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Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
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11 Oct, 30 tweets, 19 min read
This is the second time in 24 hours the focus has been in being polite from within #WIM #PROWD

Traits I value:
visionary, innovative
being accurate
humanism
pro-mental health

Polite is a subjective term, often means aligning w/ status quo. Polite people quietly avoid bullies.
Yes, @KamalaHarris is able to smile through her debates and adhere to expected gender norms and avoid any hint of the racist trope of “angry” as a Black woman. But is that really what makes her qualified? Or is it a career worth of experience as well as times she persisted?
What are our priorities? In a busy world, we will only have a chance to achieve 3-5 max. If we put polite and being on time in those top 3-5, where does addressing safety, quality, inequity, mental health fall? Are we judging someone on timeliness who may have chronic illness?
Am not saying no accountability. Let’s think carefully about top priorities and think carefully if we judge without knowledge.

Personally I participate in few #WIM and #PROWD type events as I don’t share the priorities.

Let’s be more messy and make people uncomfortable
Instead of staying in mostly female spaces talking of manners and politeness

these discussions are often not led by #Blackqueens who, I find, don’t focus on manners

am in a class with <20% in #STEM as a #womaninSTEM.

Yes, this can be true buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyac…
It does not happen to me, though. I speak first and no one interrupts me. I will make a second comment.

I have heard from several men I take up too much airtime. First what is too much? What about the too few women in the class itself?

Also, 🤷🏻‍♀️ This is b-school. Outcompete me.
Women win smaller grants.

There are myriad factors that contribute.

But if we ourselves rate polite or manners as top priorities, aren’t we always trying to make ourselves small to stay within boxes others’ drew/defined?

Are we internalizing barriers?

insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/0…
“investors ..promotion orientation when quizzing male entrepreneurs..on hopes, achievements, advancement, and ideals..when questioning female entrepreneurs..a prevention orientation, which is concerned with safety, responsibility, security, and vigilance.”
hbr.org/2017/06/male-a…
More evidence women embrace roles of control, policing others, enforcing existing rules/status quo.

Then we wonder why we women can’t advance or be seen as leaders.

Women focused on manners & on compliance with rules make the glass ceiling thicker.

law.com/corpcounsel/20…
It has an even more sinister aspect when applied to race

there is an unintended consequence that the people in HR, compliance, leadership charged with enforcing the rules are the barriers to diversity or to psychological safety of BIPOC themselves.

npr.org/sections/codes…
On the Freedom Trail is a statue of Mary Dyer, martyr to what is now the 1st Amendment

“For as long as she could, Mary maintained an uneasy silence, in keeping with church rules. And then she heard another woman speak.”

Truth tellers try to self silence

tolerance.org/classroom-reso…
From a women’s history month post on why NOT to be well behaved.

Are you fine with status quo? Okay, then behave per existing rules. Keep being an anti-change agent.

Do you want progress? Then be ready to be imperfect, messy, and maybe even impolite.

whs.mil/News/News-Disp…
Not suggesting anarchy. Saying question who wrote the rules, what purpose they were intended to serve, whose interests they serve, what inequity they create, what barriers the create, who defines “nice” or “good” or “polite” (all subjective, not with clear, consistent criteria).
Women are interrupted a lot. Others already at the table are not polite

then tell new entrants that being allowed at the table requires having manners.

In fact “high ranking women” interrupt back. Give as good as you get instead of seeking permission

slate.com/human-interest…
Many women are feeling more crowded, overwhelmed online, now our entire existence.

It leads to women wanting more policing, norms, controlling what is “off topic”

yet on/off topic often has to do with whether one is engaging in systems thinking.

nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/…
Many of these #WIM conferences focus on pay gap data

but fail to communicate how much women police/penalize other women when women ask for (take) more (defying gender norms and “selfish”)

There is a lot of resentment of the system and each other

psychologytoday.com/us/blog/family…
Isn’t this a catch-22? Advice is “be non-threatening” but isn’t a culture of interrupting each other likely to come across as threatening?

Team player is how I have been

budget reality:
negotiating for 5 or 300 women? more 💰 needed than for 1

pon.harvard.edu/daily/leadersh…
Which is why Lean In (which I do not think works) does not have any strategies for advancing all woman rather is about advancing oneself

has been robustly criticized by many BIPOC not least of whom

npr.org/2018/12/03/672…

&

peopleofcolorintech.com/articles/why-b…

&

blackenterprise.com/michelle-obama…
Ethics matter. Where in feminism is ethics built in? (Manners are not the same as ethics) Facebook is hugely successful but has also been credited with spreading misinformation & #pandemic conspiracies. So am wary of career advice based on that success

yaledailynews.com/blog/2019/04/1…
From @sciam: being polite will never fix systemic racism, or, even sexism.

scientificamerican.com/article/well-n…

So can we be as anti-racist as @apha and other leading orgs call for if we are teaching that the highest priority is politeness and manners?

apha.org/topics-and-iss…
In fact, a certain part of feminism, arguably, is built upon or leveraged racism to advance selves, leaving behind Black and brown women.

Don’t we see something similar today with ethical compromises made by highly successful woman?

Do we use the right metrics of success?
Those of us South Asian must be mindful whether we assimilate so much into American culture that we fail to question the underpinning of inequity. Why are we so often welcomed as the “model minority”? We are accommodated already to layer under power (from colonialism)
Many of us born in the U.S. don’t know this history.

This is why you see many South Asian embracing embracing Lean In. Black women recognize the way Lean In aligns with status quo of inequity to advance oneself within the existing hierarchy, does not work for all.
It may not have been that intentional across the board. Do see that it certainly had that effect

I know I can get ahead - have been in c-suite & have had 4 c-suite level offers

But what for? So, I can enforce rules on those below?

