Women in a Man's World: Striving for Equality and Beyond in the Male Dominated Workplace

by Dana Ayotte, Collective Member,
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
December 6, 2003

Through high school I never questioned my equality with boys, at least in the academic realm. I knew for the most part that I was smarter than them, and for the most part they stayed away from me, preferring my friends whose names didn't appear on the honour roll. As I moved through my engineering studies at university, I had a single-minded determination to keep up my good grades. But in my first term, surrounded by men who grew up helping their Dads fix the car, my confidence sank and along with it my grades. My own father, an engineer, had suggested that I might be happier pursuing fashion design.

I struggled through my first year of general engineering and eventually managed to prove myself and regain my confidence. But the narrow focus on my schoolwork that this required cost me my awareness. I was so consumed by my studies that on the early morning of December 7, 1989 I didn't pay much attention as I learned of the massacre at L'Ecole Polytechnique while preparing to leave my dorm room to write my first engineering exam. Of course I didn't have much time to absorb the details, and the horror of it had not yet sunk in. And it never really did until several years later while I prepared for a December 6th event as a volunteer at Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter.

Ten years after the Massacre, watching the film "After the Montreal Massacre" for the first time, the shock and horror really hit me, not only of the lives lost, but of the screaming message it sent to feminists and women everywhere: push the boundaries if you dare, but you'll pay the price. Newly identified as a feminist myself, and as an engineer before that, ten years later I finally took it personally and I cried.

Now, 14 years later, with a job as an engineer at Ballard Power Systems, my Dad couldn't be more proud of me. And after 4 years working and organizing as a front-line anti-violence worker at Vancouver Rape Relief, I no longer have the excuse of a lack of awareness. One thing I have learned from feminist organizing is that in order to know how to make change, we need to know what we are up against, and we need to have agreements with each other. This can only come from developing a common understanding of our experiences.

It's not that we are starting from scratch. I've come here today already having some common understanding with the women's movement - for example that we agree that sexual harassment is violence against women. I think between us here in this room we already have some agreements based on our common understanding - for example, I think we all agree that women have a rightful place in science, technology and trades; I think we all agree that young women should be encouraged in these fields. But I don't think we talk enough about our shared experiences as women in male-dominated fields. So now I want to share a few stories with you.

While working at Queen's University during the summer of my 3 rd year of engineering, I often had to use the workshop in the basement of the mechanical engineering building. At that time I didn't really know why I felt so intimidated every time I entered the workshop. My much-wiser feminist self now realises that perhaps it was the pinup calendars on the wall that made me feel like I didn't belong. Several years later, after a particularly long day of geological field work and power struggle with my supervisor, I understood almost immediately why he chose to recommend to our field assistant, also male, a strip club in Montreal where he thought the women were particularly sexy. Though infuriated, I decided not to object, knowing I had to spend the next 3 weeks on the road working for him and I decided not to object. If it happened today I probably would.

The following year after giving a technical presentation to a crowd of 500 at a local engineering geology conference, a female colleague and myself were asked to come up to the stage to draw the winning name for a prize giveaway. I don't think it was any coincidence that we were selected to be the 'beautiful assistants' like the women on the Price is Right - we stood out at that conference as very young and very female. After collecting his prize, the winner, an older white man probably in his 60's, grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me towards him and kissed my cheek. This time I decided not to remain silent, and wrote a letter to the DAWEG newsletter in protest (Division for the Advancement of Women in Engineering and Geology). The backlash included a letter telling me to lighten up since 'boys will be boys' and suggesting that it just goes to show that the men are getting more comfortable with having women around.

Today, working at a relatively young, high-tech company that hires a fairly high proportion of women, I consider myself fortunate to have this job and to have avoided any overt sexual harassment. Most people I work with know that I am an organized feminist and I suspect that by reducing my isolation this protects me to some extent from more overt and frequent sexist attacks. But the occasional sexist jokes and comments, which occur almost always when I'm alone in a group of men, are a reminder of my inequality. In the words of Marilyn Waring, "when men use their power to treat women sexually in a non-sexual context, they interfere with women's right to work, to learn, to be treated as equal and respected participants in public life".

Though obviously a less extreme form of violence against women, sexual harassment delivers the same message from men as the Montreal Massacre did: You are a woman and therefore if you think you're entitled to a piece of my pie you got another thing coming. As women taking what is rightfully ours, we are punished by being sexualized, murdered and raped.

My education and job provide me with the privilege of money and the kind of public respect you get when you have letters behind your name. It is more difficult for men to belittle me if I choose to expose to them that I have a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. I have much more privilege than most women, which gives me the luxury of sometimes feeling equal; being treated equally a lot of the time. But my privilege does not protect me from sexual harassment, from rape, or from the fear of rape. I can never be equal until there is no rape, no wife-beating, no prostitution, no pornography. It is for this reason that I committed myself to work to promote all women's equality by organizing to fight violence against women. This is especially important now, when the provincial cuts to welfare, legal aid and funding for women's centers are making it even harder for women to leave abusive relationships. And these cuts threaten all women in the same way that violence affects all of us - because an attack on one woman reminds us that it could be us.

Along these lines there are a few things I think you might not know that I want you to know:

What I have learned from feminist collective organizing is that in order to fight sexism we need to talk honestly with each other about our experiences. We need to share our strategies about how to resist sexual harassment on and off the job, educate ourselves and each other about the policies in our workplace, share our frustrations (for example, about how few women there are in high-level positions), and scheme about how to make change. I think today's workshop is the first step towards reducing our isolation and I plan to continue this discussion with you beyond today. Now is the time to get organized with groups both inside and outside our workplaces. I want us to keep talking to each other, to keep using existing groups, and to think big about where we can go from here. After the Montreal Massacre Andrea Dworkin called upon all of us to be the women Lepine wanted to murder; to refuse to give up in the face of extreme backlash. What a call to action!

We need to MAKE DEMANDS. Demands of our government to stop the cuts to welfare, demands of institutions to fight sexual harassment. Demands on the university administration like the women who formed the committee for the study on the status of Women Faculty at MIT in 1995. We need to know how to use the tools at our disposal, but we also need to think about and be able to imagine that if we had the power, what would the solutions be?

I have only just started to imagine a world engineered and built by and for women, but I have the desire and the skills to help do it. In my vision of an ideal world I imagine decentralized power generation in every community û running on the fuel of biomes waste and controlled by the community. I imagine giant wind farms and solar-paneled buildings and pedestrian-only downtowns with nonpolluting public transportation and car-sharing programs. I imagine collective control of resources and skills trading. And I am working with one of the longest-standing and most successful collectives in Canada where I have learned a great deal about the sharing of power and accountability. In fact, feminists are leaders in collective organising.

Most days I really like my job. But I struggled for a long time to find work that is meaningful to me. Work that would allow me to be proud of what I was doing, that would allow me to say that I was doing something which would change the world for the better. This motivation has driven me first from a Master's thesis in the mechanics of bone-fracture healing, to an unfinished PhD in landslide mechanics and prevention, and finally to fuel-cell technology at Ballard Power Systems. And in my search for meaningful work I have discovered fields of study that include higher percentages of women. It seems that most women I have met are driven to improve the world around them. I am sure that with all the shared skills, creativity, spirit and knowledge between us we can come up with a world that we can be proud to live in. A world without violence, and world beyond equality.

More about the Montreal Massacre and December 6th organizing

One thing I have learned from feminist organizing is that in order to know how to make change, we need to know what we are up against, and we need to have agreements with each other. This can only come from developing a common understanding of our experiences.