Have you ever been an ‘x’ in a room full of ‘y’s?

Have you ever been an ‘x’ in a room full of ‘y’s? If yes or if no, this blog post is for you. I’ll walk through two things today: (1) why it is important to encourage participation from the ‘x’s (diversity = money in your pocket) and (2) how to succeed in the workplace as an ‘x’ in a company/industry full of ‘y’s.

(Although this blog post will be about the importance of getting more women in STEM and the realities of being a woman in STEM, diversity is much more nuanced than gender alone – it also comes from race, religion, country/state of origin, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and a million other factors. Please know that I don’t mean to discount other forms of diversity by overgeneralizing the diversity issue as male-female.)

The Problem

13% of engineers are women 

Why is this? Women have the same cognitive abilities as men 

Women represent50% of the population and 57% of undergraduate degrees 

Why, then, are we so underrepresented in what I consider (likely biased, given I am an engineer) to be one of the world’s most important professions? 

Before I start my breakdown, I’d like to say that I believe both women and men can and should be whatever they want to be; I am not advocating that every woman should be an engineer – that would make for an awfully boring world. What I am advocating for is gender parity: there is no reason the split of engineers should be anything other than 50/50.

The Impact

First, a show of hands for everyone who likes to (1) make money for themselves and (2) make money for their companies: if you didn’t raise your hand, I don’t know what is going on there; if you did raise your hand, let’s talk about how we can make more money simply by increasing the diversity of opinions in the room. Studies have proven that having a variety of opinions in the room, on a company’s management team, or on a specific board of directors not only increases the type of ideas in the room, but also raises the company’s profit margin (one of the earliest studies to prove this was McKinsey’s “Delivering through Diversity” published in 2015). Variety of opinion is formed by a variety of life experiences: inevitably, diversity of thought is formed in part by diversity.

Short-Term Fix: Getting more women in and keeping them

Here are some tips for surviving and thriving in a ‘y’-dominated workplace:

1.     
Take every opportunity that is given to you. I’m a huge believer in grasping every opportunity that comes your way and figuring it out later. If you never take a risk or go outside of your comfort zone, you are never going to grow and develop. Particularly with women, we tend to make sure we check every box in qualification before making the jump – let’s lean less onto qualifications and more onto faith in ourselves.

2.     Find a champion. In my current role, my boss, Rhett Bennett, has been my absolute biggest champion. He pushes me and makes sure that I’m challenging myself – ultimately, you need this kind of person (either as a direct supervisor or superior in the organization) in order to not get lost in the politics. Find yourself a Rhett.

3.     Find mentors and keep them. This one might sound like the above, but it is a different angle. For me, Rhett is both a champion and a mentor, but that isn’t always the case. A mentor is a person who you can bounce ideas off of, who has been in your situation previously, and who serves as an objective third party to help you formulate next steps. Mentoring goes both ways, so make sure you pay it forward and are helpful to your mentors where possible. I count myself very fortunate to have amazing mentors across the industry.

4.     Ask for help. No one is born knowing how to do something. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can start advancing your career. I love when someone at work is asking questions – to me, that demonstrates curiosity and the ability to learn and grow. Even if you think it is a “dumb” question, ask.

5.     Know your worth. This one is obvious. Get paid what you are worth – ask for more responsibility, ask for a bigger title, ask for more money. Make sure that your predisposition to not asking is not holding you back from advancing your career. I view someone negotiating their salary with me as an indicator of what that person’s work performance will be like.

6.     Reach out to other ‘x’s in your field. Shared experience is a strong way of bonding with others. It can also keep you from recreating the wheel. Realizing that you are not alone in your situation can be very powerful.

7.     Support other ‘x’s. Madeleine Albright famously said “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women” – I really believe that. As a woman who has done well within natural resources, I think it is my responsibility to reach down and help pull up other women.

8.     Be curious. I think this is the number one requirement for success broadly: want to learn and understand.

9.     Be able to laugh at yourself. Not everything is going to go your way. Sometimes you have giant *facepalm* moments and it is best to be able to laugh in order to keep from crying.

10.  Ignore the haters. Look, you are going to have them. I wish I could say I’ve never met a chauvinist at work, but I would be lying to you in a big way. Sometimes its small things and sometimes its big things. Don’t let them occupy your mind space. Avoid them where you can (rarely will you change their deeply ingrained mindsets); if they can’t be avoided, lean on your resources to ensure they don’t damage your credibility or reputation. Prove them wrong, but not for their benefit. Do it for you.

Long-Term Fix: Fixing the funnel

Now, how to fix this problem so we don’t have to have the conversation of ‘x’s and ‘y’s anymore – we can all just be people.

I believe it has to do with two broad areas: (1) conditioning of children towards broadly ‘male’ and broadly ‘female’ concepts and (2) proliferation of people who ‘look like them’ in those careers.

From a conditioning standpoint, our society loves to gender items to increase sales: girl vs boy legos, girl vs boy markers, girl vs boy TV shows. I get it – it is smart from a business/marketing perspective; however, largely, what we see is that items made for girls are more geared toward traditionally female roles (homemaker, teacher, fashion, beauty), whereas items made for boys are more geared toward today’s “power professions.” 

The difference in the marketing of things to little girls vs to little boys is ripe with undertones that begins to impact kids and tell them what they “should” be (ex: two shirts, side by side, one says “little boy, big ideas” and the other says “little girl, big smiles”). These gender norms and marketing practices are damaging the upward mobility of our girls and the ability to attract girls into traditionally male-dominated fields.

From the standpoint of STEM being so male-dominated that it is hard to see, as a young girl, a spot for you to succeed in the industry – I also get it. I live this life every day. Generally, I am the only woman in the room, in a meeting, etc. I am actively working to correct that, as are so many wonderful people I know and work with (I would love nothing more than for there to be a line for the women’s restroom at an oil and gas or mining conference), but we can’t do it alone.

It is hard to BE who you can’t SEE. My goal is to increase awareness for young girls about STEM fields, to encourage retention of women in STEM fields, and to ensure women in the pipeline see people who ‘look like them’ succeeding in their field. If ever there was a time to make a push for gender equality, it is now. I am here for it and I commit to making it happen. It starts with me and it starts with you – let’s do this.

Author: Ashley Zumwalt, PE '12
Instagram @ashzum ; Twitter @ashzforbes ; LinkedIn AshleyZumwalt