What it feels like for a girl — part two

Photo by Robert Metz on Unsplash

During the latter half of 2017, the metoo hashtag put sexual harassment and inequality in the workplace slap bang in the spotlight. In the three decades since I began working, it seemed that the female voice had finally gained a foothold, people started listening. Something had changed. Heads were rolling. Women were feeling free to wear their high heels without fear of retribution.

I learned something from all of the stories, some of which tore strips off my soul. I learned that no matter what we try to do as individuals, it was going to take a revolution to break apart the male domination, the old boys club, that pervades the world we live and work in.

In my early twenties, I was working in an R&D center as a developer. In those days, there wasn’t the shortage of women in technology that there is today — well at least not where I was working, I had plenty of female colleagues. The hierarchy remained predominantly male, but that didn’t scare me, I was smart, feisty, and rebellious. I was happy.

This is my #metoo story.

At the time, I believed I handled the situation without too much damage. But, once I started writing this story, nearly thirty years after the fact, it struck me just how much that one experience has shaped my life. How it knocked my confidence, and how it eventually pushed me out of technology.

I was working with a team of developers on a project that was researching automated air traffic control — theoretically a fun project with lots of opportunities for learning. Our team lead was an external consultant, a married man in his early thirties with two kids and zero understanding that a daily shower, if nothing else, is a common courtesy to your fellow colleagues. All was fine until one evening I received a phone call from him at home asking me to join a dinner. I thought it was a bit weird but accepted anyway.

Five minutes into the evening, he made it clear this wasn’t a casual bite to eat among workmates. I swore to myself, thinking shit, how could I be so bloody naïve. So, I made it equally damn clear that I was not interested. And that I hoped was that. No harm done. A man is, after all, allowed to ask a woman out on a date — right? And a woman is allowed to accept without fear.

Over the next six months, the man plagued me to go out with him. I invented boyfriends, squash matches, laundry nights, anything to avoid being alone in this man’s company. Nothing I said had an impact on his willpower to get me where he wanted. After a while, the situation started affecting my performance, my desire to come to work. My hair started falling out. At some point, I discovered that the day he first called me was the day he officially got divorced from his wife – that sent me retching all the way to the bathroom. The more I said no, the more determined he became.

And then he started making things difficult for me at work. He once said to me that I would be better respected if I could learn something about networking. He said I was slow and that I wasn’t creative. He constantly made me out to be an idiot in front of the team, saying my code was flawed. I was made to come in at weekends and holidays “to make up for my shortcomings”. On these occasions, it was often just me and him in the office.

I wanted to take on a new role, to develop the interface that would demo our project – partly to get away from him, partly to learn something new. He told my boss I wasn’t smart enough and gave the role to someone else.

The tipping point came when he hosted a team dinner party. I invented yet another excuse not to attend. And he kept postponing until even he realized he was beginning to look like a buffoon. I didn’t go.

I remember vividly the feeling on my way to work the following day. The sun was shining, I felt victorious, I’d shaken him off, I figured he could no longer go on badgering me — by this time, I had told some of my closest teammates what was going on.

My high spirits didn’t last long. The minute I arrived, he came flying into my office rabbiting on and on about what a great night I’d missed, and what a brilliant chef he was. All I could hear was white noise; the fear was back. He pushed me one last time, told me the food was so good that he would make it again — just for me, just for me. I can still hear those words ringing in my ears. My heart was racing, I felt trapped. Nowhere to go, no way out.

I went to my boss.

Let me put this into perspective. I was 25, working in France. It was the early nineties. My boss was a 60-year-old Frenchman who smoked in my office and dumped his ash on the floor. He was a tough ex-military man with little emotional understanding. He laughed, he brushed it off, told me I was a pretty young thing, and “What could I expect?” I spent the rest of the day in the ladies’ bathroom waiting for the bus to take me home.

Shortly after, I left for the US on an exchange program with another research institute. The man in question also left to start his own business. I thankfully never saw him again. But my love for technology started to die. Because of that one bad individual. I questioned my capabilities for the first time in my life.

Recently, I heard a man say that women are not as good at coding as men. To you, I say, you idiot, you lost my respect in that instant. And to the same man who said, “We don’t have any metoo problems here,” you are an idiot. To any woman who hears a man say these things, I say this: don’t let them beat you down, don’t let their gender bias make you feel inferior because you are not. I know that now.

Thank you #metoo for providing me with a voice. Hear me roar…