Blond MIT Student’s Story Shows Belittled Female Engineers Are Not Alone
Alice Zielinski does actually study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, no matter what people may think.
The MIT junior said in a widely shared op-ed last week that she spends too much of her time convincing people that she attends the nation’s top engineering school. In her testimony about the struggles of being a young, blond, female engineering student, she pointed out that a lot of people don’t take her seriously.
“Sometimes I feel as if in saying that I attend MIT, I’m telling a blonde joke,’’ she wrote in the piece, which appeared on Medium, Quartz, and Talking Points Memo. “Hint: I’m not.’’
Zielinski’s story shows that a lot of people are apparently bewildered by the existence of an MIT-educated aeronautical engineer who also happens to be a blond woman. She says the puzzled responses include:
“That’s cute. After you complete your degree, are you going into modeling?’’
“Oh! So you’re like a genius? But you seem so down to earth! Did you have some traumatizing childhood experience that brought you down to earth?’’
“That’s a joke, right? You don’t look like you go to MIT.’’
“What!? But you’re wearing a dress!? Do you go to MIT?? How ‘bout I take you out?’’
“Do you do any real engineering?’’
Living in a world where even the most successful women’s salaries don’t match their male counterparts’, where studies suggest 99 percent of women report experiencing some type of street harassment, and where the Equal Rights Amendment remains in limbo 92 years after its creation, Zielinski’s story shouldn’t be surprising. Some people, however, apparently didn’t buy it, or didn’t care.
In a follow up, Zielinski said that while she received a lot of praise for the piece, some feedback was negative. Readers alleged:
“Just another Social Media Darling looking for attention. And I’ll bet 5 bucks she doesn’t work a day in engineering.’’
“I’d equate it to an essay about how much it sucks when the guy at Starbucks gets your order wrong.’’
“She thinks she’s hot. But her photo really isn’t that attractive.’’
“Stop whining and go do something productive.’’
You can see where this is going.
Despite some skeptics’ insistence that discouraged women in the tech industry are just too conceited, it’s clear that Zielinski is not alone in feeling marginalized for her appearance or her gender. Her post emerged just weeks after female MIT computer scientists hosted a reddit AMA about their careers. While the conversation was largely constructive, the opportunity to ask questions was met with questions about their bra sizes, “make me a sandwich’’ jokes, and demands that the three PhD students prove they have contributed to the field in some way. It’s hard to see reddit trolls questioning what three MIT PhD students do with their time if those students were male.
MIT confirmed to Boston.com that the Zielinski is indeed a student there, but declined to comment on her observations. Zielinski is enrolled in the university’s aeronautical and astronautical engineer program, has worked with Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and was attending an aerospace conference in Florida in the days following her post. So why do some find it so hard to believe that she is an MIT student?
“I think that society has an idea of how the stereotypical engineer should look and behave,’’ Zielinski told Boston.com. “Anyone who deviates from this pre-defined engineer norm is met with surprise and disbelief.’’
Zielinski suspects she doesn’t look or act how people think an MIT-educated engineer “should’’ look or act. She says she’s experienced this disbelief at MIT on occasion, but usually encounters it off campus — according to her original post, it’s happened at a coffee shop, frat parties, even during a dentist appointment. Zielinski said that those belittling comments are not the only ones she’s experienced.
Zielinski alongside an ATHLETE (All Terrain Hex-Limbed ExtraTerrestrial Explorer) robot she says she worked on in high school while working in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“[Once] during a robotics meeting I asked how I may contribute to the investigation of a problem. The coach told me to ‘just sit there and look pretty,’’’ Zielinski said. “There was another instance when our team was preparing to end work for the day, and the boys were organizing robot parts and cleaning machinery. The coach told another blond female teammate and me that ‘girls should pick up the trash from dinner and sweep the floor.’ I went on to be lead of computer vision software engineering on that team.’’
Zielinski’s MIT colleague Kathryn Siegel told Boston.com that she has had similar experiences off campus. A computer science major who has helped organize the school’s largest hackathon (HackMIT) for the past two years, Siegel is currently studying the role of women in the tech industry. She’s creating her own tech demographics, analyzing how female computer scientists are distributed throughout the field by collecting data about their careers. That Zielinski’s article has been widely shared, Siegel said, “seems indicative that a lot of other women can relate [to her].’’
“An engineer in the Bay Area once expressed disbelief that I was from MIT on the basis of my looks,’’ she said. “Recruiters regularly assume that I prefer ‘front end’ positions (typically seen as a less ‘hardcore’ area of computer science), even if my resume clearly states otherwise.’’
Siegel’s findings are expected to be released later this week.
Zielinski and Siegel both said that the MIT community has been very supportive of female engineers, even if the world off campus isn’t.
A spokesperson for MIT told Boston.com that “the Institute’s support services are available to all members of the MIT community and can be accessed via MIT Together,’’ the school’s support resources portal.
Zielinski said she won’t let the backlash to her post prevent her from telling her story. “This perpetual cycle of silencing those speaking out… must end,’’ she wrote.
“We’re in this together.’’
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