frequently asked questions

WIMDI is for intermediate and senior professional women* working in male-dominated industries that want to have exciting, ambitious careers. We’re a community of leaders who do great work, and who love to connect and help each other. We value growth, forward movement, and practical solutions that we can use right away to make work better.

Absolutely not! Although I’ll admit, the name kind of makes it seem like that.

The first thing you should know is that WIMDI uses an inclusive definition of women that means “people who are in a gender minority in their field”. This includes trans individuals, genderqueer, agender, intersex, two spirit, and non-binary folks. If you are not sure if you are included, please err on the side of participating in our community and attending our events. Feel free to reach out to the Organizer, Holly Burton, with any questions and for an automatic welcoming face and first friend at any WIMDI event.

WIMDI knows that all people in the non-dominant group have just thousands of things in common when it comes to creating equitable workplaces. We think of WIMDI as a big umbrella for all of us who want to have amazing careers to work together on making that happen.

We recognize that some of our members have privileges that others may not, due to race, class/socioeconomic background, sexuality, gender, and many other factors. WIMDI believes in using the privileges we do have to ally and advocate for others.

Absolutely!

WIMDI believes that change and progress comes from all corners and we welcome people of any gender identity to participate and learn with us. Our mission is to help women* have successful careers, and we do that not only through career-focused content, but also by teaching our members about best practices for creating diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces. WIMDI is a great place to learn about the obstacles women and minorities that you work with are facing. Please come learn with us!

Some notes on attending our events as a cisgender man:

• Remember that WIMDI events have a primary purpose of connecting and support women and other minorities, not educating cisgender men. Please come and learn, but do not centre the discussion on you, your experience, or your questions. We ask that cisgender men spend most of their time listening and very little to no time telling. If you have a question, please check with others whether they are open to helping you learn, and be respectful and understanding if they don’t. Many women and minorities have the experience of, not only advocating for themselves, but helping cisgender men and others learn to see the problems that they encounter every day, which is a heavy burden. Many members are happy to help you learn, but we ask that you be respectful of those who aren’t into it.
• Most of our events are open to individuals of any gender identity, but we do reserve some events for members who do not identify as cisgender men. Events with restricted attendance will be clearly marked in the event copy. We do this in the rare cases of events which feature complex, sensitive issues (eg: harassment, trauma, etc), and where a restricted guest list allows for a deeper sense of safety that enables participation in tricky subjects.
• Additionally, we reserve our WIMDI Cafe Nights for members that do not identify as cisgender men. These events have limited attendance and often involve personal discussion, debate, and advice specific to dynamics underrepresented minorities in these industries experience. We have found that, in small settings, having cisgender men present changes the dynamic substantially and so we reserve the Cafe Nights as a space for women* to connect with each other freely and openly.
• Occasionally, our events are so popular that we do not have space for everyone who wants to attend. Yikes! This doesn’t happen very often, but since our core mission is to provide connection and career resources to women*, we have a policy of asking cisgender men to give up their spots if our event is waitlisted.

No!

Lots of our members are passionate about making their working world better for women. At WIMDI we believe that feminism is all about choice, and sometimes just existing in your role is a radical act! So we never require or expect any woman to take on an activist role. But we love it when our members push the envelope on behalf of other women and minorities, whether that’s working to advocate for more inclusive policies at work, or helping other WIMDIs make connections that lead to their next opportunity.

Heck yes!

We care about putting on events that are safe and fun for our members, and we know that policy is the backbone of a great experience for many people. You can check out what we require of our attendees over at our Code of Conduct and Policy page.

Sometimes!

WIMDI runs some events with photography and some without. Check out our photography policy and release for more information.

Put down that application. You’ll be fine without an advanced degree in gender and equality.

WIMDI is for everyone — beginner and seasoned feminists alike. All of us have day jobs that aren’t advocating for women, right? So we don’t expect you to be able to talk like one!

We aim to make WIMDI accessible to people who are just dipping their toes into the whole feminism/diversity/inclusion/equity thing. You’ll learn more about the issues women and minorities face at work through your participation in the group, and we promise it won’t be an information overload.

We want you to be able to better understand what you and your colleagues are up against at work — but you have to actually understand it. We promise not to jargon you to death.

Gather around children, it’s story time.

Our founder, Holly Burton, was working a two-week-in-two-week-out rotation as a mining engineer, flying back and forth between home in Vancouver and a remote mining camp three hours north of Timmins, Ontario. The unvarnished truth is: Work was awful back then. Difficult and heartbreaking. Political and lonely. Bleh.

Holly decided she needed to meet more women who understood what she was going through. As supportive as her besties were, a bunch of self-employed vegan yarn creators, opera singers, and vegan personal trainers didn’t have a concept of what it’s like to be an engineer surrounded by politicking dudes in -40C weather wearing a jacket that is way too big in the shoulders and comically too small in the hips.

So she started going to women’s networking groups. Aaannndd…..Cue the frustration. She’d find a group that she liked, resolve to go to their next event, and then discover that it was while she was away at work. And then next month it was the same story. And for the next 4 months after that. It was impossible to get any traction or make any connections because she could hardly ever attend more than one event every few months. Ugh.

So she said, F— it. I’ll make my own group that fits my schedule. She created the group on meetup, set an event schedule every four weeks (her work rotation), and named it after who she wanted to attend. On December 15th, 2015, Women in Male-Dominated Industries was born, and the very first Cafe Night happened only a few weeks later. The rest is history!

WIMDI was born from something all of us have: A need for connection with other women who get what we do and who we are. And now there are literally thousands of us.

