Yassmin’s Story

by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

  I hadn’t even realised then that different people need different levels of support, of encouragement; that they sometimes need to be led in different ways. YWB could have got so much more out of the placement, and could have made our intern’s experience so much richer, but we wasted the opportunity. It would be a long time before I admitted to myself that I had failed in this respect and that I would need to learn to provide more support for people, instead of expecting them simply to succeed because I had given them an opportunity. I was too young and inexperienced to recognise this, so our intern became another piece in the puzzle we didn’t know how to put together.

  We had begun contacting schools, building the program, our general expectation being that fundraising would be easier once we had the foundations organised. We thought the money would come naturally, but as the date of the camp neared, people started asking us to pay invoices that no amount of fundraising barbecues were going to cover. We were eventually saved by another wonderful supporter from Engineers Australia, and the company of one of my previous mentors, after we begrudgingly started knocking on the doors available to us. It turns out people love being part of a successful, empowering journey once you frame it to them appropriately.

  All our fingers, toes and appendages were crossed as we focused on sorting out the actual logistics of the camp; we had never done anything this big before and weren’t sure how it would work out. Planning the camp activities was a little easier, as we were completely youth-led; we just thought about the activities we would like to do and made them part of the schedule. Bridge-building competitions? Check. Excursion to the CSIRO? Check. Creating your personal mission statement? Check. A day at the theme park to demonstrate the reality of engineering? Check. The best part about being a couple of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds designing a camp was that we didn’t have to think about what the ‘young people’ would want – we were the young people. When we needed help with the training, culture-creation and the details – like how to organise meal times and the best way to manage big groups – we asked some of our friends who had staffed other high school camps to give us some advice, crowd-sourcing the solutions.

  The weeks leading up to the camp coincided with my demanding fourth-year exams, which made for a hectic month. I was running from one meeting to the next, missing most of my morning lectures, trying to keep the UQ race team going, scamming rides to uni from my best friend because, to top it all off, my car had broken down and I couldn’t afford to replace the snapped timing belt!

  Forty students had registered from around the country, and even though only twenty-two walked in the front door, as they arrived we knew we had created something special. They came from around Queensland, and all were ethnically diverse, or from the ‘wrong end’ of town. They were kids who had potential but who had never considered coming to a nerd camp before. All in our care, believing in us and the experience we had created. They changed our lives as much as we did theirs. They went from being students who didn’t want to be at nerd camp, nominated by a teacher or parent who believed they had potential, to proud, confident ambassadors. The people who staffed the camp were other university students who stepped into the role of mentor. They were all friends from engineering who came from similar backgrounds to these school students or who understood and believed in the mission of the camp. We had an extremely high ratio of students to staff, almost two to one, meaning that each student got the connection and attention they deserved.

  We were a small team, but the sleep deprivation, the excitement and the sheer insanity of it all brought us closer together, and we made it happen. Our planning had a few holes, so every night I stayed up with a couple of other team members to create the daily schedule and outline the roles for our mentors, printing off programs in the mechanical engineering computer labs and deliriously singing to hip hop tunes. During this time, I realised that even though I could get away with making up things on the run, that wasn’t good enough if I wanted to take my team along with me. I needed to communicate where we were going so people felt like they were part of the journey, not just being led blindly.

  The feedback at the end of the camp made the exhausting five days all worth it.

  We knew we were onto a winning ticket with Spark, but the following year I was working so I asked a colleague if they would be willing to take over the planning. The experience ran smoothly, but messages were coming back to me that the culture of the camp had changed. I should have known that we were heading for a showdown.

  Out on the rig, I woke at 3 pm for my night shift and switched on my computer to find an email saying that YWB was ill-equipped to handle Spark and that I should take a step back from my position.

  I was sitting at my ‘desk’, a plank of plywood wedged between the bed and the side of the donga, and my stomach literally dropped. What was happening? I kept reading the email. It seemed to me that the person wanted to take the project away from the organisation. For the first time in my life, someone was making a move on something I had built, and it wasn’t a nice feeling.

  Oh, was I furious. This was not the point of Spark, not at all. It wasn’t about who got to run it, or who got the credit – YWB was created to avoid this kind of fighting and competition. I was furious because Spark was meant as a safe haven. It was a place that was inclusive and supportive, a place where people felt as if they could be themselves, broaden their horizons and realise that their world could be so much bigger than they ever imagined. Spark was able to be that way because it was imbued with the values of YWB, and it made the students – all of them, not just the ones that ‘fit the mould’ – and the wholesome, inclusive experience the absolute priorities.

  This email felt like it was trying to turn Spark into ‘any other science camp’, the beginning of the end of our dream. I was not going to let that happen.

  Over the course of the next months, and eventually years, it was determined that Spark would stay a YWB program, but it was a relationship that needed careful management. We had brought in people who were used to a different way of operating. The culture these volunteers were from was the older, science and engineering camp atmosphere. We then realised how crucial it was for all the staff to understand why Spark existed.

