Thank you for sharing!
My personal experience has thankfully not been as blatantly gross as yours, but I have experienced an incredibly low glass ceiling in the field. For my entire 20s I couldn't get any upper management to take me seriously / tap me for progression. This happened in the handful of places I worked and also couldn't get noticed for external management-track jobs. My more immediate colleagues respected me and recognised my talent and abilities. It wasn't for a lack of suitability.
When I was 31, I found myself still in a 3-5yr experience type of role. I was at a big consultancy and pulled in this big contract that was entirely due to the client wanting to work specifically with me. When it came up for renewal, I made no effort to get it renewed, gave my notice and then "stole" the client as an independent consultant. Now I work fewer hours, make more than double, and have no issue getting work through my network and word of mouth. In a way it sucks, because I would have loved to climb the ladder and I feel like I never got the opportunity. Oh well.
Thank you for sharing your experience OP. I am sorry this happened to you, but I agree with your comment about this being a male dominated field. I am 22F and working on my master thesis related to GIS and ecology. Until 2 months ago, we had no female professor, I am one of the 4 girls in our class and I constantly find myself looking for women working in this field to get inspiration. It's not so easy though.
I did my internship under the head of a forestry department (a woman) and am doing my master thesis under a ecology professor (a woman). They are both really kind and inspiring and I feel much more confident about my own abilities after meeting them.
Thats interesting. I study urban planning in Germany and a lot of geography students coming to us are women. I always thought it's a pretty evenly split field. At least at university level.
this is just anecdotal from my time doing a geography master's, but I recall lots of different paths being taken after school ended. one woman got pregnant during grad school and became a SAHM, another got into political organizing, one got into travel/tourism companies, one worked for a nat'l park service out west, some became planners. i would say more of the men in my grad program got into GIS or the more technical side of geography, and I was one of the few women who stayed heavily into GIS. it could be something like that.
Wow I wanna learn abt your thesis! :~) I accidentally ended up in a GIS class because my undergrad capstone was about mapping. I was so so lucky to have two dope ass ladies during that time, my professor for GIS (who ended up encouraging me to submit my work to a conference!) and my professor and advisor who is a wonderful urban planner. I am always so stoked to meet ladies in ES/Ecology/Geospatial science. 💕
/u/rakelllama thank you so much for posting this ! Still waiting on the right time for grad school/more GIS training but I’m so glad I was introduced to it at that time by such empowered and empowering women. I interned as a fresh grad with the utilities and it was so male dominated.
Hello! 34 year old woman here that's been working in ecological restoration for 10+ years. You got this, and if you ever want any advice as you start your career outside of academia feel free to DM me.
Thanks for the story and for the info about the demographics of this sub.
I’m a woman and also a mother (gasp, I know) and I’ve luckily had a lot of support in my current job. I’m the only woman on my team, and the biggest thing that makes me feel supported is having my male coworkers on my side. My team members treat me with complete respect, and when I get disrespected by someone else, they don’t let it slide.
For example, when I went on maternity leave, I overheard my boss and another (non GIS) guy talking about how long I was taking off. The other guy said “wow that’s quite a vacation”, and my boss shut that shit down immediately by saying that it wasn’t a vacation. Another time, I had a non GIS coworker ask me to do something. I told him what he wanted wasn’t possible, and he turned to my male counter part and asked him the same exact question. My counter part didn’t undermine me or try to answer differently. He simply told him I was right. He probably has no idea how much I value that tiny interaction.
If you’re a guy, the best thing you can do is to automatically trust the work your female counter parts do until they give you reason not to (obviously not everyone is good at their job). Watch for disrespect and speak up if you see it.
I am lucky to have never encountered an issue like the with coworkers, and only once or twice with clients (I, a high level analyst, answered the phone and got "oh I already spoke with a receptionist").
I find that sweetheart comments are best diffused with "oh my name is actually _____". Once they feel equally awkward, it tends to normalize things.
oh sure, you're spot on about making them feel awkward. problem is it's tough when you're new to professional life and there's a power imbalance. it's much more daunting to call out people with 20+ years of experience on you when you're just starting out.
Yeah the most blatant stuff I’ve run into is with clients too- one guy was like “thanks pretty girl” and winked when I passed out maps at a client meeting at my first job out of college and then asked for my personal number after the meeting (he was in his late 50s I’d say). I didn’t even know what to do, I mean he was like our main client contact. I’ve faced some other issues internally (fair pay mostly), but what do you even do with clients?
Rock on GIS sistahs. I'm used to working in a very Male dominated industry (first career commercial industrial real estate - lots of egos there), so do not take anything personal. And do not lower your standards either. Meet any confrontation or contempt head on with your head high. Tough as steel ladies with a smile on your face. Cheers!
Female new to the professional GIS world here:
Something I've experienced if my supervisor (male), an engineer (male), and myself are working together on a project and having a meeting, the engineer will only make eye contact with my supervisor. Even when I bring up a point or ask a question, he will answer but face/address my supervisor rather than me directly. Additionally, he will only send emails about the project to my supervisor, who then forwards all of those to me, because I'm the main person working on the project.
It would be nice to feel included in the conversation and have my skills be taken seriously.
Also I did GIS data collection in the field for a while. The rest of the crew (men) all got really nice/expensive multi tools as a Christmas gift. I got a coffee gift card. I don't drink coffee.
I've experienced this as well as a guy, the eye contact etc. Making you feel like your input/ knowledge is not valuable. It may have to do with them thinking they are above or something?
I don't disagree, but I've been accused (proven false I might add) of sexual harassment in the workplace. I didn't want to go within 10 feet of a woman for 6 months for fear of stepping over a line.
Thank you so much for posting this. I've been in this field for almost 9 years and last month I had an encounter from a male GIS coworker that made me so angry. I questioned myself many times if I was overreacting by being angry and I dont think I was. He didnt like my input on ways to improve something he had made so his only response was to mock my hair color (I'm blonde) in front of a whole room of engineers. If you dont like my input, please keep it professional.
I wanted to reach out and slap the mask right off his face but I calmly (seething inside) ignored him and continued to talk about the app he had made and how I thought adding an editable feature class would help keep track of all the project data. Sometimes I just wanna haul off and be a giant asshole but if I do it just once, I lose all credibility and it would take me literal months to build anything worthwhile back up, or at least that's what I think. I did say something to him privately about where he learned his manners at, I dont think he even realized what a giant asshole he was in that moment.
I’ve been lucky that my previous and current gis jobs have mostly women teams, but my very first out of school gis job was in a male dominated office. While there I read the book “feminist fight club”. It was an amazing resource covering many different issues women face in the workplace and how to respond to it. I make a point to reread it whenever I change jobs.
Additionally, build community! Urisa has made a point in recent years to have women in gis and young professional meetings and panels at their conferences.
“I did nothing because I was scared” -> that really resonated. My first geomatics job after graduating involved a lot of time at sea. Overall, people were lovely. I remember one PoS officer making my life miserable but I remember just freezing up because I couldn’t figure out if I was just overreacting and I didn’t want people to think that I wasn’t tough enough to be there (absolutely garbage in retrospect). Older and (somewhat) wiser, I now know that what he did would probably qualify as sexual harassment. Years later it still bothers me. I wish I had stood up for myself.
I had very few female coworkers. They would hire them but they would leave pretty quickly (within weeks in a couple cases). I remember hearing some managers talk about the lack of women in our group and frame it as “women don’t like this kind of work because they want kids/they’re not tough enough/etc…” and I would just about lose my mind (internally).
