Several people talked about the issue of power rather than gender, of being in the ``in'' group. One person described the ``self-selecting good-old-boy network'' based in well-known, large universities. People with ``new'' ideas, like fuzzy processing or neural networks, could not break in, so they left mainstream AI and started their own ``clubs.'' Several people emphasized that problems with uncooperative or unsupportive advisors can happen to anyone; the difference is that women with lower self-confidence sometimes fault themselves for such problems, and leave programs rather than fight for a new advisor.
Several people talked about personality issues, not necessarily tied to gender. In their early years of education, women are often encouraged to be quiet and not respond to criticism, cultivating bad habits for a successful science career where researchers must sometimes get into the intellectual fray. Quiet, retiring men have similar problems. One woman suggested picking a school that fits one's personality; some schools have a reputation of being more nurturing than others.
One woman feels especially isolated: ``It has not been easy as a faculty member here - it makes the situations in undergraduate and graduate school seem trivial. I do not have a mentor in the field or in this department. This makes it incredibly difficult to publish or get funding. It is difficult to get the respect of one's peers because they assume you were hired on the `woman track' and therefore are not quite in their league. It is difficult to get the respect of the graduate students for very similar reasons: If they perceive that the other faculty have no regard for you, they see no reason why they should either. For instance, I was abused by an ex-student of mine who tried to publish my paper under his name, and the department and the university offered no help... I am considering a job in industry. If I leave academia, it will be with a great sense of personal failure. The fact that I have survived thus far is mostly due to my `never-say-die' attitude fostered by my super-supportive parents as well as my super-supportive husband.''
Another said, ``The attrition rate of female faculty here is nearly 100 percent. The environment is survival of the fittest: You have to compete to get an advisor, compete to get an account on a machine. If the university creates an environment in which people must struggle and claw to get basic resources to do their work, it ends up selecting a population for those skills and not necessarily for academic ability. And on average, this process takes a higher toll on women. This wastes a lot of human resources.''
``We women have been taught to put ourselves down,'' another interviewee said. ``We're more objective in describing our projects and results, and not willing to play the hype game. Over time, history will give women credit for not hyping their work. The problem is, we're competing with `hypers,' and at any given time a good sales job can determine who gets funding. Of course, most men aren't willing to hype their results, either. Hypers represent a small piece of the AI community.''
An ex-AI person also addressed the question of hype: ``I was involved in AI three different times. Each time I had to deal with people who felt they had to oversell what they were doing to get funding. Often they were young, eager men with little sense of perspective, and no experience in marketing. At the first site, a company, we began with six female managers out of 20. The women seemed to be more reasonable, with more sense of balance. It's a question of research versus production: You can promise you'll do research, but you can't promise you'll produce. By the end of one year, all six had left [and] another woman had been hired.''
Two women talked about peer competitiveness: ``My biggest gripe is that my fellow female students, rather than being timid and unassuming, were fiercely competitive. Most of the science students I knew were unwilling to have any kind of intellectual conversation about anything for fear of sharing information. The close friends I made were those who could get past this barrier. We studied together and shared insights - these were my most fulfilling times at school.''
Regarding access to granting agencies, one woman said, ``The senior people were reluctant to let us junior researchers have any contact with the funding people who came to our site. Everyone was out for themselves.''