A panel with two UW-Madison faculty members spoke Monday evening on their experiences as women of color in business and medicine.
The event — hosted by the Wisconsin Union Directorate and held at Memorial Union — featured UW-Madison School of Medicine diversity outreach and communications manager Beverly Hutcherson and Wisconsin School of Business professor Min Li.
Li began the discussion by detailing her personal journey of the inequalities she’s faced during her career in education, like the disbelief her college classmates in China showed when she told them she was a teacher in the U.S.
Li presented a variety of academic studies that highlight the biases affecting women professors and shared her own experiences dealing with similar situations from her own career. She said a simple understanding of behaviors and societal practices that treat women differently are the first steps in breaking down biases.
“This is a very biased world, and this has consequences for the university and its instructors,” Li said.
Li also cautioned women from being “over-sensitive” when dealing with issues of bias and discrimination in their respective fields, saying that being upfront about issues can help in educating people about biases.
“No matter who you are, try to give others the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “Sometimes you can educate people and have a conversation to help them understand their biases.”
Hutcherson — the recipient of the 2017 UW-Madison Outstanding Woman of Color Award — took a different approach to tackling the role of inequality in her field.
Rather than focusing on her gender identity, Hutcherson discussed the role of her black identity in a predominately white STEM field. She stressed the importance of using her differences to her advantage.
“When people think of a scientist, they’re not thinking of me,” Hutcherson said. “All of who I am is not necessarily what’s typical in this field, which is awesome. I walk in a room, and all eyes are on me, so I make it work, because it makes it easier for the next person who looks like me.”
She said that instead of looking at gender as an issue, people should embrace their identities, adding that oppression is sometimes “in the mind.”
“As a black woman, I own my space and recognize that racism and sexism are very real things, but they are also things that were designed by people,” she said. “If people designed them, they can be changed.”
