Quote:
Originally Posted by Whatever
When I was mentoring FTC we ended up having a discussion with the driver of the robot as to whether she should be wearing a purse while driving. I was concerned that it looks unprofessional and could effect their draft position. She did it anyways and they did get drafted as the second pick of the first alliance in their division. They also ended up using one of the pictures of her while driving in the event programs during the next year.
I did notice the head referee of the division we were in at worlds also wore a purse while refereeing. I still think it looks unprofessional but maybe it is just me.
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You might want to take a step back and try and figure out why you find a purse specifically unprofessional. There's obviously some gendered connotations to this, and perhaps to some extent your internal view of what constitutes "professional" includes "non-feminine". That's probably not great.
Even if you think anybody holding any kind of bag anywhere looks unprofessional - which gender's default clothing has pockets that are so small, going without a bag isn't always an option? This is an internal bias that is going to cause you to view more women as unprofessional than men.
We all have internal biases over things that, in a vacuum, logically make sense, but when applied to society as a whole tend to distort our views toward particular groups. This doesn't make you a bad person or whatever, it's just something to be aware of and to try and counteract.