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Overseen as the participant in many social events

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Overseen as the participant in many social events

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A few of the PhDs from my generation are finishing in our group. Just yesterday, there was another PhD party. When it came to anecdotes of the social life and activities, they showed pictures of the main "participants", but ommitted me (only woman). I wouldn't care if they ommitted some others, but I organized many of those outings and it hurts that even though I was such a big part of that group and the only female participating in those outings, they simply ommitted me. The same already happened to me back in the autumn when two other PhDs finished.

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Today, everyone has to be perfect and always do something productive at work, in their everyday free time, or on your holiday. I always feel that one has to prove oneself, even more so when being a woman: to get listened to, you first have to prove that you are more intelligent than others. To get invited to something, you need to be kind to all; to get promoted, you have to work harder and be better than men; else, you are just the woman elected because of women's quota.

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Unequal gender ratio biases who wants to join the group

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Unequal gender ratio biases who wants to join the group

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In a previous semester, we had 4 female master or semester students. While none of them wanted to pursue a PhD in our group, many men do want to stay. This tendency has been growing over the last semesters. This semester, we do not have a single female new comer. I noticed this with another male colleague during the last semester so we decided to speak to the girls. I took the lead in speaking to them (woman to woman, but he joined in). We were shocked by what all them were reporting (bad supervision, not being heard, not being able to communicate with their supervisors, not fitting in) leading to eg. working in the labs at night to avoid colleagues, not joining lunch with the whole rest of the group. This does not seem to be the case with most male master or semester students. In all reported cases, we came to the conclusion, that an equal gender ratio would probably solve all problems. For example: many men tend to a laddish behavior among other men, which is often times off-putting by many women. This is much reduced in a group with an equal gender ratio.

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As a single and the only woman in the group, I am hit on regularly by men from the group, creating a very uncomfortable working environment for me. 

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As a single and the only woman in the group, I am hit on regularly by men from the group, creating a very uncomfortable working environment for me. 

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I am in my research group for 5 years now. Initially I really tried to integrate myself by e.g. joining skiing trips, climbing trips or going for beers with my male collegues. While I was purely trying to fit in, find friends in a new city, many (!) of them misunderstood this as showing interest in them. I was regularly hit on, 4 times (4 different men) this was not a casual short term try by them, but a pursuit over weeks and months. Whereas initially I took it as a compliment, by the second time I realized how it creates a very uncomfortable working environment, in which I was partially unable to work at all such that I stayed home or I was distracted too much at work. I strongly believe this would not happen in a group with an equal gender ratio. Today, I gave up on integrating myself because of what I experienced and intentially stay distant from the group in order not have anything happen again. It is frustrating that this is necessary!

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I am a doctoral candidate at D-MAVT and have found my experiences dealing with mechanics frequently frustrating. Multiple times, after requesting the fabrication or modification of parts, I will spend weeks/months trying to convince our mechanics that my requests are indeed what I want and that their suggested "improvements" would not be better. Often, it is only after my male supervisor speaks to them directly that they are willing to perform the task as requested. I appreciate their attempts to provide help, but after the first time, it gets very annoying and impedes my work.

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I was at a conference for young scientists over the weekend. During the trivia, we were randomly split into groups of 6. I was the only woman in my group, and one of the guys immediately said "I bet you have the best handwriting - you should write the answers". I told him immediately I found the comment sexist and I would not write. It was a bit disheartening to see that a young person under 30 still had and acted on this bias...

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I work in a lab where I am the responsible of keeping some machines up and running. I have experienced multiple times that users of the machines prefer to ask their problems from my male colleagues instead of me, even if they are not as familiar to the machine as me. They always have this in the back of their mind that because I am a female, I do not know anything about the machine.

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I was in the hallway waiting to leave, where there happened to be a cleaning person’s cart in front of me. A master’s student I am supervising (male) walked out of the office he was using and made some comment about me cleaning the office. I didn’t understand and then asked him to repeat what he said… he commented how there was the cleaning cart in front of me, and he was asking if I would
clean “his office”, and said it was dirty. Even though all of this was supposed to be a joke, I'm sure a male colleague would not have received the same comments. at the moment this exchange happened there were no male colleagues around, only another woman. It’s extremely frustrating, and tiring, to have “jokes” like this made

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There was an incident where women in our group were treated unequally. A couple of women sought to talk to those involved, which led to a public apology and more awareness in our group, which is great. Downside of the story: a week later, I (female) had a meeting with my two male supervisors, who both agreed on the fact, that women nowadays and especially in our country, should stop constantly complaining about their situation and enjoy the privileges they already have. What a progressive work environment...