  I learnt the importance of ensuring I provided the right kind of support for my team rather than expecting them to know how to do everything involved with a job. After all, YWB is about empowering people and building their capacity, not just hiring people who know their path and potential already. I learnt how to fight for the project, as I truly believed in the original purpose of the camp. Spark is about empowering young people to see that they are valuable, and helping them realise that they are capable of doing things, even if they have never been told that before. It is about building capacity in the mentors while creating a safe space for all students. The camp is a melting pot of culture, language, belief and ability, and although that does make it a tough job, it’s also what makes it worth doing.

  Spark was also the first YWB project that my father believed in. Up until that point, he was in ‘wait and see’ mode, unconvinced our programs made a real difference. However, with Spark, I finally secured his approval: ‘Ah, Yassmina! This is how we create change: we coach, we mentor, we empower. It’s all about empowering.’

  No matter how much I try to deny it, the approval of my parents means a huge amount to me.

  Spark now runs in two states in Australia and changes the lives of more than one hundred students every year, with attendees from over forty different towns and cities. It has become a professional initiative in its own right, and the Spark-YWB team has taken it much further than I ever could have. The ability to take something fledgling and make it fly is a special skill. I owe it all to the likes of Lucy Shaw, Liam Nolan, Bianca Goebel, Avrithi Misthry and the others who drove Spark to magnificence and believed in it when nobody else quite did.

  Chapter 17:

  Why Should I Care?

  As I waited for my colle
ague to let me into his apartment building where the drilling crew was having dinner, I looked down at the food I had brought: Sudanese lentils in a plastic container. It was the recipe my grandmother had taught me, a hearty meal, but in that moment it crossed my mind that it was a dish people would associate with refugees.

  ‘Sorry, Yas,’ the voice squawked out of the intercom. ‘We’ll come down to get ya now.’

  It was the day before my TEDx talk and we’d just gone sailing as part of our work competition. A group of five to ten of us regularly went out on the boat once a week in the summer months, competing against other corporate teams from around the city. We would knock off early and cycle across the river to the little surf-cat store where the boats were moored – a true slice of heaven. Then, depending on who was in town, we would all head back across the river and grab dinner. Oilfield folk, particularly those in drilling, tend to blur the lines between work and friendship. Not many ‘regular’ folk understand the fly-in-fly-out nature of the rig life, or the expectation that you are always on call, no matter what, during operations. The intensity of the lifestyle brings people together, and in some ways they become your best friends, even your family.

  There were spectacular views over the river from the apartment, and after a quick tour of the house I returned to the dining table and grudgingly pulled out my lentils.

  The thick soup had been agitated in the container as I’d cycled from my house and some of the burnt-orange liquid had seeped around the outside of the seal. I sighed.

  ‘Why don’t you have some of this food, Yas?’ the friend next to me asked. ‘There’s plenty and the butter chicken is the best!’

  I smiled and thanked her, saying it likely wouldn’t be halal – many take-out places in Australia aren’t – but it turned out they’d checked before ordering and it was! I was fortunate in this situation, because one of the beauties of working in the oil patch – particularly with those from offshore – is that many of the people there are thoroughly multicultural and have either lived in a country with a completely different culture or worked closely with folks from around the world. There is less ignorance about day-to-day differences in an environment like that, so everyone sitting around me knew what the halal deal was all about.

  Never one to pass up a free meal, I tucked into the butter chicken, and as the conversation ebbed and flowed, I joined in the way I often do when faced with a group of people who have different perspectives to mine – I started asking deep philosophical questions to find out how they think. The reasoning behind this isn’t necessarily to change people’s minds. My questions come from a place of curiosity and from a desire to understand people. I see it more like amateur anthropology – using my social time to really get to know people and the environment around me and to hear different perspectives. The answers to my questions tend to either change my perspectives or enhance the understanding I already have.

  When it comes to whether I try to convince people of my own perspectives, it depends on the situation. Changing minds takes time and I respect that other people have their own opinions. Asking certain questions, though, can sometimes plant a seed of doubt. Over time, that seed can grow depending on whether it is fertilised or poisoned …

  The role of women on rigs is always fun to bring up, to see people’s reactions. I ask guys what they think about it, women in leadership roles, how they feel about feminism, their comments on violence against women – anything controversial. Why not? It’s a tailored sample group. The guys just tend to roll their eyes, although some answer and others ignore me. I’ve been called ‘radical’ for wanting to know so many things and asking so many questions. I simply say to them, ‘Mate, please don’t call me radical; people will get the wrong idea!’

  That night, my mind was in a different space. I had yet to test run my TEDx speech in front of anyone to see if it would connect with audiences. I didn’t feel ready to share it with my crew, so when I finished my butter chicken portion I started to make a move to get some more practice in front of the mirror at home, but a colleague jumped up before I could walk out the door. ‘Hey, hey, hey! Didn’t you say you were going to do your speech for me? You can do it right here!’

