Steminist blog

Masks

Shreyasi Mukerji

Every morning, when I get ready for work, I go into my closet full of masks and pick one for the day. Factors that affect my choice of mask for the day include the people I will meet that day, the work I must present and defend, the complexity of the meetings scheduled, and the amount of personal turmoil that I’m trying to hide in the name of professionalism.

I can tell you with a fair bit of certainty that other women in STEM fields, or any field in which they are under-represented, probably have similar walls of masks at home. I’m sure men must don masks too, but the pressure of competence for a gender famously misunderstood as hysterical is surely greater. After all, the word “hysteria” literally comes from hysteria, which translates to “uterus” in Greek.

For centuries, women were diagnosed with hysteria, a “mental illness” that caused illogical behavior among women. Freud even believed that hysteria was a product of women not being able to come to terms with the lack of a penis. Treatments ranged from rest and restriction from physical and mental activities to sexual release. Today we know that hysteria basically consisted of all female emotions that made men uncomfortable.

Workplaces are designed for male behavior patterns. Women are known to be emotional as opposed to logical, as if those two things are mutually exclusive. The only way for me to rise to the top is to imitate male behavior patterns. But strangely, a male colleague's uncontrolled rage or aggression isn’t met with the same attitude towards showing emotion. Men are emotional too, and the constant restrictions over their emotions have crippled their ability to express it in a safe way. Statistics of violence are an excellent indicator of this.

Showing vulnerability in the workplace can easily be misconstrued as incompetence in a company setting. Competence defines productivity, and productivity translates to profit. Despite all this new talk from corporates about focusing on mental health, most colleagues will value the amount of time you visibly put in over actual output. However, I would argue that being in control of one’s emotions - expressing them, accepting them and accommodating them instead of suppressing them - would lead to more holistic decision-making, empathetic teamwork, and a positive work environment that promotes productivity by allowing employees to thrive as humans rather than robots.

So here’s another reason why we need more women in fields like STEM: to create an empathetic, compassionate workforce that works together towards an equitable society. Companies that accommodate for natural human behavior and the highs and lows of an employee can easily expect a higher output of work as well as employee retention and buy-in. And while I’m proud to currently be a part of such a company, I know that most companies have a long way to go. And it starts with making people uncomfortable. So I hope to slowly rid myself of masks and perhaps show up to work with my actual face, and hope I can instill confidence in my fellow coworkers to do the same.