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At conferences, a lot of people have commented on my appearance, which has not happened to my male colleagues who were there with me. The comments would be phrased as compliments but they make me feel like people are paying more attention to my looks than to my work. Some male attendees would also get way to close when talking to me. They also paid me much more attention compared to my male colleagues and said we should meet again after the conference. For example, some attendees would only approach me to say goodbye and stating how nice it was to meet me, even though they have been spending way more time with my male colleagues. They would also later send me messages on Linkedin.

When talking about this with my colleagues they would say that they are just being nice. But even if this is meant to be nice this makes a woman feel "different" at an event like this and requests having our guard up at all times. It takes a lot of energy to always be aware of this unwanted attention and make sure to not send signals that might be misinterpreted.

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A typical job for a woman (at ETH) is to educate men about sexism. A lot of male colleagues are unaware of some challenges and will confidently start conversations about why it is unfair that more and more open positions are filled with women. I have been in multiple situations, in which I had to decide if I explain them the reasons for the measures and how men are favored without them. Not saying anything would mean not changing anything and listening to the men encouraging each other that the recent development is not fair for men and that they are the victims. This might seem not too bad, but it is very tiring and takes a lot of energy to do this over and over again. And the situations can be very uncomfortable because it is often one woman against multiple men in the discussion.

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A colleague bought a sex toy calendar for the whole group and wrote the name of all group members on a door. All the big doors had the names of the few women on the group on it indicating that it might be a dildo/vibrator. On the first day a foreign post doc woman opened her door not knowing it was a sex toy calendar. She opened it and had a vibrator in her hand in front of a bunch of male colleagues, startled she said' What is this?' The co-workers laughed and left. After this humiliation, she broke social contact with most people in the group.

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My co-worker and I were lab course assistants and he would touch me a lot on my legs and arms in front of the students. I did not know how to react and did not want to be 'complicated' so I just let it happen.

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I had lunch with my colleagues and for some reason the conversation drifted off and someone said that they would like to sacrifice virgins for good weather. However, then someone jumped in and said that they are too valuable and it would better to fuck them or too teach them how to be good at sex. That was the last time I went to lunch with my colleagues.

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I was organising a 3-day conference with fellow (male) doctoral students last summer. When discussing who should be at the welcome desk to hand out badges on the first day, one of them said "ah it should of course be [me], everyone will want to see your pretty face!". He meant this as a compliment. One of the other guys stood up for me. Phrases like these have no place in a professional environment! I would hate to make a colleague feel as uncomfortable as I did then...This was one out of many uncomfortable incidents from that event. I have left the organising committee.

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I was organising a 3-day conference with fellow (male) doctoral students last summer. When discussing who should be at the welcome desk to hand out badges on the first day, one of them said "ah it should of course be [me], everyone will want to see your pretty face!". He meant this as a compliment. One of the other guys stood up for me. Phrases like these have no place in a professional environment! I would hate to make a colleague feel as uncomfortable as I did then...This was one out of many uncomfortable incidents from that event. I have left the organising committee.

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In my story I wasn't necessarily ignored as a woman but my professional competence was overseen during an oral exam. After receiving the grades I went to the examination review and the (male) professor told me that my appearance was rather reserved and hence he got the impression that I didn't get the big picture. He mentioned that it is unfair that many professors judge based on the appearance and the presentation of a student, yet he still considered these in the evaluation. This way of subjectively evaluating students places women at a disadvantage who oftentimes appear less confidently than their male colleagues.

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To be heard I need to speak up loudly and firm and repeat myself and interrupt others that interrupt me. People have said (behind my back) "I am a bitch, too direct, not leaving room for others." But then I observe (and counted) the exact same behaviours from male colleagues and people say "great how he took charge of the meeting, he will be a great leader in the future"

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I had a conflict with a male colleague of mine, I organised something for my lab, informed everyone and followed up on what I said. He didn't read my info and exploded when I followed up. He told and wrote me very sexist things and would have communicated differently with me if I were a man. In our conflict resolution meeting with my boss we found the logical root of the problem and an actionable solution. But never discussed the sexism part, my boss didn't mention it, and when I did it was ignored.

