At my job I have three challenges to overcome everyday:
- I’m female.
- I’m young.
- I’m a contractor.
We’ll explore these disadvantages in reverse order.
3. First of all, contractors are basically robot-programming mercenaries for hire (or whatever your skill-set is in). I work for a smaller company that doesn’t generally produce products; it produces skilled people. They make their money by hiring me and my co-workers out to the highest bidder (customer) when they need robot programming work done. This means that I end up getting moved around to different build shops a lot. Each time I get moved to a different build shop, generally there are all new sets of electricians, builders, pipe fitters, robot programmers, PLC programmers and bosses that I have to learn to work with and with whom I must establish myself as value-adding employee. If you can’t prove your competence and indispensable-ness before the budget starts to get tight, you are told to pack your tools and head back to your contracting house– sometimes halfway through the work-day. Because you are essentially disposable, it is almost impossible to nail down a schedule or maintain a modicum of a social life. You have no idea which state you will be in next week or if you can even think to commit to a club that meets at 7pm every Thursday.
On my very first day out in the field an older trades-person approached me and asked me how long I had been doing my job as a robot programmer. I told him, “About a year”– which was essentially true; my college education combined with training I received at my company amounted to about 1 year of robot experience. He then went on to say, “You know you’re going to quit in 5 years or less right?” Slightly shocked I responded, “I like my job. I don’t anticipate quitting”. He followed up, “At some point you’re going to want to settle down, work less hours and travel less. You’ll get burnt out and you’ll quit– only freaks, or people up to their ears in debt, stay longer than 5 years.” I shook my head and continued trying to program my section of the 2014 Fusion and 2015 Mustang line. Retrospectively, that man was right. The thing about robots is that once they are installed and debugged– they don’t need supervision. You do an install and then you leave. The next job will start at some other job shop, end at some other plant, and then there will (hopefully) be another job with the same travel and unpredictability from week-to-week, month-to-month each year. The hours are also astronomically long because the auto industry is super demanding and projects sometimes get handed to you for the first time after they are already 8 weeks behind schedule. I got hired in as one of six fresh graduates at my company, and two years later, there are only two of us left– the way employees are treated is ultimately unsustainable and not conducive to retaining skilled workers.
2. The American auto industry is an old industry… demographically speaking. A lot of people that were able to hold onto their jobs during the depression of 2008 were the ones that had established themselves as experienced enough to be deemed unable to be let go six years ago. Also, since about the ’80’s, less and less people have had the desire to work in a trades-level job and have been heading to college in hot pursuit of their executive suite (which more often than not ends up being a poorly-lit cubicle)– so there hasn’t been an equal influx of new blood per old blood. As a result, it really is at times “The Good Ol’ Boys Club” with tales of, “back in my day…” And just like any industry, every job posting is looking for “10-40 years of manufacturing experience” (to magically appear out of time and space because I haven’t been done with puberty for 10 years yet… sheesh!), and they are disappointed when they get a 0-2 year veteran like myself (Honestly, the only way that I got put on my first assignment is because I was under the wing of a wonderful programmer who also worked for my company and had been doing this job for 20 years at the time… so, you know, since I was 2 years old). As a young programmer, I am met with a lot of doubt in my abilities every time I get sent to a new shop, which as a contractor, is just about every 4-6 months. And because I am only 23 years old, I can’t usually pass myself off as any older than 26, and every new shop I go to, my “baby face” gives me away… so I have no chance at hiding that I have only been doing my job for 2 years. As a result, you have to spend the first couple of weeks proving yourself as a competent and autonomous programmer who is able to positively contribute to the project.
