[comp.society.women] competition

fester@bosco.Berkeley.EDU (05/11/89)

I have a really hard time believing that women can compete effectively
if they do not compete like men.  Most of what I've seen and done contradicts
this notion.

For example, to look only at the issue of aggressiveness and a greater show
of confidence:  one thing that was really, really painful for me to see as
a Teaching Assistant for second semester calculus last year was that so
many women really DON'T understand the game.  Mathematics can be difficult.
You are not always going to understand the material, I mean *really* 
*understand* the "why's" of what is happenning.  When I was in calculus,
even if I didn't understand the material I always knew how to manipulate
the expressions to be able to solve problems, but the point is *I also
knew that at some point the lag between actual understanding and ability
would be eliminated, and it was ok not to understand right away.*

So many times I saw/see women realizing they don't really understand the
material and thinking that that is cause to drop out of math.  The men
I've dealt with in similar circumstances somehow "know" that its not
necessary to understand, and are willing to go on with a show of confidence
even if that confidence has no basis - as mine didn't.  So they don't
drop out when the difficulties emerge, and sure enough, later on in the
semester you have some insight which enables you to see why what you
have been doing really works and what it's all about, and so you go
on.  But the women don't seem to know that its ok to fake your way 
through for a while (with the hopes that eventually, of course, you
really will understand it.)

My brother, who graduated from MIT with a course 6 degree, was once
telling me about applying for some job in which he was required to 
know a particular computer language which he didn't.  But he told them
he knew it anyhow, and when I exclaimed, he said "That's what everyone
does.  Because if they hire you, you can always learn it quickly."

Oh.  That's what all his peers at MIT were doing.  And so I adopted
this practice, of lying on job interviews when the skill in question
was something I thought I had enough background and brains to pick
up should it be necessary.  But of course if as a woman you don't
have the habit of lying about your skills, of making a false show
of confidence, then the men you are competing with for this job who
*are* willing to make these claims are going to get the job, because
the employer thinks they have more skills than you.

There is no nice pat moral to this story.  People will doubtless 
write in saying that eventually a liar will be caught, but you see
the point is that you don't make outrageous lies, you only say as
much as you have the brains and guts to really pick up (should you
need to).  The point is you need to be willing to operate on a show
of confidence, because you are competing with men (people) who are
willing to, and they have the advantage as long as they are doing
that and you aren't.

I shouldn't be saying this in public, I've just gone through the
interviewing process :-):-) :-) 

Like I've said many times before, if you know any "secrets" of how the
game is *really* played, you should make it public.  Women have far less
access to this kind of information in general.


Lea Fester
fester@math.berkeley.edu

"An old, old woman ran the gears
she couldn't move, they said she'd been there forty years
I think that's rude, cause forty years is forty years
and I was only fifteen then."