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Often many people I meet (in and outside of ETH) think that I got the space in my group because I am a women and to increase the diversity in my group. I need to hear that I am not as smart as the men in my group, and not as hard working and hold less worth.

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I am at D-MAVT, so an extremely male dominated field. Also in my group we are few female PhDs. the expectations for us are higher than for our male colleagues. More self-initiative is expected, a higher output rate. if we slack we get to hear how we didn't deliver. I fully believe that this is done unconsciously but when I want to speak up, I am not heard.

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For some time our group had pictures of women in bikinis stuck up on the walls or as the screensaver on the group computer. After complaining about this the men added a picture of a half naked man to the screensavers - hurray for "equality"!

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It is very clear that the female members of our group are given the bulk of organisational and administrative tasks, which can be very time consuming but are not recognised as real work. This is partly due to delegation from the PI but also largely from the group secretary who I suppose feels the women of the group are more approachable.

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The men on my floor do not empty the communal dishwasher. Some of them will offer to help empty it, but only after a woman has started the task.

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I really struggle to meet the expectations of being a woman doing her PhD. There is obviously pressure to perform and I feel like sometimes my supervisors are less willing to engage with me than with my male colleagues to avoid giving the impression that I might be receiving special attention (little do they know that they have gone the opposite way). I tend to take more of the administrative tasks in my group and teaching teams for the simple reason that if I don't, then nobody will. Outside of work, I also do a much larger share of the grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning than my partner - as well as feel the need to take care of my figure and my looks. Basically, I am exhausted and don't feel like I am managing to do any of it well at all.

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We have had a problem with harassment for a year now. Our professor chooses to ignore the problem, resulting in female PhD students isolating from the group and locking themselves into their office to escape the unwanted attention.

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My supervisor tends to micromanage my work - from the methodology over the implementation to the way the legend is arranged on a graph. I have a hard time to make my opinion heard. Female colleagues experience the same problem, male colleagues face no such issues.

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During the lab cleaning only women were assigned the job to clean the kitchen. This changed after some years, but was very puzzling at the time.

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My subgroup during my phd consisted of a male supervisor and a male phd student who started at the same time as me. Nevertheless, I always organised all the meetings, because “you are so good at this”.

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Once I had a conversation with one male colleague and two male students about the miracle of life after a colleagues partner gave birth. My colleague proceeded to tell me that I would want a baby by the time I reached 30. I told him “I do not want to discuss my reproductive future in this setting” which he ignored and I repeated two more times. He then became very upset and did not speak to me for a week. After he left, one of the male students, who was older than me (I was a phd), told me “my sister also never wanted kids and now she has a baby boy”.

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Once during the pandemic I prepared a video about a poster I made for a conference. When checking it with my supervisor he described it as “sexy”. After three days of agonising I confronted him about this, he didn’t remember he had said this.

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I am a senior postdoc, leading several own projects. When I propose a different opinion, my collaborators ask if my supervisor agrees with this, if I could check with him before we pursue my idea, or even sometimes they write him anyway to ask. Never heard similar stories from male colleagues. The great thing is that my professor redirects them back to me, explaining I take the lead on these projects and that I am more knowledgeable than him to answer their questions. While it is wonderful to have this support, empowering me in my role, it is sad that I need a male validation to be considered credible as an expert - as if my scientific track record did not matter.

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During a social event (among other people), a professor grabbed my shoulders and attempted to kiss me. Instinctively, I pulled back and said in shock: "what are you doing...?!" In response, I heard that I am a "f***ing b***h" and few other vulgarities. People around looked as if they did not see it.

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I was bullied by a female post doc in our lab. She had unrealistic expectations from me about my work to be an author on my papers (to be). When I said I am not physically capable of doing what she was asking-she threatened me to pull the plug of my work. When I went to my supervisor to state that I wish not to continue working with her, she went to higher authorities to make me work with her officially. Moreover she also bullied male interns, once they complained about her- she twisted the situation as this not bullying but on the contrary male students do not want to get instructions from a female post doc.
Not only this situation was unfortunate enough because of a scientist with higher degree to use her status over a PhD student or interns to obtain authorship etc, but also it is more upsetting that this was a “female” scientist where we deal with the handicaps of being a female in science but she was using her sex as a leverage for her needs

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Male postdocs in my group regularly complain loudly that they are being disadvantaged when applying for faculty positions because "it's so much easier for women", "women who are much less qualified get the job just because they're women" etc. As the only woman in the group, this always puts me in the difficult position of either trying to explain to them what the reasoning behind diversity policies is and sharing my point of view or ignoring them and having to listen to their sexist talking points. The last time I engaged in the discussion it turned into an argument that lasted several hours, after which the postdoc involved gave me the silent treatment for several weeks.