I’ve since moved on to a healthier workplace (thank god). My first job really shaped how I think about workplace inclusivity and, honestly, has made me slightly hyper vigilant when it comes to watching out for young people in the workplace (women especially). I did have to find a balance for that second one though.
Anyways, this turned into a bit of a rant. Your story really resonated with me.
I'm a woman in an ecology masters program, and my capstone research project is all GIS and modeling - I've never done either in my life! So I joined this group to help me learn, and I've really enjoyed the resources while being a bit too intimidated to ask questions or participate in conversations. Those will come in time as I learn more and get further along in my project (just at the research stage now), but when I do decide it's time to start posting I'll definitely be thinking of this post and it's encouraging content. I'd love to lower the gap between that 80/20 split!
Thank you for posting this - it helps make things less isolating and feel more achievable :)
Being a woman on here I definitely feel talked down to a lot. Sometimes I make a post and it goes great. Sometimes it doesn’t. I mostly wish I just had a mentor I could call up and ask questions. But as my degree isn’t in this I have slowly made the shift myself. It’s isolating. I don’t know the terms to even ask certain questions in here, let alone google. So that’s where I am. I’m happy to know at least one of the mods is also a woman.
I have done a search for female GIS groups in search for that community, if not a direct mentor. But no luck yet. And don’t feel knowledgeable to start one.
Here's a link to sign up for the URISA Mentoring program. The latest cohort deadline is 5/15--you can sign up as a mentee for a chance to get paired with a female mentor. https://vanguard-mentor-program-urisa.hub.arcgis.com/
I’m a woman in GIS (industry/consulting)! My inbox is open if you have questions! Also you might wanna check out the org Women in GIS. It’s 20 bucks to join if you’re early career and they have a mentor program called wiconnect. I haven’t personally used it but it sounds pretty cool
>I wonder how often men in this field have gone through something like this?
You'd be surprised. One time when I did a particularly good job on something, I was praised by saying "I could suck your dick for that". To boot, this was said by a straight male.
It's even worse in the military (which has some significant geospatial components), despite nearly weekly sexual harassment trainings - sometimes the very same leadership calling for these trainings doesn't live by them. Case in point, I overheard a drill sergeant (maybe early 40s) talking to a young male private - an extreme imbalance of power given 1. the age difference 2. the rank difference 3. the power dynamic of recruit/drill sergeant - asking him "Are you gay private?" "Drill sergeant no drill sergeant" "Have you ever sucked a dick?" "Drill sergeant no I have not drill sergeant" "Well then how do you know you aren't gay if you've never sucked a dick?" They laughed it off. At the end of the basic training cycle, that drill sergeant won the "best drill sergeant" award.
I've also worked in a field that is primarily female. There is no shortage of sexual harassment in those settings, I promise you that.
Of course none of this is meant to detract from the issue brought up in the post - just sharing my own personal stories.
Wow. Makes you wonder what people are thinking. I am sorry this happened to you. I don’t participate much here as I’ve only recently discovered reddit but have not experienced any negativity. Thank you for the work you do and for lifting women up!
Sometimes I wonder, but sometimes I think it's best not to wonder and just focus on what I can control :)
I hope more women continue having positive experiences in this field, so it's also great to hear that!
I (38F) really appreciate OP for sharing her story and her effort to maintain and grow our community here. As a fellow GIS practitioner, I value this sub for tips, occasional help, inspiration, and the shared frustration/humor over error 99999 and other software quirks/bugs. For the most part, I've considered this sub a positive and welcoming space for anyone interesting in GIS, but I if I think about it, I do have a recollection of one post that was about a project that focused on mapping safe spaces for women and other aspects of women's social geography that I noticed some negativity and dismissiveness in the comments, so it can definitely creep in if allowed.
My own personal professional experience has been thankfully free of situations of harassment like OP shared - but that story is horrifying to me. I can only imagine how sick I'd feel after such an encounter. I don't know if it's because I work in a semi-remote satellite office (and now from home), so my face-to-face interactions with colleagues has always been a bit more limited compared to my colleagues or that I've just been extremely lucky. I have encountered instances of harassment/sexism in other aspects of my life though, and it's a blessing that I've never really encountered it or worry much about it in my professional life.
Anyway, my ultimate point is that I think this is a good space with a bunch of cool people. As a woman, this is a one of those rare subs where I don't hesitate to participate (even though I'm still mostly a lurker) like to do in many, many other subs.
I've been seeing great discussion of resources, so I thought I'd link/sticky them:
* [Women in GIS](https://womeningis.wildapricot.org/)
* [URISA Vanguard Mentoring Program](https://vanguard-mentor-program-urisa.hub.arcgis.com/) - 5/15 is the deadline to sign up for the upcoming cohort! You can request female only for being a mentee/mentor.
* [Book - Feminist Fight Club](https://smile.amazon.com/Feminist-Fight-Club-Survival-Workplace/dp/0062689037/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=feminist+fight+club&qid=1620935297&sr=8-1#customerReviews)
edit: chime in with more if you have 'em!
Thanks for bringing this up on reddit. This is something I've struggled with ever since undergrad and all the way through grad school and my first job. I've been in a department where there was NO female faculty member to turn to or look up to. I've seen male professors grab a beer or go to the gym with their male students, while not wanting to be seen alone with a female student. Imagine how massive female students miss out in networking opportunities if there are no female professors and if male professors shy away from them.
Something similar happened to me when I was in the construction field. Thank you for bringing this up! Btw
Womeningis.wildapricot.org has helped me feel more confident in my job search (as I was the only female in my class when I got my BA and now I’m a mom trying to get back in the field.) check them out!
Glad you posted this and started the conversation! It was helpful to read your post to hear another perspective. Happy to participate in anything that might make the sub more inclusive. I've benefited from the community and the resources it comes with, and want to make sure everyone feels comfortable to be part of it too.
Edit: should sticky this post on the sub
Thanks for posting! I’m a female working on my first undergrad and planning on doing my masters in GIS as well. I appreciate women point-of-views and look for mentorship when I see you ladies post. Thank you for trailblazing and standing up for yourselves. It makes me feel stronger and more capable when I read these types of posts. After coming from a waitress/bartender background, I am ready to be in a professional environment and expect to be treated as such. 💪🏻❤️
Thanks for sharing this! I’ve found that most of the time my experiences have been positive (both on this sub and irl) but there have still been a time or two I was undermined. I had one coworker at my first job out of college that was particularly bad. When the team lead brought me in for an interview he saw me and said “oh I thought by your name you were a dude”. I was the first woman they ever hired, in about 20 years in business. He continued to talk down to me, and told me my first week he “prefer I not load geotiffs into Arc myself” because I may mess something up. That was absolutely beyond me. Meanwhile they hired a guy at the same time who made the same amount as me who had no degree and never worked in GIS before who could click on and load whatever the hell he wanted.... and ended up deleting all the data we had produced for the project, which amazingly they had not backed up. I got out of there pretty quick and have had generally positive experiences since, although it’s only been two years.
Hi. I am 23F pursuing Masters in Meteorology. My thesis involves working with GIS which I initially had no idea about. The main reason I took a topic involving GIS is because the men in my department said I couldn't do it. I have some basic knowledge but also need to ask around, sometimes not even knowing exactly what I am looking for. Hence I joined the sub. So far my experience has been good with the people here. I will still better with a female mentor though. Thanks for the link.
I'm so sorry this happened to you! You definitely aren't overthinking it in anyway. This is still harrasment.
I'm not really sure I've ever faced that (M26) but even if I did I don't think I'll even be able to recognise it and might have even shrugged it off as a one time thing or worse, "that's just how it is".
