Yassmin’s Story

by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

  Interestingly, the fact that I’m a woman who works on the rigs is way more remarkable than the fact that I’m brown or Muslim. To be fair, most of the guys just can’t believe a woman would choose to work on the rigs. But it is entertaining. I remember when I told one of the guys I wanted to learn how to surf.

  ‘You won’t be able to surf with all that gear you got on. I don’t know any women-only beaches either …’

  ‘Nah, mate, all good,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got an outfit that I wear to the beach.’

  ‘Oh, you could start a new clothing range – beach and surf wear for Muslim chicks. You run that youth organisation, yeah? You could change it. Youth without board shorts.’

  I also remember once being asked if I’d eaten some of the yoghurt from the fridge: ‘You should keep eating that! It’s the only culture you’ll get around here!’

  Unfortunately there is a little bit of truth to that, and particularly at tables where influential decisions are made.

  In 2010, the Australian National University sent out over four thousand identical job applications for entry-level jobs. In order to get as many interviews as an applicant with an Anglo-Saxon name, someone with a Chinese name would need to submit 68 per cent more applications, someone with a Middle Eastern name an extra 64 per cent and someone with an Italian name, only 12 per cent, but still more.

  If you look at the top tech companies in the States as another hub of influence, they’re not doing great either. Google’s ethnicity data released this year indicated their US workforce is 61 per cent white, 30 per cent Asian, and the other 9 per cent a mix of others. The rest of the tech companies who released data are no different. Although those numbers might seem decent, a recent study by Green Park – Britain’s leading supplier of senior execs – shows that these numbers don’t trickle up.

  More than half of FTSE100 companies have no non-white leaders at board level, whether executive or non-executive; and two-thirds have no full-time minority executives at board level. Also, the study says, minority leaders feature disproportionately as non-executive board directors: as a consequence their true level of influence is far smaller than their numbers suggest.

  We’ve identified there is a problem. What do we do about it? Interestingly, the author of the gender resume experiment offered a solution of sorts. ‘If you look at the paths of successful women, there is one thing they have in common by and large: they all had good mentors.’ Aha. Mentoring, sponsoring … we’ve heard it hundreds of times before. But let me offer this as a solution. I challenge each and every one of you to mentor someone different.

  Think about it. We are attracted to mentoring people who look like us, who are familiar, who remind us of us. You might meet a number of people at a networking event, but if someone went to the same school as you and supports the same footy team, you’re probably more likely to connect and offer advice that will help them on their way. For the individual in the room who has no shared experience, it becomes a little more difficult. The idea behind looking for what isn’t always familiar is to open doors for those who don’t usually have access to that hallway. Part of the challenge with diversity is the fact that there is lack of equality of opportunity.

  People like me aren’t born with the opportunities. I was born in one of the globe’s poorest cities, Khartoum. I was born brown, a female, and a Muslim in a world that is pretty suspicious of us for reasons that have nothing to do with me at all. Yet, here I am, talking to you.

  Yes, I’ve had my share of privilege: amazing parents, education and the blessing of migrating to a country that gives me all the opportunity I can grab. But I’ve also had the blessing of mentors who have opened doors beyond my wildest imaginings.

  I’m not the only one either. There are many examples of men and women who have been given a break by a mentor from a different community. A young man in Sydney for example, whose mentor showed him how to set up the Bankstown Poetry Slam event, which has grown and become a big part of the cultural scene. Or a fellow Muslim lady, who arrived as a refugee from Afghanistan and with the help of mentors became a doctor, taking out the Young Queenslander of the Year award in 2008 for her efforts.

  Would you have picked me as someone to mentor if you’d seen me in another version of who I am or another presentation of myself?

  I challenge you to pick someone who seems to sit at the opposite end of your spectrum. Structural change is going to take ages – history tells us this. I don’t have that level of patience. Mentor someone different. Rather than thinking the issue of diversity is someone else’s problem to fix, understand that you’re part of the system and can be part of the solution. If you don’t know where to go to find someone different, go to the places you would not usually find yourself.

  If you usually enrol in private high school mentoring circles, try offering your services at a state school or visit your local refugee tutoring centre. Go out for coffee with that new graduate who looks out of place, without it being a tokenistic gesture but because you truly want to open doors and learn about their way of seeing the world.

  Diversity is where the magic happens.

  And remember to always look past your first impression, because I bet you, it’s probably wrong.

  As I closed it out, silence rang in the air.

  ‘Okay …’ tonight’s host said, looking at me sceptically while the other drilling engineers in the room applauded lightly. ‘It was okay, yeah, but why should I care?’

  ‘Yeah,’ another engineer nodded. ‘You know, I used to be like you, idealistic and doing all sorts of things, but you got to realise that people just are the way they are, you know? You can’t change everyone ’cause a few people are a little bit selfish.’