1. The disadvantages to being female are very similar in part to those of being young… except that I will not age out of this demographic. Just like the new blood, you have to prove that you “belong,” but instead of worrying about belonging to”The Good Ol’ Boys Club,” you have to worry about belonging to “The Good Ol’ Boys Club”. For example, when Mary Barra was named the CEO of GM at the end of 2013, the headlines read: “This is a big deal: GM appoints the U.S. auto industry’s first female CEO”. She is a statistical and historical oddity– even thought that whole “Women’s Rights” thing happened decades ago, women are still incredibly under represented in the S.T.E.M. fields. Like this chart explains from an article on the subject,
| Occupation | Total Number of People in Occupation | Share of Women Employees |
|---|
| Construction Millwrights and Industrial Mechanics (Except Textile) | 75,900 | 1.5% |
| Electricians (Except Industrial and Power System) | 72,390 | 1.6% |
| Industrial Electricians | 29,960 | 1.7% |
| Steamfitters, Pipefitters, and Sprinkle System Installers | 22,190 | 1.7% |
I’m not quite sure if/where the robot programmers would be on this sort of list, but these are my peers out on the floor with me, and chances are, I will find 1 or 2 female cohorts per 100 coworkers that aren’t managerial or clerical positions whom I see in passing. This creates some pretty weird situations– every day I go to work is kind of a miniature social experiment. There are three general ways that people react to me on the first day I appear at the shop:
- G…g…g…g…girl! — The deer-in-the-headlights
- Think for a moment about the “social prowess” and technical know-how of the stereotypical engineer, and then take away the college education. Taa-daa! Because of the rarity of females in their work-world, a lot of guys simply don’t know what to do when we invade their shop floors because they have never really thought about it happening before. Not that it was out of the realm of possibility– just out of the realm of probability. These guys usually just stay away and observe from a distance until they can figure out how they want to approach me. In addition, HR videos and word-of-mouth have taught them that sexual harassment is something they have to be on hyper-lookout for, unless they want to lose their jobs because women are “just looking for your slip-up to equal a payout.” These guys (perhaps, wisely) decide that saying nothing at all is safer than accidentally saying something that gets taken the wrong way all the way to the HR office.
- I am SO gonna tap that! — The conquistador, who thinks that I am there for his entertainment instead of my employment.
- Almost the antithesis of the deer-in-the-headlights, these men become men on a mission and that mission is to make me a trophy of theirs. Que the strange, personal (sometimes including sexual) questions, dinner invitations and attempts to establish some sort of alpha-male status that is supposed to impress me.
- Coddle and Protect — The Papa Bear
- It’s a weird hybrid of deer-in-the-headlights mixed with a reactionary instinct to protect me from the conquistadors…even though I am almost entirely capable of doing it myself (however any encouragement to grow up and respect women they can pass on to the conquistadors is appreciated). These guys take the deer-in-the-headlights beyond silence and into a hyper-apologetic and protective role. These are the guys that, upon seeing me, apologize for cursing– which is really comical as I am as good at flinging profanities as anyone else on the floor. They also commonly call me default pet-names. Pet-names and nicknames are one thing, when you and some coworkers know each other well enough and have an inside joke repertoire, but when my superiors call me “Sweetheart,” I find it disheartening. Most of the time they don’t have a sexual connotation attached, but I get instantly demoted from “equal” to “child” and all of my efforts get demoted from “impressive” to just “cute”.
Oddly enough, my coworkers that are closest to me in age leave me alone and treat me normally more often than the coworkers that are closer to my dad’s age. Over time, the longer I am in a shop, my coworkers figure out how to interact with me “properly”– and if they don’t, I just make sure to avoid them.
Even with this parring down of the circumference of my social circle, I get talked to a lot. I do get preferential treatment– but it’s not without equal and opposite undesirable treatment. If I need a welder and a male coworker needs a welder, chances are that I will get the assistance of the welder first. My bosses generally don’t schedule me for night shift work– which is fine by me, but not so fine by my other coworkers. They see it as preferential treatment, which it is. Normally the young programmers are the ones forced to take the crappy shifts. However, my male coworkers will not have to endure pickup lines or worry about being followed into the restroom or worry about being one of the last people to get into their car at the end of the evening. But coworkers don’t always see it that way. They sometimes choose to be resentful towards a decision that a] I have very little say in making (it’s the bosses with the aforementioned “Papa Bear” mentality) and b] is made (unfortunately) out of necessity for my safety.
