If there is one thing my twenties taught me, it is just how good we – as a society – are at counting women out. Women are not only underrepresented, but they are categorically underrecognized. We rather call a woman naïve or delusional then accept that she may be competent or on to something. From my personal experience, that urge often even overrules past performance or the facts:
🎓 At 20, I made the decision to complete my Bachelor in 2 rather than 3 years. I had quietly completed more than half of my degree credits in my first year of University, before making the choice. Much to my surprise, a lot of people seemed to have an opinion about the matter, and I was generally seen as some sort of “mildly arrogant and rather delusional smarty pants”. Years later, colleagues of mine used to talk about how impressive they found their peers, who had graduated early or with a double degree – but they only ever said that about their male classmates.
💼 When I started my first corporate job at 22, clients often asked me (and treated me as) if I was a secretary. There was this big admiration for my male colleagues who had started their careers really young and had gone to these “great universities”. I never once heard the same said about female colleagues or myself. We were somehow treated as if we had cheated the system.
🎓 When I was granted my Fulbright Scholarship to go to Columbia Law School in my mid-twenties, I literally had colleagues say to my face that they never thought I was that smart. Some of them even listed male partners’ and male associates’ names who went to Ivy League universities and then asked if I had really been accepted to the same universities, as if there must be some sort of misunderstanding. For context, the fact that I already had degrees from Leiden and Edinburgh was not a secret.
🌱 I started doing research into e-waste and conflict minerals in my early twenties. It was a fairly niche topic at the time and difficult to find a job in. When I decided to start The E-Waste Column in 2022, the interest in raw materials and the (just) energy transition had grown a lot. Despite the need, there were not many experts who had looked closely at the social and regulatory aspects. When I started to cover these topics, a lot of people told me they thought it was a “nice little project” but that no one was actually going to read it. Several people who read the column even told me that they never thought there was a woman behind it – and that although I am always named in the posts.
At the current rate, it will take until 2158 to reach full gender parity. That is another five generations! If we want to accelerate this, perhaps it is time that we speak about and recognize the achievements of women as equally worthy to those of men? To put it bluntly, women that dare to color outside of the box are not always naïve or delusional. They may be just as smart and brave as the men pushing the envelope.
Comments