Clothespins are OG WIMDI and a great representation of what we do.

At our in-person WIMDI events, we make name tags out of colourful paper and then attach them to ourselves using adorable mini-clothespins. And they’re so much better than normal name tags. Think about it: How many times have you put a sticky nametag on your shirt only to get your hair painfully tangled up in the sticky mess? How many times have you cringed while putting one of those plastic nametags with a metal clip or safety pin through one of your nice blouses?

WIMDI’s clothespins accommodate women’s common-but-unique needs (long hair and fancy shirts), freeing us from the patriarchy’s name-tag tyranny! So basically, we have super-feminist name tags that challenge systemic bias. Obviously, we’re joking a little, here — but only a little.

Clearly, our clothespins are great. So we’ve adopted them as our official symbol of what makes WIMDI unique and fun.

Fantastic! Talented! Inspirational!

But also, when we refer to a group of WIMDI members, we call them WIMDIs, eg: “Hello WIMDIs!” or “What’s happening, all you fantastic, talented, and inspirational WIMDIs?”

Ooh, what a delicious question. We’re huge word nerds here at WIMDI, so we had fun with this one. For those who aren’t in the know about collective nouns, they’re what you use to refer to a group of creatures. Like a murder of crows, a herd of cows, a gaggle of geese, or a flamboyance of flamingos. We tried on a lot of options for WIMDI’s collective noun. Some were inspirational — like an empowerment, a supremacy, a mobility, a diversity, and a C-suite. Others were full of dark humour, sarcasm, and reclaiming of words used to dismiss women — like a shrillness, an unlikeabiility, an illogic, and a hysteria. Ultimately, we're taking a page from the many animals with multiple collective noun choices and declaring that literally all of the above (and any other fun ones you can think of) are options you can use at your leisure the next time you need to refer to a large gathering of WIMDIs. You know, like when you're giving directions to an event: "Take a left down that hallway and you'll know you've arrived when you encounter a shrillness of WIMDIs"

Right now, WIMDI only has in-person events in Vancouver, Canada.

If you’re a YVR local, join our meetup group and come on out to our amazing events. If you’re not, join our newsletter and reap the benefits of all our cool online content.

Live somewhere else and wishing there was a WIMDI chapter near you? Interested in starting one yourself? We’d love to expand our chapters with your help! Drop us a note letting us know who you are, what city you’re in, and if you’re interested in volunteering, and we’ll get you all set up to create some fantastic events where you are.

ZERO DOLLARS.

What!? Are you kidding me? What a sick deal.

No, but seriously, all of our awesome events — both in person and online — and all of the valuable resources we make available to you are free. Women leave careers in male-dominated industries at shockingly high rates — and there are thousands of complex, systemic reasons for that. We don’t think any woman or minority should ever have to leave a career that they spent thousands of dollars and four years on a university degree and then multiple more years of hard work and effort getting. But we especially think they shouldn’t have to leave because:

• They were starved for connection with other people who get who they are
• They didn’t know enough career how to’s, like how to make an amazing resume, or how to advocate for a promotion, or how to effectively use stretch assignments to grow their capabilities

That is truly heartbreaking, because it’s so damn easy to solve. So we solve it for our members. At WIMDI, we make sure everyone has easy access to career skills resources and connection. Full stop.

Then we get to work on the tougher challenges — like owning their power, being a transformational leader, and dismantling systemic bias in their workplaces.

But ain’t nobody leaving for lack of information. Not on our watch!

Yuck! No!

At WIMDI, our philosophy is that we don’t treat our members like a captive audience we can sell to. Our core mission is to help you build an ambitious career — not to get your dollars. So we create lots of free resources to help you do exactly that.

And, sometimes the way we help you create that yummy career you’re after is to connect you to skilled professionals, especially if you need highly-personalized help to make your career truly outstanding. Maybe you need one-on-one support to become a fantastic leader for you team. Maybe you need some coaching to create some bigger dreams, get out of your own way, and go out and do the scary thing that you really really want to do. Maybe you just really need an expert set of eyeballs on your next complex salary negotiation to get you the extra $10k of your dreams. Awesome! We want you to have access to that help too, so we’ll connect you to it. We’re not going to keep you from great resources just because you’d have to pay for them.

So basically, we’re not going to spam you with sales pitches (yuck!), but we’re also not going to hold back from telling you about smart, useful professionals that can help move your career forward (yay!).

Not officially!

WIMDI’s community is not a registered non-profit, it’s just a deeply non-profitable part of an otherwise profitable business. WIMDI has a very small operating budget funded by the profitable parts of the business and the occasional very-cheap-but-paid-event. We keep our events simple, which allows us to do everything on the cheap. Our biggest budgetary expenses are webhosting and mini-clothespins for our nametags.

Yes!

WIMDI has a number of sponsors that help us put on our events. Local companies help each WIMDI chapter by hosting us in their office space, and occasionally providing us with food and drinks. This in-kind sponsorships allows us to continue producing free events for our community, and we love it!

Interested in sponsoring us? We’d love to have your support. Get in touch with our sponsorship volunteer and we’ll get it organized!

Wonderful!

Head over to our speakers page to apply to speak at one of our events and one of our volunteers will contact you to figure out if we’re the right fit for each other.

Absolutely!

As a volunteer-run community, we’re always looking for bright people to help us out. Check out our volunteer page for a list of positions we’re specifically looking for, or pitch us on how you might be able to contribute if you don’t see something that matches your skills.

If you want to participate in a small way, we always need a volunteer or two to help with name tags and logistics during our events. Stay tuned for announcements ahead of the event to throw your hat in the ring for some night-of assisting!