There is a phenomenon that those of you outside of the manufacturing world may be unfamiliar with: Shop Hot. I experienced it on my first day out in the field. Everyone pretty much knows where they are on the 1-10 scale of “hot or not”… and you get very unsettled when you get treated either better or worse than that normal level by the opposite sex. Usually you get offended when people treat you like a lower number, and you usually are flattered when people treat you like a higher number than you rank yourself. In an instance of the Shop Hot phenomenon, to put it in perspective, simply not having a penis puts you at a 50 on the 1-10 scale.
Walking into that (all male) shop for the first time, it was like I must have been a super famous porn star in a previous chapter of my life that I had NO recollection of. People stopped what they were doing to stare. People waved from across the shop, hoping to catch my eye. People would come up and introduce themselves, even though there was no actual reason to. It’s like they have never seen a real, live, woman before. Never mind that the second they step off of the shop floor and into basically any other non-industrial establishment 50% of the people they encounter are female. In the shop, you are it to them. That wonderful programmer under whom’s wing I was for my first year of work was at my side that first day, with myself on one side and another young-twenties female programmer on the other, and the attention we attracted even made HIM feel uncomfortable and self-conscious.
I purposefully wear what I call my “hobo clothes” to work everyday; partially this is because many of the shops are very dirty, but mostly it’s because the minds of the men I work with are dirtier. My most “flattering” pair of work pants I have deemed “my sexy pants”. They are 1980’s black denim, high-waisted jeans. High-waisted in the sense of, I no longer have a belly button when I wear them. They have no form on my glutes or thighs and the pant leg only begins to taper just above my ankles. I wear a tattered hoodie, usually under another over-sized men’s coat (the one plaid one I fondly refer to as my “lesbian lumberjack coat”). Again, the goal is for everything to be as baggy as the plant safety people will let me wear… and I still get hit on.
I have been asked out (repetitively). I’ve been approached by coworkers who were hurt that I didn’t wave back to them from all the way across a plant. I have had someone ask my name, ask whether or not I have a boyfriend and then ignore me entirely after I replied, “yes” (as in, didn’t even introduce himself or ask what job I do, or how my day is going). I’ve been asked if I thought that I would “do” a coworker if we got stuck on a dessert island together. I have been “stalked”—one man used to always park his car next to mine (even when I changed where I parked dramatically) and try to wait around until I got off of work. You figure out 40 different ways to work in the phrase, “My boyfriend…” or “My fiance…” within the first 4 sentences of meeting a new person. At one point during our dating lives, my now-fiance and I seriously went to Claire’s (the tween store) to pick out a faux engagement ring so people in the shop would leave me alone. Unfortunately this tactic doesn’t always work.
I’ve also been in situations where the complexity of the relationships with my coworkers doesn’t actually stem from my interactions with my coworkers, but the “threat” that I pose to their wives/girlfriends. 80+ hour work-weeks are not uncommon, and being a robot programmer requires a lot of working on the road (aka: being out of town, eating out for every meal and staying in hotels). The people you work with become your social life– for better or worse. If you don’t want to eat alone or just recluse into your hotel room, you hang out with a group of your coworkers. Once I got a late-night text from a coworker’s girlfriend, “Y R U TEXTING MY BOYFRIEND?” and the funny part was that the most “erotic” text message we ever exchanged revolved around me bringing in some meat-substitute casserole that I made because he was curious about what tofu tasted like. I have made a good number of significant others uncomfortable just by existing and being friendly to “their” men while at work. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with some of the women over dinner or drinks and I’ve been quickly written off as not being a threat and thereby allowed to continue on some great friendships. Other times I’ve had to delete contacts and sever ties with coworkers just to appease their significant others. You don’t want to get the reputation of being a homewrecker– whether it’s rightfully earned or not.
And there are there are things you just don’t do; like change into a bathing suit and go swimming, despite the 100+ degree heat, when deployed on a summertime install because all of your coworkers are also staying at the same hotel. They take enough notice of your hobo-clothed body as it is… you don’t need to add fuel to the “Shop Hot” fire. The slightly ironic part about the concept of “Shop Hot” is that, as a personal rule, I am never allowed to rank the men on the 1-10 scale (or at least tell them that you do) unless you want to see full-scale man drama… which by the way, exists and is NOT pretty. As the only girl in the shop if you tell one person that you think they are good looking, they will brag to all of their buddies and then they will twitter among themselves as to what you must think of them because if Joe has a chance, by golly, their chance must be even better! Even though none of them have a chance– by the time I got into the industry I had been dating my boyfriend for 2, almost 3 years and then we got engaged.