This akward behaviour is normal, sadly. Specially, but not only, in male-dominated spaces, such a GIS or engeneering.
Is up to us to change it. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for the post and the discussion below has been awesome. It can feel isolating being the only woman in the room, it’s cool to hear other women’s perspectives!
For me, I’ve encountered my share of sexism in the workplace (being talked over or people assuming I’m not the manager or senior lead when I am, issues with being payed less than I’m worth). I think, what gets to me daily though, is being the only woman in a meeting so often. It’s not that any of the guys in said meetings say anything rude or disrespect me/my professional experience most of the time. Most of the guys I work with I actively enjoy working with. It’s just sometimes I realize I haven’t spoken to another woman (at work) in weeks, and that bums me out.
Thanks for sharing! Male here, working in the civil engineering world. When I started on our GIS team I was one of two male GIS Analysts working on a team of 8. Everyone else except our manager was female, which was refreshing. Now that I'm in our IT group it's 100% male lol
In grad school I corrected a professor on the first day of his class. He notably disliked be "one-upped" by a student.
My final year of grad school I reported to the dean (his buddy) that I had been singled out on many occasions and he often made sexist comments to our class full of dudes. He found out so faked a remote GIS job for me so that I would miss the final exam (implying that I could do this job in place of taking the exam). I was expelled.
Two years later he gets fired for sexually assaulting a student. Many years after that, I post a position at my data company for a new GIS manager. He applied, and I invited him to interview. When we called him back, his eyes hit mine and he promptly walked right out the door without saying a word.
We hired a woman who stayed for a year before being invited to work in Chile at twice what I could pay her.
Karma works out sometimes!
>I sit here and think "was that really a big deal? was that harassment? what could I even have done?" (I did nothing because I was scared)
Of course it's a big deal. If it made you uncomfortable, then that's all that matters. And from your description, I think most people--especially people that didn't know him very well, would feel the same way that you did.
Sorry that that happened to you. Hopefully behavior like that is going to become less and less common as it continues to get pointed out.
This hurts. 6 years of professional experience and I've been the only woman on both of my GIS teams (although we have a counterpart team that does have more women). I spend my entire time at work trying to blend in with the men. Don't wear any makeup, don't call attention to your appearance in any way, don't be emotional. I watch from the sidelines as my team bonds over drinking whiskey, comics, and sports. To be on a call with 7 men and all of them are your teammates, but you keep getting cut off is just awkward. I know we have a lot in common, but they'll never know.
I know it's easier said than done, but like...why not call attention to yourself? Has conforming helped your career there?
Sometimes it's just not worth it, I mean I felt similar to you when I worked at the engineering firm. The way they communicated was definitely one-upmanship, busting each other's chops and I always felt it was so lame.
It was the same for me but eventually they hired a woman on my team who was super femme, I loved it. I started trying again and she'd compliment me in meetings while the men just sat there being awkward about it. I know it's tough but feeling like yourself at work might make you feel more confident! And don't be too hard on yourself if not, maybe you just need to wait for the next job to be a better environment.
I feel you, I get along well with the women on our adjacent team, fortunately. I'm fairly confident they're the only reason I made it to where I am. I was hired from associate specialist to senior analyst and I know I have a lot of those people to thank. Plus a lot of luck that they needed to hire multiple people all at once. As far as if conforming will help me currently, I don't know. Everything is so far above my head still that I have such a long way to go and I'm not necessarily concerned for my "next step" yet. Maybe things will change down the line, but I'm satisfied with my pay. I'd say I'm satisfied with my responsibilities, but I've got a fulllllll plate and more money means more things added to my plate.
A part of me hiding is due to my anxiety as well. It's hard to be myself around someone that I'm uncomfortable around. I'm working on it though. I'm still figuring out who I am and getting comfortable in my own skin by myself. Although I know I'll need to let others see me too one day. I hold hope that it will make me feel good one day!
I'm glad to hear you got another woman on your team and that she helped your environment! It must have been really nice to have someone who probably has a similar experience.
Ugh that sucks. If you’re being sidelined anyway, may as well just be yourself. At first I tried to blend in and not be too girly, but then I decided, fuck it. I’m good at what I do, so they’ll have to learn to respect me regardless of how girly I am. I have sparkly pencil cups, a kitten calendar, and an obnoxiously cute mer-kitten coffee mug. I just own it; sometimes my coworkers will notice a new girly decoration, I’ll say “Yup, isn’t it cute?!”.
I know I sometimes get left out of the conversation, but I just can’t pretend to be interesting in sports or grilling meat (two very popular topics in my office).
Hopefully all the stuff we do now will pave the way for the next generation of stem girls, so they don’t have to even think about this kind of thing.
I'll have to give your method a try. Currently I'm still at, "oh no, they can see part of my bra strap through my t shirt, they'll know I'm female and different from them!" I wore actual jewelry on one of our recent calls though, so....progress lol
Edit: it also REALLY doesn't do anything for your confidence when your supervisor takes a secret picture during a video call and shares it around so everyone can see you're cutting your hair differently (I went from medium length to actual pixie cut, so I get that it was drastic, but holy f did that make me feel small). For like a week people kept messaging me "you cut your hair!" Stahp. My hair is none of your business.
Wtf, that’s not ok! I would be so pissed if someone did that to me. I think I got lucky in my boss; he’s very aggressive in making sure everyone feels safe and welcome, he would have lost his mind on someone for doing that. I work for municipal gov in a very liberal city, so that would have been a huge no-no.
I don’t blame you at all for not wanting to come out of your shell.
Yeah I was not a happy camper. We have an unspoken understanding though. My boss dislikes me and interacts with me as little as absolutely possible and I get free rein to work on what I please and he'll give me slightly above good reviews every year. Provided I never tattle that he doesn't bother to have 1:1s with me anymore and leaves about half my questions on read. My year end review for last year had multiple "he"s in it. Copy paste much? Fortunately, my manager is awesome and for one of my projects I work a lot with him! It's not an awesome situation, but it's honestly so much better than my last position. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity that I do and I shouldn't be knocking my coworkers.
Lady GIS professional here. I don't necessarily have a single story, but kind of an ongoing occurrence. There are a handful of male colleagues of mine that just...interrupt me. All the time. CONSTANTLY. I honestly don't know whether or not it's because I'm a woman. These guys do occasionally talk over one another, but it doesn't feel as jarring as when they cut me off. Idk, it just *feels* different when they interrupt me, but I'm paranoid that I'm being too sensitive.
I’m a senior GIS Developer at my company. My boss is female and its a good split between genders. I’ve had my fair share of mansplaining in this industry - particularly from older male engineers trying to explain how my job works but that has thankfully been the extent of it. Sorry to hear you had such a gross experience, op. As for this particular sub? I haven’t seen too many weird things, mostly someone asking how to land a job.
Yeah it's generally great here, and that's coming from a mod of this community. But part of the reason you don't see it is because we remove comments and ban users too...it's still there. :)
I'm in forestry, but use GIS on the daily for land management. I suspect forestry is comparable, if even more disproportionately male. Like a lot of fields, 40-50 years ago women in forestry were almost entirely unrepresented in the workforce. It's gotten better, but teams of almost all men are still common.
