Hi Lois,

this can be a particular confusion if you are working with non-English speaking colleagues.  My work name appears as Victoria Quinn in emails and in my email address.  But often colleagues address me as Quinn, because in their culture the FAMILY name is displayed first.

So it may not be bias, but may be a genuine misunderstanding of the use of your name.

there is also a tendency in some cultures to address unknown people as "Sir" - or thelocal equivalent, again not necessarily meant as an insult, but a local culture issue which does not translate into English very well.

I tend to find that with Mother-tongue-English speaking colleagues they will err on the side of caution and not mention gender or titles.

I often have an issue with colleagues in other countries trying to understand - what is the family name or forename, whether or not it is considered polite, or acceptable to use the forename or the family name, etc.  our company has started adding a "short name" to our ID's  - this at least lets us know what to call people.  So for instance my name would appear as Victoria (Vikki) Quinn.

To be truthful, there IS a bias within engineering world, but I believe this is statistical bias, simply because the ratios are such that it is actually MORE likely that a person would be male rather than female in an engineering workplace.  Funnily enough, I actually raised the issue with the IET last year as I was getting mail (snail mail) address to Mr V. Quinn, and they have my gender on file!

In the main I don't let it bother me, in some cases I will try to give gentle hints about the use of gender in communications if it is someone I will be in contact with a lot, e.g. a new colleague.  Often a phone call is enough.  I also keep a photo on our email server so that - internally at least - people can see a photograph.


Hope this helps.

Hi Lois,

this can be a particular confusion if you are working with non-English speaking colleagues.  My work name appears as Victoria Quinn in emails and in my email address.  But often colleagues address me as Quinn, because in their culture the FAMILY name is displayed first.

So it may not be bias, but may be a genuine misunderstanding of the use of your name.

there is also a tendency in some cultures to address unknown people as "Sir" - or thelocal equivalent, again not necessarily meant as an insult, but a local culture issue which does not translate into English very well.

I tend to find that with Mother-tongue-English speaking colleagues they will err on the side of caution and not mention gender or titles.

I often have an issue with colleagues in other countries trying to understand - what is the family name or forename, whether or not it is considered polite, or acceptable to use the forename or the family name, etc.  our company has started adding a "short name" to our ID's  - this at least lets us know what to call people.  So for instance my name would appear as Victoria (Vikki) Quinn.

To be truthful, there IS a bias within engineering world, but I believe this is statistical bias, simply because the ratios are such that it is actually MORE likely that a person would be male rather than female in an engineering workplace.  Funnily enough, I actually raised the issue with the IET last year as I was getting mail (snail mail) address to Mr V. Quinn, and they have my gender on file!

In the main I don't let it bother me, in some cases I will try to give gentle hints about the use of gender in communications if it is someone I will be in contact with a lot, e.g. a new colleague.  Often a phone call is enough.  I also keep a photo on our email server so that - internally at least - people can see a photograph.


Hope this helps.