Brain or Breast?

I had a concert a few weeks ago (it went fabulously), and the director of the concert series was talking with us afterwards and, upon hearing that I run a leadership program for young women, told a story about his MALE friend (this is true).

His male friend was named Kim, not an ideal man name and he may or may not have been bullied as a child, but that's not relevant to this tale. He graduated as an engineer a decade or so ago and, as graduates are wont to do, sent out a bajillion resumes and cover letters. Now engineers are not the type to not get hired, because it's not like it's an arts degree folks. People love them some engineers. But Kim wasn't getting any calls back and he started to get legitimately concerned. He had decent grades, a good work term history, great recommendations, but he couldn't even snag an interview. So he called a few of the firms where he'd submitted his resume and they were very surprised indeed to learn that Kim was a man and not a woman. Kim changed the name on his resume from Kim Roberts (I made up that last name, it just sounds nice) to K. Roberts, and was offered 3 jobs within a 2 week span. He said that for a brief time, he glimpsed how difficult the world can be for the female Kims out there who had a great resume, but a vagina instead of a penis. This is just bullshit, and I hope all of you reading out there can agree with that. If not, I'd love to hear why. Shouldn't employees be looking at their own hiring criteria and not their prospective employee's genitalia? (I don't mean that literally, so you can stop imagining your junk being examined during an interview).

But I also feel like it goes both ways. There are a lot of companies and businesses and whatnot out there who are being proactive in the fight for equality. I'm all for hiring a woman if she has a better resume (this seems fairly obvious...). I even agree in some cases that hiring a woman over a man if they have equal qualifications and work experience is okay, seeings how our sex has been oppressed for millenniums here. But hiring a woman who is less qualified just so you can up your female column in your employee statistics doesn't seem fair to the penis-wielding sex. My fella is in engineering and has noticed that there are several female-specific scholarships for engineering students, but no male-specific. They don't have scholarships out there for single fathers, but single mother scholarships are in abundance. I have noticed that my female engineering friends have had no trouble finding their dream work placements or post-graduation jobs, but some of the guys have been struggling. Now, it could be that the women in engineering these days are just better than the men in every way but that doesn't seem to be the case (except for this one chick in my boyfriend's class who appears to be robot-like). There's just a movement towards having women on-staff, to prove your company isn't sexist. It's like in teen movies, when there's the "token black guy" (I'm pretty sure Scary Movie called them out on this), well now there's the token lady staffer (sounds sexual) (it's not).

My concern is what happens once you're hired on. Were you really hired for your brain or for your breasts? And I don't mean for the male employees to ogle them, though I'm sure that happens too. My mom, who has led a career in male-dominated areas, has told me about times where she has run into sexism. It hasn't been upfront and bold, because people these days know they couldn't get away with saying "sit down sugar-tits". My mother has described it as being more insidious (fantastic word choice). As an example, she brought forward a project idea and it was rejected with very little discussion. Two weeks later, a male colleague of hers presented the exact same idea and it was eventually accepted after a thorough discussion. I think it would be very disheartening to encounter this kind of behavior. My mother has a Bachelors in Biochemistry, a Masters in Business, and her CMA (Certified Management Accountant). What I'm trying to say is that she's frigging smart, and she, or any other woman, shouldn't have to put up with sexism in an obvious OR subtle way. It's not enough to hire a woman; you then have to treat her with the same respect you would give to any other employee, male or female. She shouldn't have to worry about whether she was hired for her brain or her breasts (unless she chooses a career path in modeling or pornography, which changes things).