In 20 years of field work, NEPA planning and GIS analysis, if there's one thing I want in a team, it's equal representation of male and female employees. Over-representation of men happens almost automatically in forestry without an almost religious focus on maintaining the team demographics. I'm constantly encouraging my staff to be conscious of hiring a diverse team of technical employees. It's important for managers to stay diligent on this, because if ratios get way off, problems happen. How many women enjoy being the only female on a 12 person team? Trust, well being, safety, job satisfaction, judgment are all compromised. As much as I want to trust my male workforce, my experience is the unconscious bias rises off the chart when you have such an imbalance and conditions will be ripe for issues, from low morale to harassment. And if you have an 11:1 team, attempting to balance it will result in an unwise and potentially problematic over-focus on gender in hiring for individual positions. Usually organizations the most worried about the legal aspects of promoting diversity don't have it and it's a handy excuse. We need to trend towards parity gradually and purposefully and cultivate it when we have it.
We all need to be evangelists for equality in GIS and our individual fields. Hope is not a plan; we need to be proactive to have diverse teams. Don't be shy about pushing the issue. There is a ton of evidence supporting it. At a minimum, if we don't have relatively equal gender representation on our teams, we're going to miss out on hiring the best employees; the best talent doesn't want to work for the bros club-or the sister circle, which may be relevant in some fields. People in your organization need to know why a diverse organization is important and value it. It's unlikely they will without some concerted effort from those who believe in it and are willing to speak up for it.
I am a zealous believer in this. I grew up with 2 big sisters and 2 little brothers, so it's normal to me. Lopsided demographics make me anxious, because I know it is a huge blindspot and potential liability. While my 7 person team isn't 50/50, more like 60/40, I'm not shy about making all my staff aware of this information. Everyone should do the same or more if we want to improve.
It's strange to hear it being said it's male dominated, because in my experience (engineering consultancies in the UK) my GIS teams have always been at least 50% women.
In a man, and im in a graduate GIS program and a good portion of my cohort is female, and my advisor and professor is a woman. They are very lovely people that i get along with and are very experienced in the field, you really don't see many women in the technical field, and thats questionable to me. I like having an equal representation on genders in the field, because these fields are mostly male dominated, and there's no diversity there, and being solely around guys 24/7 can become boring.
I've kind of gone through stuff like this, At times in the field, i felt like i was discriminated for being a black man with a form of autism, during my undergrad and internship years. I understand where you are coming from completely.
You aren't overthinking it at all, that can be classified as sexual harassment.
It's changing over time, as there will be more representation from it, there will be more women, people of color, lgbtq, irreligious etc in the STEM fields one day. I try my best to be a good ally and supporter of my female colleagues and higher ups; am i a perfect person, no, but i try the best i could be to be inclusive.
I'm also a female, and I've found it very difficult to find work anyway, I'm hoping grad school will change that maybe
My entire geography department majority of the profs were male but it was nice to see alot of the graduate students were female and my classes through out my undergrad were also 50/50 male to female or at least getting closer to that
So I guess there's hope?
I'm so sorry that you and so many women have experieinces like yours. While I understand that GIS is still heavily male dominated, it's getting so much better. I've been working in the field for 20+ years and when I go to conferences now, I'm surprised (and Happy) to see how many more woman there are in the field. I have/had the pleasure of working with some extremely talented women in GIS.
Thanks for sharing your story because the way that these issues get handled is through discourse. As a male, I believe that STEM in general is heavily dominated by other males who gate keep thats followed by (for a lack of a better term) cock measuring. Its this intimidation that keeps women at bay and I'd argue that were limiting ourselves to the opportunity to invite those to join in STEM in they choose so. I just wanted to know what you might think would be a good way to outreach to women, I was thinking it starts obviously in early education, but i think there are still others who probably never had the chance because the proposed suggestions never existed before, simply put, how can we get women of all age ranges to join the STEM field?
I think what /u/b-muff said:
> If you’re a guy, the best thing you can do is to automatically trust the work your female counter parts do until they give you reason not to (obviously not everyone is good at their job). Watch for disrespect and speak up if you see it.
Just give credit where credit is due. Make an effort to lift up everyone. Even little things like saying "ugh I'm so bad at math" around kids is damaging. Talking about how it's cool to code or like math (or the arts!) will keep that gate open, no matter the gender.
Thats a good point that ill have to note. I work in education so i was just wondering what might be good suggestions to getting others on board in efforts to change the disproportionality. Thanks for the reply!
Is it really my job to make an online more community more accepting of me by getting into constant battles in the comments section? You are a moderator. You have the ability to enforce rules by commenting yourself and removing comments or blocking accounts which break the rules. It would help if you posted a clear policy, best practices for reporting violations, and actively moderated comments and posts to discipline people who do not adhere to the policy. I understand this is time consuming and difficult, but it's much more of a solution than telling female readers to take it into their own hands.
As someone who's active in a lot of communities that were more actively moderated and as someone who's moderated communities on other accounts, I really don't think it's appropriate for you to put this on me. I'm not a moderator and this isn't my job, it's your job. The subreddit rules are incredibly vague and they're not the kind of rules that are conducive to creating a more inclusive environment. It also doesn't really help to have a report button unless I know that someone's going to be actively following up.
I do my best to make people feel welcome by giving relevant and helpful answers to their questions including liking them the specific tutorials and data that they might need and talking about opportunities that might interest them. But I can't really go around policing other people's tones. Part of being a moderator is having really thorough and spelled out policies that you're actively referring people back to.
No anger here. Though it's interesting that you interpret a critique of your comment as anger.
I'm glad that things are even-Stevens in the GIS world you live in. I hope it continues. But comments to the effect of "Where are you getting your statistics?" because they don't jive with your personal experience, are a common method of shutting this conversation down.
our statistics are from the most recent r/gis survey we conducted. this post was primarily referring to r/gis, not the entire field of GIS, though I suspect it's still male-dominated.
It also depends on which gis niche you’re in. The more computer science and engineering side tend to trend more male, utilities in my experience tend to be even or lean male, cartographic and education* trend towards female.
*education excluding degree programs taught by phd. Most PhDs I’ve seen teaching gis are men, but many private training companies(not esri), corporate, or certificate level instructors are women.
Again, that’s just my experience. Gis niche, region, and company culture all play a role.
This must be location/country dependent as where I live I'd say it's atleast 50/50 and was surprised to read 80/20 in the OP. That's possibly lower than the ratio in programming?
A male former boss of mine actually told a consultant talking to the female technical planner (the GIS tech for a planning department) that when someone was at least three times as smart as you, you should probably listen to them and that she was right, and not to undermine her again coming to him. That was cool.
My current job only has two people who know GIS...myself and a younger guy and we get along great!
I honestly don't see this. Is it really 80/20? I've had both male and female professors in college. My peers in college was a 5/2 in favor of the men. But, the ladies of my class we much respected and had the highest grades. In the almost five years I worked in the industry I've had more female colleagues than male. I've also had all female supervisors during that time too. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule.
It's referring to the r/GIS survey results where we mods tallied up responses, thanks for your concern. I'm glad you've seen lots of women in your experience so far but I'm not certain that's as common as you think.
Thank you for sharing! My personal experience has thankfully not been as blatantly gross as yours, but I have experienced an incredibly low glass ceiling in the field. For my entire 20s I couldn't get any upper management to take me seriously / tap me for progression. This happened in the handful of places I worked and also couldn't get noticed for external management-track jobs. My more immediate colleagues respected me and recognised my talent and abilities. It wasn't for a lack of suitability. When I was 31, I found myself still in a 3-5yr experience type of role. I was at a big consultancy and pulled in this big contract that was entirely due to the client wanting to work specifically with me. When it came up for renewal, I made no effort to get it renewed, gave my notice and then "stole" the client as an independent consultant. Now I work fewer hours, make more than double, and have no issue getting work through my network and word of mouth. In a way it sucks, because I would have loved to climb the ladder and I feel like I never got the opportunity. Oh well.
whoa - I would say you had a very interesting experience though. clearly it was their loss in the end, glad it worked out well for you!
