A Visitor, and More Double Standards

Last week I hosted a visitor at work: a senior member of the technical staff at another national lab. Okay, it wasn't actually as glamorous as it sounds. The visitor was a classmate of mine from graduate school, and "senior member of the technical staff," as distinguished as it sounds, is actually the lowest level for Ph.D's. (If you have a masters, you start out as just a "member of the technical staff.")

Anyhow, he's a good friend of mine in addition to being a top-notch scholar, so it was fun to catch up on his life as well as hear about his latest research. He went out to eat with me and Jeff and Vinny one night, so he got a chance to meet Vinny for the first time. He and his wife have a son, and another one on the way, so he wasn't spooked by hanging out with us and our baby; indeed, he was actually excited to meet Vinny.

In addition to talking about our research, we also talked about our work environments, and I think I'm really glad to be working where I work. Although he makes a lot more money than I do, I wouldn't want to trade jobs.

We also had an interesting discussion about what it's like to be a woman in science. Obviously my friend is male, plus he's white, so he has no experience being the "other" at work. He is not obviously biased against women but I told him about the sort of unconscious bias that he could inadvertently get caught up in. For example, people tend to describe men as "original thinkers" and "very smart" in letters of recommendation, whereas they tend to describe women as "hard workers" and "a pleasure to work with." If you didn't know about this bias, you might select the "original thinker" rather than the "hard worker," when in reality they could both be equally good candidates. I personally saw a lot of this sort of letter-writing bias when I was on the department graduate admissions committee as a graduate student. So it's definitely something to watch out for; otherwise you may be inadvertently perpetuating bias. He was completely oblivious to this fact until I pointed it out to him.

I talked about the door-opening incident before, but another thing that gets me sometimes is the fact that many men often do not extend their hand to shake mine, whereas they will readily offer their hand to another man. According to some etiquette experts, men should not initiate a handshake with a woman, although this view should not apply in the business setting. But when I took my visitor to meet some men whom I didn't know either, they readily shook my visitor's hand but not mine.

My boss is male but he's not white, so he at least has an idea of what it's like to be treated differently, even if his experience isn't the same as mine. He's no stranger to racism, and he's sensitive enough to lend a sympathetic ear when I feel the need to vent. I don't get angry about any one incident, but someone once made a very apt metaphor to describe the additive effect of these little slights: it's like death by papercuts. Oh sure, one, two, even ten of them aren't going to do much damage. But over the course of a lifetime, it hurts a lot.

But, back to my guest. He was charming, everybody was impressed with him, and he had a great time. He invited me out to his lab, and I think I will pay him a visit in the fall.