Let’s lead instead

npr.org/sections/codes…
If I wanted to be a police woman I would have chosen that field. I want to change things for population health outcomes. When will our conversations in #WIM #PROWD really address system level issues for impact at scale?

We need more women in #innovation

inc.com/greg-satell/wh…
We need women & BIPOC in spaces where there are few women or BIPOC like #tech or #STEM or #artificialintelligence #AI #ML - go where there is no path. Build the path. Go where there are no predefined metrics. Write the rules yourself. @nature #WomeninSTEM

nature.com/articles/d4158…
#AI is restructuring our world. Where women right now fill compliance roles, in the future algorithms will replace many of those jobs

Are we busy being polite & policing each other or are we proactively engaging in #FutureofWork

whose jobs on the line?

time.com/partners/enter…
That is my why for being at @MIT @MITSloan @MITSloanFellows this year & why I am have been doggedly pushing past boundaries to work w/ @EshipMIT @mithackmed @MIT_Innovation on this @MITvsCOVID19 #hack4thefuture - as we build, prevent past inequity from being coded into our future
Please support the @MITHackRacism which is part of family of #hackathon series as @MITvsCOVID19. Then build on the momentum to also contribute to #Hack4theFuture

We need the full spectrum of diversity of human talent at the table ...without gatekeeping

covid19challenge.mit.edu/hack4thefuture/
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More from @usnehal

Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
11 Oct
Please start to do this. If you find something not factual, take the time to highlight, cross out, write notes on the image. We are highly visual creatures and the red X will communicate much better than your facts or words.

Make the “wrong” or “not factual” a clear visual.
Further, think of unintended consequences. Will what you put out there take a life if its own?

I have seen too many of those paid to instruct #STEM professionals on #SciComm & #MedTwitter professionalism

fail to understand this aspect of #SciComm - how will others repurpose?
How often in re-sharing a conspiracy theory post are you merely driving traffic to that site or person? It is a numbers game. In your “OMG look at this!!!!” are you contributing to this?

Please stay away from those who share a new “look how bad” example

sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/f…
Read 11 tweets
Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
10 Oct
Absolutely. Sound even so the “don’t talk to her, DM me instead.” Also, plenty of men gossip or encourage women to gossip and spread gossip to achieve an agenda or neutralize someone.
Typos in above.. oops. But you get the drift.

Isolating people, preventing communication with someone, moving communication to dark spaces, DM conversations about others ..are all red flags for bullying.

oncentral.org/news/2012/09/1…
Bullies often flip the narrative and play victim which makes it hard to assess

Step back. Look at actions

Who is using gossip and isolation? Who is shining sunlight and being direct?

Who escalates emotions each time they are shown to be inconsistent?

journey.support/2019/09/07/bul…
Read 5 tweets
Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
26 Sep
Both/and. The issues of manipulation of our reality is true. That said, I have seen some of the most educated and supposedly intelligent so-called skeptics engage in high school types of clique behavior and had their biases exploited as @RogueRad references below.
The other thing I have noticed is that rivalries in healthcare

that have long existed between doctors

now expanded to all the different types of clinicians
+
healthcare industry professionals.

Savvy non-clinicians exploit the backstabbing, bullying culture of healthcare
This is so pronounced that @TJCommission has published this on it including using the term “sabotage.”

These are things typically done via gossip, in the dark, without due process as compared to use of transparency and appropriate mechanisms ImageImageImage
Read 13 tweets
Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
23 Sep
On "called in" versus "called out": in fact, a true ally can tolerate being "called out" to model #learning #mindset/#growthmindset for others. Those who need everything to be done hidden/in private reveal they care more about image, optics, their own reputation.
People need to let go of this concept of "shame" or "did you just call me a racist"? Everyone has more to learn. Was just discussing with a woman who pointed out elite programs in the U.S. fulfill "diversity" quotas with "Black" from Africa rather than descendants of slaves.
The underlying issue of exploitation, specifically slavery, was #economic. The experience of personal + generational trauma + loss of generational wealth + loss of identity is a deliberate #systematic #systems approach to value extraction for economics.

wbur.org/hereandnow/201…
Read 21 tweets
Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
22 Sep
So true. In my case, don’t pick on a POC, WOC, student, trainee, refugee, someone with disability, someone with mental health, etc then deny/justify you did so, flip the script, or manipulate optics.

Our generations had to work 3x harder for everything. It makes us relentless.
Finally watched Gaslight (movie that gives us the term) This is so classic (not just men who fit this mold). When someone who is all about “optics”, manipulates who talks to whom in what spaces, starts to be revealed, they play victim/appeal to emotions
Ingrid Bergman is so powerful in that scene. Love it. Uff..her turning the tables to play the same game back to him just for a few powerful moments. Previously he had made a point to humiliate her in public while making her and others think she was insane
Read 4 tweets
Umbereen S. Nehal, MD, MPH Profile picture
21 Sep
Someday soon this labor of love and product of dogged persistence will officially be published after something like 100 edits to slide format, removal of any photos not from Creative Commons, adding content, updating references, expanding on limitations.

Yes, I am relentless. Image
When it comes to protecting the marginalized and vulnerable from the bullies spreading xenophobia, cutting funding, closing clinics, I am non-stop

With every clinical service closure I am more and more pointed on understanding what administrative budgets are used for ImageImageImageImage
I was CMO of a 14-center FQHC that also was a dedicated refugee screening center and no, this type of care is NOT any CFOs favorite tho the mission driven ones figure out a way to serve mission at the cost of margin and get the revenue from elsewhere.

modernhealthcare.com/article/201810…
Read 11 tweets

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