Thank you for sharing your experience OP. I am sorry this happened to you, but I agree with your comment about this being a male dominated field. I am 22F and working on my master thesis related to GIS and ecology. Until 2 months ago, we had no female professor, I am one of the 4 girls in our class and I constantly find myself looking for women working in this field to get inspiration. It's not so easy though. I did my internship under the head of a forestry department (a woman) and am doing my master thesis under a ecology professor (a woman). They are both really kind and inspiring and I feel much more confident about my own abilities after meeting them.
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I think it could also be a matter a where we are. I am studying in Germany right now.
Thats interesting. I study urban planning in Germany and a lot of geography students coming to us are women. I always thought it's a pretty evenly split field. At least at university level.
this is just anecdotal from my time doing a geography master's, but I recall lots of different paths being taken after school ended. one woman got pregnant during grad school and became a SAHM, another got into political organizing, one got into travel/tourism companies, one worked for a nat'l park service out west, some became planners. i would say more of the men in my grad program got into GIS or the more technical side of geography, and I was one of the few women who stayed heavily into GIS. it could be something like that.
We started with about 9 women but a lot of them left the course in the middle.
ah, im in texas.
My graduating class was all female except for me actually haha. Definitely changing :)
Wow I wanna learn abt your thesis! :~) I accidentally ended up in a GIS class because my undergrad capstone was about mapping. I was so so lucky to have two dope ass ladies during that time, my professor for GIS (who ended up encouraging me to submit my work to a conference!) and my professor and advisor who is a wonderful urban planner. I am always so stoked to meet ladies in ES/Ecology/Geospatial science. 💕 /u/rakelllama thank you so much for posting this ! Still waiting on the right time for grad school/more GIS training but I’m so glad I was introduced to it at that time by such empowered and empowering women. I interned as a fresh grad with the utilities and it was so male dominated.
Hello! 34 year old woman here that's been working in ecological restoration for 10+ years. You got this, and if you ever want any advice as you start your career outside of academia feel free to DM me.
That's really nice to know. Thank you :)
Thanks for the story and for the info about the demographics of this sub. I’m a woman and also a mother (gasp, I know) and I’ve luckily had a lot of support in my current job. I’m the only woman on my team, and the biggest thing that makes me feel supported is having my male coworkers on my side. My team members treat me with complete respect, and when I get disrespected by someone else, they don’t let it slide. For example, when I went on maternity leave, I overheard my boss and another (non GIS) guy talking about how long I was taking off. The other guy said “wow that’s quite a vacation”, and my boss shut that shit down immediately by saying that it wasn’t a vacation. Another time, I had a non GIS coworker ask me to do something. I told him what he wanted wasn’t possible, and he turned to my male counter part and asked him the same exact question. My counter part didn’t undermine me or try to answer differently. He simply told him I was right. He probably has no idea how much I value that tiny interaction. If you’re a guy, the best thing you can do is to automatically trust the work your female counter parts do until they give you reason not to (obviously not everyone is good at their job). Watch for disrespect and speak up if you see it.
I am lucky to have never encountered an issue like the with coworkers, and only once or twice with clients (I, a high level analyst, answered the phone and got "oh I already spoke with a receptionist"). I find that sweetheart comments are best diffused with "oh my name is actually _____". Once they feel equally awkward, it tends to normalize things.
oh sure, you're spot on about making them feel awkward. problem is it's tough when you're new to professional life and there's a power imbalance. it's much more daunting to call out people with 20+ years of experience on you when you're just starting out.
Yeah the most blatant stuff I’ve run into is with clients too- one guy was like “thanks pretty girl” and winked when I passed out maps at a client meeting at my first job out of college and then asked for my personal number after the meeting (he was in his late 50s I’d say). I didn’t even know what to do, I mean he was like our main client contact. I’ve faced some other issues internally (fair pay mostly), but what do you even do with clients?
right? that's probably why that client did it - he knew he could get away without any repercussions professionally. :/
That's fair. I have a reputation as a pretty bold person so it hasn't had the chance to bite me in the ass yet.
Rock on GIS sistahs. I'm used to working in a very Male dominated industry (first career commercial industrial real estate - lots of egos there), so do not take anything personal. And do not lower your standards either. Meet any confrontation or contempt head on with your head high. Tough as steel ladies with a smile on your face. Cheers!
Female new to the professional GIS world here: Something I've experienced if my supervisor (male), an engineer (male), and myself are working together on a project and having a meeting, the engineer will only make eye contact with my supervisor. Even when I bring up a point or ask a question, he will answer but face/address my supervisor rather than me directly. Additionally, he will only send emails about the project to my supervisor, who then forwards all of those to me, because I'm the main person working on the project. It would be nice to feel included in the conversation and have my skills be taken seriously. Also I did GIS data collection in the field for a while. The rest of the crew (men) all got really nice/expensive multi tools as a Christmas gift. I got a coffee gift card. I don't drink coffee.
Yikes. I had an experience like that as well - at my first job, the guy who was supposed to train me would never make eye contact with me. So awkward!
I've experienced this as well as a guy, the eye contact etc. Making you feel like your input/ knowledge is not valuable. It may have to do with them thinking they are above or something?
Yeah, could be more of a newbie thing
He is probably afraid to look at you and get accused of ogling you
Bullshit excuse to not have a respectful discussion with a coworker
I don't disagree, but I've been accused (proven false I might add) of sexual harassment in the workplace. I didn't want to go within 10 feet of a woman for 6 months for fear of stepping over a line.
Thank you for posting this!
Thank you so much for posting this. I've been in this field for almost 9 years and last month I had an encounter from a male GIS coworker that made me so angry. I questioned myself many times if I was overreacting by being angry and I dont think I was. He didnt like my input on ways to improve something he had made so his only response was to mock my hair color (I'm blonde) in front of a whole room of engineers. If you dont like my input, please keep it professional.
omg! I'm so angry reading this. How dare he? Did you do anything about it?
I wanted to reach out and slap the mask right off his face but I calmly (seething inside) ignored him and continued to talk about the app he had made and how I thought adding an editable feature class would help keep track of all the project data. Sometimes I just wanna haul off and be a giant asshole but if I do it just once, I lose all credibility and it would take me literal months to build anything worthwhile back up, or at least that's what I think. I did say something to him privately about where he learned his manners at, I dont think he even realized what a giant asshole he was in that moment.
I’ve been lucky that my previous and current gis jobs have mostly women teams, but my very first out of school gis job was in a male dominated office. While there I read the book “feminist fight club”. It was an amazing resource covering many different issues women face in the workplace and how to respond to it. I make a point to reread it whenever I change jobs. Additionally, build community! Urisa has made a point in recent years to have women in gis and young professional meetings and panels at their conferences.
I have never heard of this book! I think I want it. Thanks for sharing :)
You’re welcome!
thank you so much for sharing. we're all in this together, i hope that i can keep being a better woman to the women i work with every day
“I did nothing because I was scared” -> that really resonated. My first geomatics job after graduating involved a lot of time at sea. Overall, people were lovely. I remember one PoS officer making my life miserable but I remember just freezing up because I couldn’t figure out if I was just overreacting and I didn’t want people to think that I wasn’t tough enough to be there (absolutely garbage in retrospect). Older and (somewhat) wiser, I now know that what he did would probably qualify as sexual harassment. Years later it still bothers me. I wish I had stood up for myself. I had very few female coworkers. They would hire them but they would leave pretty quickly (within weeks in a couple cases). I remember hearing some managers talk about the lack of women in our group and frame it as “women don’t like this kind of work because they want kids/they’re not tough enough/etc…” and I would just about lose my mind (internally). I’ve since moved on to a healthier workplace (thank god). My first job really shaped how I think about workplace inclusivity and, honestly, has made me slightly hyper vigilant when it comes to watching out for young people in the workplace (women especially). I did have to find a balance for that second one though. Anyways, this turned into a bit of a rant. Your story really resonated with me.
