Recently, on a post celebrating a female professional earning a significant achievement within the cybersecurity field, another individual (male) commented wondering if this was due to DEI. The one doing the questioning has no known credentials in the field and no obvious indicators that he is qualified to make an assessment on anyone’s cybersecurity achievements. In short, this was straight-up sexism.
I’ve given up trying to argue with individuals who act like their bigoted attitude has some justification. They are extremely unlikely to see anyone else’s point of view until it affects them personally, such as their daughter not getting an opportunity. Others had already called him out so I didn’t see a need to do so. Instead, I reached out to the high achieving professional and offered my congratulations. My recommendation to everyone is ensure that you do reach out to offer your support, to try and swing the comments heavily towards the positive. Our colleagues need our support.
I want to roll back to 1996 and give a personal anecdote. Back then, I was a United States Air Force (USAF) second lieutenant at my tech school, Basic Communications-Computer Systems Officer (BCOT), at Keesler Air Force Base. The highest scorer in our class was female. And truth be told, she started the class with a huge deficit compared to others of us in the class. I had been a professional programmer long before I entered the USAF and since I reported to my base first, I was fully familiar with all the project management related curriculum taught at BCOT. There were a few weeks when I already knew all of the material cold. There were number of individuals in my class who were former enlisted, coming out of the comm field, from telephones to tech control (long haul communications). Some had at least two enlistments in the career field.
In contrast, our high scorer came out of missiles. She was transitioning career fields from missiles to communications. There is no question that she started behind when it came to knowledge in the career field. How did she beat us? She outworked us.
When I say she outworked us, I mean it. She allocated a requisite amount of time each night to go back over the material for the day and commit it to memory. She reviewed the previous days for the week as well. While we all knew that was the way we should prepare, she didn’t slip up or make excuses. She was highly disciplined; we often were not. At the end of the class, she deserved first place. I know some outside of our class questioned whether she deserved to place first. If she was male, I doubt they would have questioned the achievement. As for our class, we all agreed that her finishing first was well-deserved. As a senior officer (she was a captain), she set the example for us. I was blessed to be in the same class as her. I learned a lot from her example.
I find that my present female colleagues are no different. They work hard. They earn their flowers. They are essential. And yet they continue to get flack, simply because they aren’t male. I don’t know how to stop the sexism/misogyny, but I do know how to support my colleagues when I see it directed against them. I urge everyone to do the same.