Soulstice Spotlight: Breaking Barriers with Cindy Chen
GO FOR LAUNCH!
This week’s blog post is brought to you by Cindy Chen, my roommate and fellow wildcat from Northwestern University. There were 3 men in my graduate program of 27, and I noticed myself feeling somewhat socially isolated at times, especially from my privileged experience of working in mostly male-dominated fields before. However, my social interactions at Northwestern did not negatively impact how other people evaluated my work, nor did it present any barriers when it came to applying for jobs or advancing as a therapist. As society continues to push for gender equality, we have become more aware of the systemic microaggressions that women in the STEM field face every day throughout their careers. Recognizing the continued privilege that I carry in our patriarchal system challenges me to continuously make space for other voices to be heard in their own words and context.
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How did I get into engineering?
For most of my middle and high school career, I was dead set on going deep into academia. My plan was to get into theoretical physics, get a PhD, and work at CERN—I wanted to learn for a living. I didn’t even know engineering was an option that I could consider, and honestly didn’t really know what it was, having never been exposed to it. I decided to switch into the school of engineering the summer before my first year at college on the advice of my high school calculus teacher, who thought that I should give engineering a try, and that I might like it. So I did, thinking that if I didn’t enjoy it, I would switch right back to physics.
Getting into rocketry was kind of an accident. I was at the activities fair they put on at the beginning of the year, looking through all the clubs and signing myself up for pretty much all of the email lists—as you do when you’re an over-achieving nerd—and I wandered past the rocketry stand, and I thought to myself, “Eh I guess rockets are kind of cool, I’ll just put my email down and maybe go to one or two meetings. Whatever, we’ll see.” So I went to one meeting, and then another, and then I got more and more involved, because as I learned about rocketry and got to do hands-on building and problem-solving, I realized that this work is exactly what makes sense to me. Fast forward four years, I was the chief engineer of the team and rocketry was my life.
Range is Clear, Skies are Clear...ish
I started working at a rocket company in September 2019, and immediately started feeling a lot of the pressures and frustrations that come with being a minority—in this case, being a woman in an office full of men. At this point in the US, people in STEM are very aware of the systemic discrimination against women in the world of STEM, and large companies have taken steps to try and make this world more accessible to people who aren’t men. Those steps are important and good, but, of course, don’t solve every problem.
We’ve made a lot of effort and a lot of progress, so it can be easy to forget that a lot more effort and progress are still needed. I’ve found that there are a lot of experiences that are very common to women in STEM that men don’t see, because it can be hard to see things when the problem is just the nebulous phrase “gender inequality” *gestures vaguely*. So how about some concrete examples? When the stress about being a woman in the office started piling up, I began to compile a list—every time I felt a micro-aggression, heard something ignorant, or felt left out because of my gender, I wrote it down. Here are some of the entries I made—they are unedited (except for removing names), and just my immediate reactions.
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I've been feeling the strain from being the only woman in our team and one of few women in the office. It's just microaggressions that are always present in some way in my day that aren't done intentionally or maliciously, but are nonetheless there. I was on a phone call with two other men and one of them said to the person on the phone that he was there with [name of other man] and didn't mention my name. Now I don't actually care about being named as participating in the conversation when I was realistically just there to listen, and I'm sure that the thought process, if there was one, from the other two men on my side of the phone was just that I was there to hear the discussion being had but, since I'm pretty new, wasn't really going to contribute to the call. I understand that. But what I feel when I am left out of introductions is that they were essentially acting as if I was not there and as if I was not part of the project; it feels like all the times women are pushed away from participating in STEM and ignored. This event isolated is very small, but microaggressions build up and are always there in the background of my day at work. I know that this is a problem that extends far beyond just this team or this company and permeates the culture of this country (and tbh the world) and the way kids are raised and the way we are taught to understand the people around us, and I don't expect this to be solved right now, but I don't think most of the people at this company are even aware of how prominent this is in the lives of women who work in STEM, and I wanted to bring it up so it's heard.
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I said something, then a man said literally the exact same thing half a second after I did. Yes, they all probably just didn't hear me, but this just shows again how men don't tend to listen as carefully to women.
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The engineers who are women who you interact with are all really good because you can't just fall into engineering as a woman--you have to actively fight for it and it's not easy.
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They said they wanted to rename the Sally Ride conference room to the Baby Yoda conference room and that's upsetting and disrespectful. There's like one woman conference room. And that's the one they chose? The ignorance is frustrating.
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I often feel left out of social interactions--the guys in the team always joke around with each other and chat with each other, and I'm never included in that. I get that it's also because I'm newer here and they don't know me, but I also know it's because I'm different from them, and, because of how girls are raised to behave differently from boys, I interact with people differently from them. This is why it's so important to actually hire women, instead of just "accepting women" into a male-dominated workplace, because even if we want to treat the different genders the same, regardless of genders, there is of course a difference in how we're going to treat people of different genders--it's not as simple as the gender a person is assigned, it's also all of the societal and cultural influences that shape that person based on their gender. All this to say, having women around means that there would be people who understand the pressures you feel, without having to explain (or defend) it, and there's less pressure when you interact socially with them, because they have a similar set of understandings and influences as you.
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How do I take care of myself, given that I experience these stresses and frustrations every day?
Of course I feel angry and frustrated all the time—being the only woman in a room full of men is infuriating and frustrating—and I acknowledge that being stressed out with gender inequality is valid, but I also know that it’s not very productive to stay in those feelings. I know that change happens slowly and that it’s heartening to see where we are now, compared to not that long ago. I know that more and more programs exist that encourage girls to explore the world of engineering. I know that being here and taking up space in a world that doesn’t make it easy gives younger people one more person to see and one more reason to imagine themselves as an engineer. Engineering and rockets are awesome; I’m glad that I pushed through the obstacles placed in front of me because of my gender, and I push through still. I’m just going to keep doing my job and doing it well.
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If you’re looking to break into aerospace or mechanical engineering please reach out to Cindy here:
Email: cindychen2019@u.northwestern.edu