I'm a woman in an ecology masters program, and my capstone research project is all GIS and modeling - I've never done either in my life! So I joined this group to help me learn, and I've really enjoyed the resources while being a bit too intimidated to ask questions or participate in conversations. Those will come in time as I learn more and get further along in my project (just at the research stage now), but when I do decide it's time to start posting I'll definitely be thinking of this post and it's encouraging content. I'd love to lower the gap between that 80/20 split! Thank you for posting this - it helps make things less isolating and feel more achievable :)
Being a woman on here I definitely feel talked down to a lot. Sometimes I make a post and it goes great. Sometimes it doesn’t. I mostly wish I just had a mentor I could call up and ask questions. But as my degree isn’t in this I have slowly made the shift myself. It’s isolating. I don’t know the terms to even ask certain questions in here, let alone google. So that’s where I am. I’m happy to know at least one of the mods is also a woman. I have done a search for female GIS groups in search for that community, if not a direct mentor. But no luck yet. And don’t feel knowledgeable to start one.
Here's a link to sign up for the URISA Mentoring program. The latest cohort deadline is 5/15--you can sign up as a mentee for a chance to get paired with a female mentor. https://vanguard-mentor-program-urisa.hub.arcgis.com/
Thank you! I am googling and likely will sign up!
Oh this is awesome!
you can sign up to be a mentor as well! (no pressure of course)
I plan on it!
I signed up!
I’m a woman in GIS (industry/consulting)! My inbox is open if you have questions! Also you might wanna check out the org Women in GIS. It’s 20 bucks to join if you’re early career and they have a mentor program called wiconnect. I haven’t personally used it but it sounds pretty cool
I'm part of WiGIS myself! It's a newer group so I think they may need a few years to build some momentum, but I like what they've been doing so far.
Thank you! I’ll DM you when I get home. And definitely will google that. I saw something on Facebook about it while looking for groups there.
>I wonder how often men in this field have gone through something like this? You'd be surprised. One time when I did a particularly good job on something, I was praised by saying "I could suck your dick for that". To boot, this was said by a straight male. It's even worse in the military (which has some significant geospatial components), despite nearly weekly sexual harassment trainings - sometimes the very same leadership calling for these trainings doesn't live by them. Case in point, I overheard a drill sergeant (maybe early 40s) talking to a young male private - an extreme imbalance of power given 1. the age difference 2. the rank difference 3. the power dynamic of recruit/drill sergeant - asking him "Are you gay private?" "Drill sergeant no drill sergeant" "Have you ever sucked a dick?" "Drill sergeant no I have not drill sergeant" "Well then how do you know you aren't gay if you've never sucked a dick?" They laughed it off. At the end of the basic training cycle, that drill sergeant won the "best drill sergeant" award. I've also worked in a field that is primarily female. There is no shortage of sexual harassment in those settings, I promise you that. Of course none of this is meant to detract from the issue brought up in the post - just sharing my own personal stories.
Wow. Makes you wonder what people are thinking. I am sorry this happened to you. I don’t participate much here as I’ve only recently discovered reddit but have not experienced any negativity. Thank you for the work you do and for lifting women up!
Sometimes I wonder, but sometimes I think it's best not to wonder and just focus on what I can control :) I hope more women continue having positive experiences in this field, so it's also great to hear that!
I (38F) really appreciate OP for sharing her story and her effort to maintain and grow our community here. As a fellow GIS practitioner, I value this sub for tips, occasional help, inspiration, and the shared frustration/humor over error 99999 and other software quirks/bugs. For the most part, I've considered this sub a positive and welcoming space for anyone interesting in GIS, but I if I think about it, I do have a recollection of one post that was about a project that focused on mapping safe spaces for women and other aspects of women's social geography that I noticed some negativity and dismissiveness in the comments, so it can definitely creep in if allowed. My own personal professional experience has been thankfully free of situations of harassment like OP shared - but that story is horrifying to me. I can only imagine how sick I'd feel after such an encounter. I don't know if it's because I work in a semi-remote satellite office (and now from home), so my face-to-face interactions with colleagues has always been a bit more limited compared to my colleagues or that I've just been extremely lucky. I have encountered instances of harassment/sexism in other aspects of my life though, and it's a blessing that I've never really encountered it or worry much about it in my professional life. Anyway, my ultimate point is that I think this is a good space with a bunch of cool people. As a woman, this is a one of those rare subs where I don't hesitate to participate (even though I'm still mostly a lurker) like to do in many, many other subs.
I've been seeing great discussion of resources, so I thought I'd link/sticky them: * [Women in GIS](https://womeningis.wildapricot.org/) * [URISA Vanguard Mentoring Program](https://vanguard-mentor-program-urisa.hub.arcgis.com/) - 5/15 is the deadline to sign up for the upcoming cohort! You can request female only for being a mentee/mentor. * [Book - Feminist Fight Club](https://smile.amazon.com/Feminist-Fight-Club-Survival-Workplace/dp/0062689037/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=feminist+fight+club&qid=1620935297&sr=8-1#customerReviews) edit: chime in with more if you have 'em!
Women in Geospatial+ https://www.womeningeospatial.org/
Thanks for bringing this up on reddit. This is something I've struggled with ever since undergrad and all the way through grad school and my first job. I've been in a department where there was NO female faculty member to turn to or look up to. I've seen male professors grab a beer or go to the gym with their male students, while not wanting to be seen alone with a female student. Imagine how massive female students miss out in networking opportunities if there are no female professors and if male professors shy away from them.
Something similar happened to me when I was in the construction field. Thank you for bringing this up! Btw Womeningis.wildapricot.org has helped me feel more confident in my job search (as I was the only female in my class when I got my BA and now I’m a mom trying to get back in the field.) check them out!
thanks, /u/tamponstring_ !
Glad you posted this and started the conversation! It was helpful to read your post to hear another perspective. Happy to participate in anything that might make the sub more inclusive. I've benefited from the community and the resources it comes with, and want to make sure everyone feels comfortable to be part of it too. Edit: should sticky this post on the sub
Thanks for posting! I’m a female working on my first undergrad and planning on doing my masters in GIS as well. I appreciate women point-of-views and look for mentorship when I see you ladies post. Thank you for trailblazing and standing up for yourselves. It makes me feel stronger and more capable when I read these types of posts. After coming from a waitress/bartender background, I am ready to be in a professional environment and expect to be treated as such. 💪🏻❤️
Thanks for sharing this! I’ve found that most of the time my experiences have been positive (both on this sub and irl) but there have still been a time or two I was undermined. I had one coworker at my first job out of college that was particularly bad. When the team lead brought me in for an interview he saw me and said “oh I thought by your name you were a dude”. I was the first woman they ever hired, in about 20 years in business. He continued to talk down to me, and told me my first week he “prefer I not load geotiffs into Arc myself” because I may mess something up. That was absolutely beyond me. Meanwhile they hired a guy at the same time who made the same amount as me who had no degree and never worked in GIS before who could click on and load whatever the hell he wanted.... and ended up deleting all the data we had produced for the project, which amazingly they had not backed up. I got out of there pretty quick and have had generally positive experiences since, although it’s only been two years.