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There is a man in my group who on multiple occasions went around discussing the attractiveness of women who visited the group with other group members. These women were students carrying out thesis work and visiting PhD students. After I refused to engage in this discussion, told him I find it inappropriate and explained to him why, I was told that I'm "overreacting" and "it's a compliment"

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Often in meetings I feel that my ideas or suggestions are dismissed or ignored by my PI and other group members. When a male colleague later states the same thing, it is taken much more seriously. Since I am the only woman in my group, it is difficult to be sure whether it is about gender or not.

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My research group traditionally organizes a conference together with another group. This year I'm one of the organizers (the only woman in the organizing committee). When we were discussing who to invite as speakers, my colleagues proposed an all-male list. I pointed out that I don't find it acceptable to have only men as invited speakers, to which they replied: "ok, propose a list with women then", implying that it's not their job to care about this. I then realized that since this conference started (there have been 3 previous editions), there has not been a single woman as an invited speaker. Each time, the PIs of two groups, the departments of the two groups and associated doctoral schools have written letters of support, and ETH was the main source of funding.

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The following situation happened shockingly often whenever a new (male) Postdoc joined our group. In order for them to small-talk with other female PhDs, they would often open with: "shouldn't you be in the kitchen instead of the lab?". Since they were usually Postdocs saying this and we are PhDs, there is a hurdle of dependency issues, which is why few of us drew attention to this problem.

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In a teaching team of five, it is always somehow my job to deal with all of the course administration. I handle all of the Moodle, make sure that we have exam rooms booked, ensure we have exam materials, make sure we have enough people to supervise the exams, integrate the comments and feedback on the draft exams... I make announcements that really should be coming from the professors. Of course, I know that I am given some of this responsibility because I am competent and responsible, but it irks me so see my peers saying our class is "so relaxed" when they don't have to deal with all of this extra work - all they have to do is show up a few hours in the semester.

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People in D&I roles should have qualifications

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People in D&I roles should have qualifications

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It is my strong opinion that people in diversity or inclusion roles need to have actual qualifications. For example, my departmental student association's D&I lead is a mean bully of a woman who had never even so much as read up on diversity or inclusion issues before taking up her volunteer role. I am so frustrated that  she only ever sees D&I through lenses that she can personally relate to (that of a spoiled, brat of a white woman) and cannot see inclusion issues from any other perspectives. Of course, staff members hired to do D&I should also be qualified.

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I was at a meeting just recently and it happened to me a whopping three times that I originally shared an idea. Each time, a few minutes later a male colleague would propose this idea as his own and people would listen more to his "version". What helped me was to simply make the leader of the meeting aware of this issue.

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After reporting harassment by another group member, I stopped getting meetings with my direct supervisor. He never asked what had happened to me. Instead, he told other people in my lab that I have been overreacting.

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I recently took over safety responsibilities within my group. My PI has made it clear that anyone in the group should address unsafe behavior when they see it, but I especially hold a responsibility for addressing issues I see and have the authority to pause or stop anything that is a concern.

Twice now it has happened that I have witnessed members of the group (both men) do things that were in direct violation of safety rules and potentially very dangerous. In both cases, I immediately confronted the member to ask them to stop because this was dangerous, and both times they challenged me and became argumentative about it, despite the fact I have mandate to do so.

The colleagues in both cases were upset I was acting in not a "friendly" manner and did not like that they thought I was ordering them around. I have always tried to stay neutral and professional, but of course I need to talk to them with some urgency. It makes me upset because I feel that this behavior is sexist towards me, since I am a younger woman just doing the job I was told to do.

My PI supports the decisions I have made, but even though I am acting correctly according to my PI, I feel my colleagues are biased in their responses toward me, since also I did not witness this behavior with the previous male who held this role.

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A Postdoc in our group used to always "tickle" us (women) on the waist, for me it felt super uncomfortable. I told him off once and he gave me the silent treatment for two weeks until I had to give in and "apologize", because it was making me too uncomfortable not to be talked to. We didn't get any support from the male colleagues in our group.