There are moments in life where the universe is clearly trying to send me a message. 

Last week I finally got around to reading Lean In after having it on my list for a long time.  I think in no small part I haven’t gotten to it becuase I’ve spent most of my career being fairly ambivalent about women in leadership.

At the time of release, the press around the book seemed to go something like “Sheryl Sandburg says women should try harder.”  That’s not what she said.   What she did say is that not only are there are external factors holding women back, but internal factors as well.  Her book was geared toward the latter.  Little things that women can do to improve their chances for advancement and generally get a bit more engrained in the culture around them.  Not making a choice or a decision preemptively.  For example, don’t curb your ambitions becuase you might have a baby someday, deal with that reality when you have a baby.  Some tricks and hacks around how to negotiate in a way that doesn’t impact your likability, things like that.

She did a great job of pulling together and citing a tremendous amount of research regarding women in the workplace, and for that reason alone, it is worth reading.  All of this I found compelling but didn’t really make me feel any differently about the issue of women in leadership.

In the midst of that all swimming around in the back of my head, Boy Scouts of America announced girls would be admitted into the organization, including being able to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout.  My husband is an Eagle Scout, and my sons are both involved in scouting, and its been a big part of our family identity.  This announcement got me very excited.  I’ve come to appreciate what a great experience scouting can be for boys and young men, the rank of Eagle Scout has such a high pedigree, and in my opinion, there really isn’t a girl equivalent.

Those two things put together made no sense to me.  Why would I be so excited about the BSA announcement and not about Lean In? I agreed with most of Ms. Sandburg’s points which she backed by research and reasoning.  I’ve been part of the leaky pipeline and been balancing my kids, my intellect, and my career for almost 15 years now. 

Enter FBI agent Gracie Hart.

Gracie Hart is the name of Sandra Bullock’s character, an FBI agent, in Miss Congeniality.  I hopped on the treadmill this week and that was my entertainment of choice (it just got added to Netflix this month).   The gist of the movie is that she is an FBI agent that isn’t at all feminine and is “about the job.” She ends up undercover at a beauty pageant scholarship competition, and the clash of her normal existence with the ultra feminine culture there is the main theme of the movie.  That made everything click for me.

The “villains” in my life, quite frankly, have always been women. The entirety of my experience in female dominated environments has been school or parenting based. There I have struggled to fit and have been bullied by other women. My entire professional existence, from Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech to now, has been male dominated.  Generally, the men that I have worked with and for have been great and supportive.  This is not to say that I haven’t had my issues, but the men that I worked with daily have never been a problem. I have two sons that have certainly had some teachers that really didn’t get them becuase they are boys.

I get Gracie Hart. She’s highly competent and cares about her job.  She wants to work hard and do good work.  And she fits in better with the men in that environment than she does with a group of women.

By the end of the movie, she’s reached a middle ground.  Her hair and makeup look great, but she’s back in her FBI clothes, she’s made some female friends and can still go back to work with men.  She’s found a way to be comfortable in her own skin doing what she enjoys.

Feminism was supposed to be about choice.  About authenticity.  Not about fitting in with a bunch of men or fitting in with a bunch of women. For me it’s about fitting in with a bunch of engineers. The thing that compels me every day is to provide a platform for people to excel. I get to work with a bunch of people who’s defining characteristics are their intellect and positive attitude.  They apply it in different ways: engineering, design, software process, or HR;  but uniformly they geek out about their work.

Engineers should be people who can be talented engineers. Women, men, people of every color under the sun that are all unified by their interest in the field. My takeaway from Lean In is that we aren’t there yet for women in the field.

I’m not sure what shape it takes going forward, but I want to help everyone be Gracie Hart.  Not the Agent Hart at the beginning of the movie, but the one at the end, the one that has found her middle ground.