And this can go a few ways… it leaves a lot of power up to the woman. Some use their sex to solicit favors from their coworkers, sometimes to the point where the woman basically doesn’t have to do anything herself. This really doesn’t help in convincing our male coworkers that we, as women add value to the workplace other than sexual interest. Conversely, a lot of women go the “butch” way, and really are “just one of the guys” and just blend into the background. And then there is me, struggling every day to make sure that I am my own balance of power. I am a female. I exude, albeit small amounts of, femininity– no matter how baggy my work clothes are. These are not weaknesses or invitations for exploitation. They are part of the fact that I have XX chromosomes and use a different restroom because I cannot gracefully pee standing up (and as one of my coworkers liked to say, the girl’s room has “candy-bar machines” [aka: feminine product dispensers]). When people bring up the fact that “Well, you’re a lady” and should incur different treatment than my male counterparts, I quickly inform them, “I just want to be treated like everyone else. I want to be known first as a robot programmer, and then if you have to, bring up the identifying descriptor that I also happen to be a girl.” People pick on me, I can pick back. I’ll crack “That’s what she said”-s when I see opportunity to, and I can appreciate a penis joke as much as the next guy– but if the penis in the joke changes from an indefinite object to a definite object (aka: when you start to infer that it’s your penis and that I should be having some involvement with it), the jokes stop being funny. I respect myself and my commitment to my fiance too much to find an ounce of humor in those kinds of “jokes.”
I have never been more upset/insulted/defeated than when I heard wind about what my reputation at a shop that I had worked at for about a year had disintegrated into after I left. What people had to say about me went from how good I was at my robot programming job and achieving the goals of our picky Big Three customer to a set of fallacious rumors that insinuated that I had been willing to put out to some of my ex-coworkers because, “You know what they say about women who have mostly male friends…” (which, honestly, I didn’t other than “they probably work in a S.T.E.M. job”… but to fill you in, it’s more along the lines of “just looking for new *rooster*”). All of the 80 hour work-weeks, technical skill and attention to detail, after being gone for about a month, boiled down to my “obvious” desire just to gain access to their irresistible male genitals. Of all the days I wanted to quit my high-hour, high-stress, high-travel, spur-of-the-moment work-order, miss-important-events job, this was the one time that I almost cried over how much I didn’t want to go back.
And then, as I was making my hour+ drive home, I thought about it a bit more. I’m pretty emotionally tough– I can take criticism and glean advice out of it or just throw petty shit over my shoulder and never look back. If people like me don’t work past bull-shit rumors like that and prove them wrong– who will? But I won’t be terribly surprised if the “honor” of it wears off and wears me down to eventually quit the industry. Fighting everyday just to be treated like everyone else gets old– and there are plenty of other industries with more established female work forces.
Men tell me that they would never allow their daughters to work in the auto industry because “there are too many horny old men lurking around”. They are really missing the point. The problem is not your daughter working here, the problem is the horny old men and the fact that the industry needs to step up and make a change to respect women as people and make it a better environment for them to work in. I understand that the “Good Ol’ Boys” club that is the American auto industry will not change overnight– so yes, I would think it wise to advise your daughter, or any woman, who is looking to start in the auto industry about the attitudes towards women. However, I would only warn her… NEVER discourage or forbid her. One of the things that will bring about a change in attitude towards women is giving the men in the industry more women to interact with and basically have “witness” to them that women can be just as good at doing things in the industry as men– even if they haven’t been doing it historically as long. I’m not looking for the industry to change for me, I’m looking for the industry to change because of me, and because of other women like me who are tough enough to stick it out– women who are brave enough to enter the volatile workforce and command respect without hiding their femininity or exploiting their sexuality– those of us women that are willing to deal with it now so that later on, other women in the industry won’t have to.
The Angsty Cephalopod's Musings 