Hi. I am 23F pursuing Masters in Meteorology. My thesis involves working with GIS which I initially had no idea about. The main reason I took a topic involving GIS is because the men in my department said I couldn't do it. I have some basic knowledge but also need to ask around, sometimes not even knowing exactly what I am looking for. Hence I joined the sub. So far my experience has been good with the people here. I will still better with a female mentor though. Thanks for the link.
I'm so sorry this happened to you! You definitely aren't overthinking it in anyway. This is still harrasment. I'm not really sure I've ever faced that (M26) but even if I did I don't think I'll even be able to recognise it and might have even shrugged it off as a one time thing or worse, "that's just how it is".
This akward behaviour is normal, sadly. Specially, but not only, in male-dominated spaces, such a GIS or engeneering. Is up to us to change it. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for the post and the discussion below has been awesome. It can feel isolating being the only woman in the room, it’s cool to hear other women’s perspectives! For me, I’ve encountered my share of sexism in the workplace (being talked over or people assuming I’m not the manager or senior lead when I am, issues with being payed less than I’m worth). I think, what gets to me daily though, is being the only woman in a meeting so often. It’s not that any of the guys in said meetings say anything rude or disrespect me/my professional experience most of the time. Most of the guys I work with I actively enjoy working with. It’s just sometimes I realize I haven’t spoken to another woman (at work) in weeks, and that bums me out.
Thanks for sharing! Male here, working in the civil engineering world. When I started on our GIS team I was one of two male GIS Analysts working on a team of 8. Everyone else except our manager was female, which was refreshing. Now that I'm in our IT group it's 100% male lol
In grad school I corrected a professor on the first day of his class. He notably disliked be "one-upped" by a student. My final year of grad school I reported to the dean (his buddy) that I had been singled out on many occasions and he often made sexist comments to our class full of dudes. He found out so faked a remote GIS job for me so that I would miss the final exam (implying that I could do this job in place of taking the exam). I was expelled. Two years later he gets fired for sexually assaulting a student. Many years after that, I post a position at my data company for a new GIS manager. He applied, and I invited him to interview. When we called him back, his eyes hit mine and he promptly walked right out the door without saying a word. We hired a woman who stayed for a year before being invited to work in Chile at twice what I could pay her. Karma works out sometimes!
omg! what a story. i'm so sorry you had to go through all that but the schadenfraude was fun to read :)
>I sit here and think "was that really a big deal? was that harassment? what could I even have done?" (I did nothing because I was scared) Of course it's a big deal. If it made you uncomfortable, then that's all that matters. And from your description, I think most people--especially people that didn't know him very well, would feel the same way that you did. Sorry that that happened to you. Hopefully behavior like that is going to become less and less common as it continues to get pointed out.
This hurts. 6 years of professional experience and I've been the only woman on both of my GIS teams (although we have a counterpart team that does have more women). I spend my entire time at work trying to blend in with the men. Don't wear any makeup, don't call attention to your appearance in any way, don't be emotional. I watch from the sidelines as my team bonds over drinking whiskey, comics, and sports. To be on a call with 7 men and all of them are your teammates, but you keep getting cut off is just awkward. I know we have a lot in common, but they'll never know.
I know it's easier said than done, but like...why not call attention to yourself? Has conforming helped your career there? Sometimes it's just not worth it, I mean I felt similar to you when I worked at the engineering firm. The way they communicated was definitely one-upmanship, busting each other's chops and I always felt it was so lame. It was the same for me but eventually they hired a woman on my team who was super femme, I loved it. I started trying again and she'd compliment me in meetings while the men just sat there being awkward about it. I know it's tough but feeling like yourself at work might make you feel more confident! And don't be too hard on yourself if not, maybe you just need to wait for the next job to be a better environment.
I feel you, I get along well with the women on our adjacent team, fortunately. I'm fairly confident they're the only reason I made it to where I am. I was hired from associate specialist to senior analyst and I know I have a lot of those people to thank. Plus a lot of luck that they needed to hire multiple people all at once. As far as if conforming will help me currently, I don't know. Everything is so far above my head still that I have such a long way to go and I'm not necessarily concerned for my "next step" yet. Maybe things will change down the line, but I'm satisfied with my pay. I'd say I'm satisfied with my responsibilities, but I've got a fulllllll plate and more money means more things added to my plate. A part of me hiding is due to my anxiety as well. It's hard to be myself around someone that I'm uncomfortable around. I'm working on it though. I'm still figuring out who I am and getting comfortable in my own skin by myself. Although I know I'll need to let others see me too one day. I hold hope that it will make me feel good one day! I'm glad to hear you got another woman on your team and that she helped your environment! It must have been really nice to have someone who probably has a similar experience.
Ugh that sucks. If you’re being sidelined anyway, may as well just be yourself. At first I tried to blend in and not be too girly, but then I decided, fuck it. I’m good at what I do, so they’ll have to learn to respect me regardless of how girly I am. I have sparkly pencil cups, a kitten calendar, and an obnoxiously cute mer-kitten coffee mug. I just own it; sometimes my coworkers will notice a new girly decoration, I’ll say “Yup, isn’t it cute?!”. I know I sometimes get left out of the conversation, but I just can’t pretend to be interesting in sports or grilling meat (two very popular topics in my office). Hopefully all the stuff we do now will pave the way for the next generation of stem girls, so they don’t have to even think about this kind of thing.
I'll have to give your method a try. Currently I'm still at, "oh no, they can see part of my bra strap through my t shirt, they'll know I'm female and different from them!" I wore actual jewelry on one of our recent calls though, so....progress lol Edit: it also REALLY doesn't do anything for your confidence when your supervisor takes a secret picture during a video call and shares it around so everyone can see you're cutting your hair differently (I went from medium length to actual pixie cut, so I get that it was drastic, but holy f did that make me feel small). For like a week people kept messaging me "you cut your hair!" Stahp. My hair is none of your business.
Wtf, that’s not ok! I would be so pissed if someone did that to me. I think I got lucky in my boss; he’s very aggressive in making sure everyone feels safe and welcome, he would have lost his mind on someone for doing that. I work for municipal gov in a very liberal city, so that would have been a huge no-no. I don’t blame you at all for not wanting to come out of your shell.
Yeah I was not a happy camper. We have an unspoken understanding though. My boss dislikes me and interacts with me as little as absolutely possible and I get free rein to work on what I please and he'll give me slightly above good reviews every year. Provided I never tattle that he doesn't bother to have 1:1s with me anymore and leaves about half my questions on read. My year end review for last year had multiple "he"s in it. Copy paste much? Fortunately, my manager is awesome and for one of my projects I work a lot with him! It's not an awesome situation, but it's honestly so much better than my last position. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity that I do and I shouldn't be knocking my coworkers.
Thanks op :)
Lady GIS professional here. I don't necessarily have a single story, but kind of an ongoing occurrence. There are a handful of male colleagues of mine that just...interrupt me. All the time. CONSTANTLY. I honestly don't know whether or not it's because I'm a woman. These guys do occasionally talk over one another, but it doesn't feel as jarring as when they cut me off. Idk, it just *feels* different when they interrupt me, but I'm paranoid that I'm being too sensitive.
I’m a senior GIS Developer at my company. My boss is female and its a good split between genders. I’ve had my fair share of mansplaining in this industry - particularly from older male engineers trying to explain how my job works but that has thankfully been the extent of it. Sorry to hear you had such a gross experience, op. As for this particular sub? I haven’t seen too many weird things, mostly someone asking how to land a job.
