each”) quantifier, so they have always irritated me. My bad, or is somebody messing with my head?

Tags: colours