  Doing the speech there was nerve-racking. I usually avoided bringing my rig life together with my world of community advocacy. I was also uneasy because unconscious bias – the theme I was speaking on – is a sensitive topic. Audiences that are not in the right frame of mind can easily go on the defensive and accuse you of calling them racist. But I was curious to see if I had framed my speech convincingly enough for oilfield folk, so I reluctantly nodded.

  ‘Who is it targeted to?’ another colleague, our host this evening, asked. He was a long-time oilfield drilling supervisor, and I wasn’t at all sure how he would react to the speech.

  ‘I guess the type of people who would listen to a TED talk?’ I replied. ‘The general public?’ I hadn’t thought about the audience explicitly at this point, but I put that out of my mind, took a couple of steps back from the dining table and began the speech.

  I can walk down the street in the same outfit and the way I am treated and the world’s expectations of who I am depends on the way I arrange the piece of cloth on my head. However, more broadly, it is not about focusing on the hijab per se, because Muslim women are more than the cloth that they choose to wrap – or not wrap – their head in.

  This is about looking beyond your bias.

  I threw out a few stats about the great impact unconscious bias has on our lives, before getting into my favourite story, which is used to illustrate that bias in our everyday thinking.

  Take this example: A young boy and his father were in a horrific car accident. The father dies on impact, and the severely injured son is rushed to hospital. When they arrive, the surgeon looks at the young boy and declares they cannot operate.

  Why?

  ‘The boy is my son,’ the surgeon says.

  How can that be?

  Of course, the surgeon is his mother. This is only an anecdote, but the reality of unconscious bias is backed up by evidence – how many of you initially pictured the surgeon as a man? If you have heard it a million times before, think about this: the number of female doctors and surgeons who have heard this story but also made the same assumption of a male surgeon would blow your mind.

  Ultimately, the behaviours associated with these assumptions are a product of unconscious bias or implicit prejudice. This has been proven to have a significant effect on the diversity in our workforces, particularly in places of influence. Think of our current Australian Federal Cabinet.

  The question to ask is: how can each and every one of us work to counter the effects of this pretty common phenomenon?

  Now, one thing must be set straight from the outset. Unconscious bias is not an accusation of conscious discrimination, or saying that in every person there is a racist, sexist or ageist lurking within. We all have our biases, and these are the filters through which we take in the world around us. Bias is not an accusation here. Rather, it is something that should be identified, acknowledged, and mitigated against. The thing is, if we want to live in a world where the circumstances of your birth do not dictate your future and where equal opportunity is ubiquitous, then each and every one of us has a role to play in making sure unconscious bias does not determine our lives.

  Remember to acknowledge your biases so you can look past them.

  One of the most famous experiments around unconscious bias with gender was done within orchestras in the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to those decades, female musicians were quite rare, making up no more than five per cent of the top orchestras in the United States, and that was put down to the fact that men played differently, presumably better, or so they say.

  The change was brought about through the adoption of a blind audition process. Rather than a face-to-face audition, the Boston Symphony Orchestra introduced the concept of playing behind a screen, in order to eliminate any bias. Interestingly, the
re was no major immediate change registered – until they began to instruct auditioners to take their shoes off before they entered the room. The click clack of the heels against hardwood was giving the ladies away.

  With the introduction of this system of auditioning, the results of a study showed that women had a fifty per cent increased chance they would progress past the preliminary rounds and the move almost tripled the chance a lady would get hired.

  What does this tell us? That although we may not know it, we do unconsciously exhibit cases of bias, no matter how forward-thinking we may think we are. I do it all the time myself; the trick is to consciously look past it.

  Quite a lot of research has been done in this space going some way towards explaining why there are fewer women in senior positions and in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths.

  One of the solutions offered is a target or quota, and that is super divisive. Often, people resort to the idea of merit. ‘I don’t want to be hired because I am a woman, I want to be hired on merit. I want to know I am the best applicant for the job.’ This is a pretty common sentiment that is shared among the female engineers I have worked and studied with. Yes, it is an understandable sentiment. However, if life was about merit, why would identical resumes be treated differently, such as in the case of the 2012 Yale study showing identical applications for a lab position still had the female applicant being deemed less competent and less likely to get the job?

  I always sighed when I read this part of the speech. Some people still think that merit is what gets people jobs when in fact it is also about networks, connections, who you know, who knows you, and their subconscious and conscious impressions of you.

  Funnily enough, there may be some research that provides an answer: something known as the merit paradox. In companies that talked about ‘merit’ being important as an organisational value – for gender and for race – men were more likely than women to be selected, and awarded salary increases. Ironically, this only occurred in companies that emphasised merit as a basis of selection.