Thursday, July 31, 2008
Phase States of a Career Woman
Many days, gender really is not an issue. Many days, it is. YMMV, etc. One of the biggest problems many women encounter, as Ms. PhD points out, is walking the fine line between not promoting yourself and being overlooked, versus promoting yourself and being viewed as arrogant or pushy. Hence my humble attempt at illustrating the difficulty as a graph, thus:
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8 comments:
Safe to say I fall within the "bitch" zone. Which has its advantages.
I tend to oscillate between "cute" and "bitch". Depends on how much pressure I'm under, if you'll pardon the pun. I'm ambitious, but often struggle with "impostor syndrome" issues, so it doesn't usually show. Sigh. I was getting fairly confident as a molecular biologist, but then was seduced by the awesomeness of biophysics, and there are all these terrifyingly intelligent people in this field! Almost all of whom are dudes.
That is to say, most of the people in the field are dudes. The women who have stuck it out are often more imposing than the men, my PI included.
nice graph! depressingly familiar, though there's no box for 'needy' - enthusiastic + talkative + attempts to talk about what I'm doing in a way that isn't just 'lookatme!!' = needy. Sigh. (and some imposter syndrome that leaks out occasionally I guess).
Hi Jane, nice to see a new "face" around here. I think needy goes in the space between nice gal and arrogant...
I like it.
"Is there a phase rule?", the late Josiah Willard might have enquired, were he not so late.
Thanks for your comment on my blog. Thought I would come and visit.
I like the graph- pretty accurate, I suspect. Unfortunately, I think I fall somewhere right in the middle, in the arrogant category, and am possibly nice enough on occasion to make it up to 'pushy'. Ha. God only knows how hard I'd need to work to make it into the respect zone.
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