  ‘Yeah, Yassmin – why should I go out of my way to help others and open doors for them? I’ve got my own problems. I’ve got my divorce, we all have bills to pay …’

  I looked at my colleagues as they questioned not my arguments, but the very premise of my value system. I was actually at a loss for words.

  They were asking why? Why they should help others? Why they should go out of their way to make a difference in this world? Dumbfounded, I struggled to formulate a response. ‘Because we could? Because we have the ability to?’ I tried different options, but none of them resonated.

  ‘Then why should I help someone else who is really different? Why not help someone who I can relate to, who looks like me?’

  ‘But diversity is good!’ I interjected.

  ‘Says who?’

  They thought I was being too idealistic. I needed to pick an alternative angle and so I put up my hands in front of me, holding back the barrage of criticism. This was what I had needed to hear, but I hadn’t expected it to be quite so vehement. I thought I would try a different tack and use language that appealed to their good ol’ Aussie values. ‘Guys, gals. Do we live in a country where everyone gets a fair go? Do we want to live in a world where everyone gets a fair chance? If we want to live in that world, we all have to be a part of making that happen.’

  My colleague sat back in his seat and his expression softened slightly. ‘There you go. Right, I can see your point there. Make sure you put that in, okay? You gotta show me why I should care about some people who have nothing to do with me and who will give me nothing back.’

  I made some notes on my script, thanked the crew and wandered out, slightly readier to tackle the challenges ahead.

  Every now and again I am reminded by moments like this of the battles we still need to be fighting.

  University researchers from Carnegie Mellon in the United States found that Google’s ad-targeting had in-built bias. Male web users were six times more likely than female web users to be shown ads for high-paying jobs. Isn’t this terrifying? Computers aren’t biased but the programmers are, due to their demographics, which – no prize for guessing – are overwhelmingly white and male. Without even realising it, programmers are unconsciously embedding their own personal bias in the code and
arbitrarily reducing opportunities for those who don’t fit the norm. That is the insidious nature of bias.

  Are these norms something we want to entrench or change? It comes down to thinking about the structural and institutional biases that exist in our systems. The status quo doesn’t exist because that is the natural order of things; it has evolved this way because of historical reasons and the beliefs and biases both men and women have about gender roles.

  We simply expect women to be less ambitious, and trust men to do the job. So often people don’t see the need to change anything. There is a need for change, because the world isn’t perfect. Whether we like it or not, whether it is easy or not, we need more diversity (or, in the words of Shonda Rhimes, we need to normalise our leadership) because that makes for better, fairer more equal societies. Those who deny the power of diversity usually somehow benefit from the status quo and don’t want to see change. Change is happenin’, baby. Brace yourselves.

  But perhaps that is uncharitable. Perhaps people who aren’t interested in change, simply don’t care because they have never needed to. What the experience with my colleagues taught me is that you can’t just expect people to care. Different people have different capacities for charitable thought; and in the West, caring about each other is seen by many as a luxury and not the standard expectation. This is one of the reasons a cousin of mine said she would never live in Australia after she had spent a few months visiting here. She said, ‘It seems like no one cares about anyone else at all in this country.’

  It’s true and it can be both freeing and limiting. Caring about number one makes decisions easier. With only yourself to think about, you can technically do whatever you want without considering the consequences your actions have on anyone else. Caring can be exhausting – taking on the burdens of others isn’t always easy. That kind of individualism has the potential to create a lonely space, though, and a lonely country.

  That’s not to say that people don’t care about each other at all, but the level of care and affection that you see between strangers in the street in Sudan is worlds away from the way strangers interact on the street here in Australia. The public space is much more ‘interactive’ in Sudan; people greet one another and prioritise making friends with each other instead of efficiently ‘getting down to business’. If someone needs help with something like a flat tyre, men will come running out of cars and buildings nearby, scrambling to help out. It’s like one giant family.

  The challenge is then to not only convince people they should care about others, but to convince individualistic societies that they should care – particularly about those who are different, marginalised and most in need of help. Large-scale movements of people around the world are happening everywhere and we have to adapt with empathy. Whether it be for asylum seekers or for those who suffer from violence in their homes, we need to care about each other to make the lives of each and every individual the best it possibly can be and to give every human the fair go they deserve.

  Chapter 18:

  Grindin’ My Gears

  Right before I started university, someone told me that engineering was full of cute guys. What they failed to mention was that my classes would be almost entirely full of guys, cute or not.

  First year was manageable; there were about 160 women in a class of almost 1000. Coming into second year in mechanical engineering the number of women dropped from 16 per cent to 5 per cent, then down to only 2.5 per cent in my graduating class. I was always the odd one out; university was no different. So what does a teenager do when she is once again in the minority?

  She adapts, all over again.

  I remember walking into the first lecture for ENGG1000, the foundation engineering course that everyone had to take, and thinking daiiiiim. I wasn’t frightened or awed, but just aware that there were so many guys. The next thing I did was scan the crowd – were there any other brown people like me? A couple. Were there any other hijabied girls? Nope! Were any of them engineering camp kids, or kids from my school that I could become friends with? Yaaaaaas!