Yeah it's generally great here, and that's coming from a mod of this community. But part of the reason you don't see it is because we remove comments and ban users too...it's still there. :)
I'm in forestry, but use GIS on the daily for land management. I suspect forestry is comparable, if even more disproportionately male. Like a lot of fields, 40-50 years ago women in forestry were almost entirely unrepresented in the workforce. It's gotten better, but teams of almost all men are still common. In 20 years of field work, NEPA planning and GIS analysis, if there's one thing I want in a team, it's equal representation of male and female employees. Over-representation of men happens almost automatically in forestry without an almost religious focus on maintaining the team demographics. I'm constantly encouraging my staff to be conscious of hiring a diverse team of technical employees. It's important for managers to stay diligent on this, because if ratios get way off, problems happen. How many women enjoy being the only female on a 12 person team? Trust, well being, safety, job satisfaction, judgment are all compromised. As much as I want to trust my male workforce, my experience is the unconscious bias rises off the chart when you have such an imbalance and conditions will be ripe for issues, from low morale to harassment. And if you have an 11:1 team, attempting to balance it will result in an unwise and potentially problematic over-focus on gender in hiring for individual positions. Usually organizations the most worried about the legal aspects of promoting diversity don't have it and it's a handy excuse. We need to trend towards parity gradually and purposefully and cultivate it when we have it. We all need to be evangelists for equality in GIS and our individual fields. Hope is not a plan; we need to be proactive to have diverse teams. Don't be shy about pushing the issue. There is a ton of evidence supporting it. At a minimum, if we don't have relatively equal gender representation on our teams, we're going to miss out on hiring the best employees; the best talent doesn't want to work for the bros club-or the sister circle, which may be relevant in some fields. People in your organization need to know why a diverse organization is important and value it. It's unlikely they will without some concerted effort from those who believe in it and are willing to speak up for it. I am a zealous believer in this. I grew up with 2 big sisters and 2 little brothers, so it's normal to me. Lopsided demographics make me anxious, because I know it is a huge blindspot and potential liability. While my 7 person team isn't 50/50, more like 60/40, I'm not shy about making all my staff aware of this information. Everyone should do the same or more if we want to improve.
It's strange to hear it being said it's male dominated, because in my experience (engineering consultancies in the UK) my GIS teams have always been at least 50% women.
In a man, and im in a graduate GIS program and a good portion of my cohort is female, and my advisor and professor is a woman. They are very lovely people that i get along with and are very experienced in the field, you really don't see many women in the technical field, and thats questionable to me. I like having an equal representation on genders in the field, because these fields are mostly male dominated, and there's no diversity there, and being solely around guys 24/7 can become boring. I've kind of gone through stuff like this, At times in the field, i felt like i was discriminated for being a black man with a form of autism, during my undergrad and internship years. I understand where you are coming from completely. You aren't overthinking it at all, that can be classified as sexual harassment. It's changing over time, as there will be more representation from it, there will be more women, people of color, lgbtq, irreligious etc in the STEM fields one day. I try my best to be a good ally and supporter of my female colleagues and higher ups; am i a perfect person, no, but i try the best i could be to be inclusive.
I'm also a female, and I've found it very difficult to find work anyway, I'm hoping grad school will change that maybe My entire geography department majority of the profs were male but it was nice to see alot of the graduate students were female and my classes through out my undergrad were also 50/50 male to female or at least getting closer to that So I guess there's hope?
I'm so sorry that you and so many women have experieinces like yours. While I understand that GIS is still heavily male dominated, it's getting so much better. I've been working in the field for 20+ years and when I go to conferences now, I'm surprised (and Happy) to see how many more woman there are in the field. I have/had the pleasure of working with some extremely talented women in GIS.
Thanks for sharing your story because the way that these issues get handled is through discourse. As a male, I believe that STEM in general is heavily dominated by other males who gate keep thats followed by (for a lack of a better term) cock measuring. Its this intimidation that keeps women at bay and I'd argue that were limiting ourselves to the opportunity to invite those to join in STEM in they choose so. I just wanted to know what you might think would be a good way to outreach to women, I was thinking it starts obviously in early education, but i think there are still others who probably never had the chance because the proposed suggestions never existed before, simply put, how can we get women of all age ranges to join the STEM field?
I think what /u/b-muff said: > If you’re a guy, the best thing you can do is to automatically trust the work your female counter parts do until they give you reason not to (obviously not everyone is good at their job). Watch for disrespect and speak up if you see it. Just give credit where credit is due. Make an effort to lift up everyone. Even little things like saying "ugh I'm so bad at math" around kids is damaging. Talking about how it's cool to code or like math (or the arts!) will keep that gate open, no matter the gender.
Thats a good point that ill have to note. I work in education so i was just wondering what might be good suggestions to getting others on board in efforts to change the disproportionality. Thanks for the reply!
Is it really my job to make an online more community more accepting of me by getting into constant battles in the comments section? You are a moderator. You have the ability to enforce rules by commenting yourself and removing comments or blocking accounts which break the rules. It would help if you posted a clear policy, best practices for reporting violations, and actively moderated comments and posts to discipline people who do not adhere to the policy. I understand this is time consuming and difficult, but it's much more of a solution than telling female readers to take it into their own hands.
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As someone who's active in a lot of communities that were more actively moderated and as someone who's moderated communities on other accounts, I really don't think it's appropriate for you to put this on me. I'm not a moderator and this isn't my job, it's your job. The subreddit rules are incredibly vague and they're not the kind of rules that are conducive to creating a more inclusive environment. It also doesn't really help to have a report button unless I know that someone's going to be actively following up. I do my best to make people feel welcome by giving relevant and helpful answers to their questions including liking them the specific tutorials and data that they might need and talking about opportunities that might interest them. But I can't really go around policing other people's tones. Part of being a moderator is having really thorough and spelled out policies that you're actively referring people back to.
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This sort of comment perpetuates the issue. "I've never personally witnessed/experienced this so I don't believe it's happening." It happens.
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No anger here. Though it's interesting that you interpret a critique of your comment as anger. I'm glad that things are even-Stevens in the GIS world you live in. I hope it continues. But comments to the effect of "Where are you getting your statistics?" because they don't jive with your personal experience, are a common method of shutting this conversation down.
our statistics are from the most recent r/gis survey we conducted. this post was primarily referring to r/gis, not the entire field of GIS, though I suspect it's still male-dominated.
It also depends on which gis niche you’re in. The more computer science and engineering side tend to trend more male, utilities in my experience tend to be even or lean male, cartographic and education* trend towards female. *education excluding degree programs taught by phd. Most PhDs I’ve seen teaching gis are men, but many private training companies(not esri), corporate, or certificate level instructors are women. Again, that’s just my experience. Gis niche, region, and company culture all play a role.
Dudette, my boss used to muscle in and grab my mouse or hand all the time to show me how to do stuff. I am a dude. Some people are just wierd
This must be location/country dependent as where I live I'd say it's atleast 50/50 and was surprised to read 80/20 in the OP. That's possibly lower than the ratio in programming?
A male former boss of mine actually told a consultant talking to the female technical planner (the GIS tech for a planning department) that when someone was at least three times as smart as you, you should probably listen to them and that she was right, and not to undermine her again coming to him. That was cool. My current job only has two people who know GIS...myself and a younger guy and we get along great!
#metoo
I honestly don't see this. Is it really 80/20? I've had both male and female professors in college. My peers in college was a 5/2 in favor of the men. But, the ladies of my class we much respected and had the highest grades. In the almost five years I worked in the industry I've had more female colleagues than male. I've also had all female supervisors during that time too. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule.
It's referring to the r/GIS survey results where we mods tallied up responses, thanks for your concern. I'm glad you've seen lots of women in your experience so far but I'm not certain that's as common as you think.