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Assume people are as or more qualified than you. I think this is a great rule to apply to your dealings with anyone of whatever appearance or gender - often ou

Assume people are as or more qualified than you. I think this is a great rule to apply to your dealings with anyone of whatever appearance or gender - often our assumptions about people are wildly inaccurate (and we make hundreds before they've opened their mouth, and lots more after the first sentence). If they're not more qualified, they'll make it clear, and if they are more qualified/intelligent, maybe you'll learn something from them. You should always be prepared to learn from someone whoever they are, and never make assumptions about them based on gender, appearance, culture etc. it's not only rude, it's just ignorance. It is important to note though that just because this is a problem everyone faces in some small way on either side of interactions every day, it's one which women face to a radically different degree. I recently had someone at work criticise a page as too girly to our team including women. The same thing has happened to women I know who are doctors, architects and lawyers - competence is questioned or undervalued simply because they're a woman. It's hard to know where to start in responding to comments like that, and it's still happening in 2015, so I find this #likeagirl campaign justified and timely. It's time for people to speak out whenever they see this sort of prejudice masked as concern or advice, and stop making the workplace such a hostile environment for women. I'd love to think that by the time my daughter grows up we'll be over this sort of thing. It is really disturbing the number of dismissive and hostile comments we see on posts about women on HN. Most stories on this topic devolve into flamewars or at best are littered with negative responses saying this is a problem everyone faces or it's not really a problem at all. Good articles like this reporting personal experience widely shared deserve better. How can we change that?

Roboprog 12y ago
This one is hard to remember. Thanks for the reminder. I started a new job a few months ago. It took a while to get started on our new big project, but once we did, it was nice to see everybody on the team fall into a complementary niche. "Not same" != "not smart".
ghufran_syed 12y ago
In my experience recently in medicine (as a man), I've never noticed other doctors assuming lack of competence in female doctors, but did have female colleagues describe constantly being described as 'the nurse' by patients, usually by the oldest patients (who of course spent most of their life in a world where doctor=man, nurse=woman). Women's experiences of sexism and bigotry from male doctors when trying to 'break into' medicine over the last 50 years were pretty miserable on all accounts, but it feels to me like once the numbers of women in senior positions was high enough, the sexism pretty much went away: it's pretty hard to assume 'women don't know anything' when you've gone from utter ignorance as a medical student and junior resident to actually being good at what you do based on training and supervision from awesome female and male doctors in roughly equal numbers. With regards to 'Assume people are as or more qualified than you', I think this is just basic courtesy. If there is no way of 'knowing' someone's knowledge or status eg by rank insignia, it always safer and much better received if you make a conscious effort to be wrong..in the right direction ie in the direction of more knowledge / status /experience. People are happy to correct you, but are often flattered: 'Are you the founder?'..'No, I'm actually the intern' , or 'are you the attending physician?'..,'No, I'm a med student' ends up being a much nicer interaction for all concerned than if you ask it the other way around, while still fulfilling the need to exchange useful information.
- grey-area 12y ago
  Yes mostly assumptions would be made by patients or other professionals they interact with, not other doctors.

Roboprog 12y ago

This one is hard to remember. Thanks for the reminder. I started a new job a few months ago. It took a while to get started on our new big project, but once we did, it was nice to see everybody on the team fall into a complementary niche. "Not same" != "not smart".

ghufran_syed 12y ago

In my experience recently in medicine (as a man), I've never noticed other doctors assuming lack of competence in female doctors, but did have female colleagues describe constantly being described as 'the nurse' by patients, usually by the oldest patients (who of course spent most of their life in a world where doctor=man, nurse=woman). Women's experiences of sexism and bigotry from male doctors when trying to 'break into' medicine over the last 50 years were pretty miserable on all accounts, but it feels to me like once the numbers of women in senior positions was high enough, the sexism pretty much went away: it's pretty hard to assume 'women don't know anything' when you've gone from utter ignorance as a medical student and junior resident to actually being good at what you do based on training and supervision from awesome female and male doctors in roughly equal numbers. With regards to 'Assume people are as or more qualified than you', I think this is just basic courtesy. If there is no way of 'knowing' someone's knowledge or status eg by rank insignia, it always safer and much better received if you make a conscious effort to be wrong..in the right direction ie in the direction of more knowledge / status /experience. People are happy to correct you, but are often flattered: 'Are you the founder?'..'No, I'm actually the intern' , or 'are you the attending physician?'..,'No, I'm a med student' ends up being a much nicer interaction for all concerned than if you ask it the other way around, while still fulfilling the need to exchange useful information.

grey-area 12y ago
Yes mostly assumptions would be made by patients or other professionals they interact with, not other doctors.