  I found a few lads from my school who had chosen the same course, so my crew for first year was a mix of engineering camp friends, school mates and the other brown people in the class. There were so few people of colour (POC) doing engineering at a Group of Eight university in 2008 that we only made up one crew. That’s changing now, partly due to the Youth Without Borders engineering camp we created, and also because Brisbane’s demographic is shifting. By the end of our degree, everyone knew the POC engineering crew: we were loud and unapologetic and sat up the back, occasionally causing more disruption than we were worth.

  First year was my most disciplined year; I would try to get to class early, sit up the front and listen to the lecture. As the months and years went on, I migrated further and further away, until eventually I was one of the back-seat bandits, graffitiing the desks and talking trash – quite a change from the academic character I was at school. I liked the idea of being a ‘rebel’ (as much as I could be as a non-drinking, non-smoking Muslim chick), particularly when I’d been such a well behaved student all through high school; I was trying on a new identity. I became ‘one of the boys’ whenever I could, expecting jokes about making sandwiches and doing the ironing, sometimes even cracking them myself – because hell, you have to work with your audience, right? I had no idea what being an engineering feminist was about; the concept of feminism hadn’t really entered my radar.

  Mechanical engineering only had a few women – six to be exact, and we were all such different characters.

  One was the classic tomboy – cool, because she always seemed so sure of herself. A super hard worker, great dancer and quick with a retort, she was also dependable, and the person with whom I always checked over my answers, because we approached questions in different ways but learnt well from one another. She was the first person I met at uni after she offered me a lift at the end of a pre-uni UQ race team meet-up. As she babbled about her love for cars, it was obvious we were going to be friends; then, as we buckled up, she said something that cemented our relationship: ‘Uh, so, just to let you know, I’m kind of into hectic tunes –’ T.I. burst out of her speakers as she turned the ignition, the rapper spitting rhymes that went a mile a minute, bass pounding out of a subwoofer I hadn’t even noticed. I looked over at the slim white blonde girl in the driver’s seat and thought, Well! Can’t judge a book by its cover!

  Another was an unexpected friend because she was more typically feminine than my usual mates, always up for a laugh but totally committed to making it as an engineer. A lot of the guys seemed to want to ask her out, so she probably broke more hearts than she realised. She was the person I commiserated with over life’s problems, who was happy to vent or talk about feelings; she wasn’t a stereotypical engineer but rather an example of how there’s more than one type.

  All the girls were whip smart; I’m pretty sure they got top marks. And even though we had our own tribes, we congregated to share common frustrations as well as solutions. Different rules to those of the rest of society seem to apply in the world of engineering studies, and we were left to figure out how to negotiate this masculine world. There were no networking events for women to talk about how to handle kitchen jokes and whether you should laugh at a rape gag. There was a prevailing view that we ‘weren’t like other chicks’ – that we could ‘handle ourselves’, a viewpoint I’ve since realised can be damaging because it creates a divide between women that serves no positive purpose. At the time, it was how we survived and it played right into the character I wanted to be: the strong woman who could handle herself.

  Feminism just didn’t seem like something that applied to my situation. I talked about representing women on boards, but in the world of engineering? I wanted to get a job and have friends; I didn’t want all the lads to think I hated men. This was an attitude I think us girls shared: we just wanted to fit in, and didn’t need the guys to think of us in any other way. There have been s
tudies that show that is how most female engineering students cope. The struggle was real, but even so my UQ days were special and once I made the decision to do engineering, I never looked back.

  University life was just as much about developing YWB as it was about engineering. I brought some of the engineering lads and ladies I was friends with into the organisation, and co-opted even more into helping us fundraise for our projects. Working on a community based not-for-profit was new for most of them and was a chance to develop different skills, although ironically it led to an organisation with slightly less diversity. At one point, the YWB board was made up of three Johns, a Jason and a Yassmin, and we were all mechanical engineers!

  YWB regularly organised fundraising barbecues – a practical, volunteer activity that anyone could get involved in and thus brought together a wide range of people. The engineers handled the logistics: they had utes, the barbecue equipment and always knew people who were hungry for a snag. Then the various humanities and science students would sell our delicious wares and ensure the customers had some idea of who we were and what we did.

  I learnt a lot about the different types of volunteers we could depend on – vital information when you’re involved in running a not-for-profit. Some people like being part of the planning; they get satisfaction out of organising an event without necessarily being part of its execution. Our work with Kamar Buku worked that way: YWB helped organise the library, and although our contribution wasn’t direct, the pay-off came in knowing the result of our planning had changed lives. Most YWB projects require an enormous amount of this type of volunteering: the behind-the-scenes work that can make or break a project.

  The second type of volunteer was the kind who liked to help organise as long as they could be part of the pay-off, and these people had to be constantly engaged in local activities so they could participate directly. We would lose them quickly if there wasn’t something they could get involved in.