Interview with Zhimin Dai (17/02/2012)

1st PART: Woman’s history comprehension/understanding

• Can you present yourself in a few words and explain us what is your job/responsibilities?

My name is Zhimin Dai, I work in Saint Gobain for 5 years. Before this, I worked in university as a teacher in chemistry department. Before this I did my Phd in China then in 2004 I went in Germany to do my post doct, in Munich. It was a really interesting period for me !

My responsibility now is R&D manager for whole China. I’m managing 10 people, we have two plants one in Shanghai and one in Beijing, so I have to travel a lot between these two cities. Each beginning of the year we work with marketing development to decide which product we’ll develop this year. After that I communicate with my team, and depending on the background of each person we decide who is responsible for each project. Then we decide time schedule and what are the expectations of sale.

• How did you come to engineering and sciences?

I didn’t know what to chose between research at University or real engineering in company. When I was young, I liked chemistry and biology, and after high school I choose chemistry. I did my studies in north China. My parents were happy with me working in University, they didn’t really care about the subject, but they like me doing research because the timetable is more flexible than in a company, they thought it’s better for a woman. But actually I’m really happy to have changed and come to a more challenging job !

• Did you have to face any difficulty as a woman in your studies/in your job? Or do you think being  a women facilitated it?

20 years ago in my high school when I was studying chemistry we were only 11 girls among 60 students. In my PhD we were 2 girls among around 10 people. But it was not difficult. To find job, I didn’t have any problem. But it’s because in China it’s easy to find job for a woman when you are already married and have children because you’re considered as “stable”. When you just graduated it’s not that easy because employers think “maybe you’ll need some holidays later” and so on. But you know in China not a lot of women stay at home, everybody works. In Germany it is different, I could see when I was there that a lot of women are housekeepers.

• What are the characteristic you need to have to do your job ?

You need to be able to pick the responsibility, you need to handle the high pressure, to be strong inside. You need to be organized and patient too !

• What are your everyday motivations ?

You can chose the easy life if you want, but when I compare the different lifestyle (University/company), I can see that in a company you can have more experience. You meet more people, you need to discuss, communicate in different ways. I think it’s really important in the life to have high pressure challenges !

• How do you conciliate professional and personal life?

The most difficult part for ladies during the work is the professional travels. If you have a lot of travels to do, you need to share your time, and sometimes it’s really difficult to be understood by your family. I have a daughter, she is 14 years old, and sometimes I feel a little guilty because I have really few time for her...I have sometimes only week-end ! I’m lucky that my husband understands me, and is really supportive. My mother helps me a lot too, she lives in our home.

• Could you tell us professional realizations you are proud of?

I worked on a really big project one year ago, during it we had to organize big team work, with 24 people inside and outside the company.  We need to visit job sites, organize meetings and so on. Everybody learnt a lot from each other and it was a great success. Such a big team, it was a really big challenge, really difficult, and I’m proud of it ! 

2nd PART:  General debate on woman engineer: differences and new things a woman can bring in a male team

• Do you think men and women work differently? Could you give us concrete examples (personal works, project works)?

Yes, sure ! Men and women are different, so they work in different way... Women care more about details, and men care more about the target. Women care a bit more about the process. In my team I work nearly with only men, but I could notice this. Men care only about the result. An other point is that for a women it’s not so easy to create close professional relationship with men, because we don’t have the same language. A man can build with an other men a good relationship really easily, invite him for a beer, talk about football. But for a woman to be trusted by an other guy, to find a common language, it’s more difficult. And so for a woman to be well integrated in a male team is quite challenging ! Talking about communication, I would say women are perhaps more emotional and more sensitive to the attitude people have and the way they speak to them. I think when you are more sensitive sometimes it’s better because you can understand more things, but for sure the best is to be balanced, it’s important to be able to forget quickly the sensitive side when you have to ! Being able to take the pressure is an other thing. I’ve met women who stopped their jobs because they thought pressure was too high for them. Physically, they were feeling it was too hard. But for men, it’s different. I’m not saying that they like the stress/the pressure. Nobody likes it. It’s more that I have the impression that it’s nearly a need for them to take the pressure !  Maybe it comes from when they were young ? And anyway, they don’t have the choice to take it or not : they are so important for the family ! A woman can think “Ok, I stop, it’s too hard, I want to stay at home.”. A man cannot. All this is about traditions for sure. An other difference between men and women that you can see at work is that men don’t like to speak about what they feel, whereas women use to do. So sometimes you think from outside that the woman feels more, but it’s not true ! Of course all this depends on the character of the person, not totally on the gender.

The people like to think women and men are different and that men are more strong and more clever and can take more pressure. But I think all is about experience. If you have more experience you can be more confident and then to take more pressure. And then you can do more. At the beginning you think you are a woman and you give you excuse then you have less experience and you are less confident and you can take less pressure and its worst and worst. So the point is to challenge yourself !

• Do you think that a mixed team is helpful for working atmosphere and/or is linked to team performance?

Yes, for sure ! I like to work with men and women. It’s good to have different people, some strong, some sensitive. each one has its own advantage. We need different ideas to work efficiently. And different ideas come from different people !

 3rd PART:  Vidéo

• Short representation

Hello, my name is Zhimin Dai, I have a family, I worked in Saint Gobain for 5 years. Before this, I worked in University. So, now my job is mainly for the Research and development work, I’m R&D manager for Saint Gobain in China, and I like this job and I enjoy the life in the company.

• Which advice would you give to any young women who hesitate to start engineering studies?

My advice is firstly you need to know if you like it. It’s very important. After this you decided to do something you like, even if you commit some difficult decisions but that is life.  So my advice is doing follow your heart.

• What has been your biggest difficulty as a women engineer?

During the work, how to solve the doubts from the men you are working with.

Then try to make the good result so people can trust you and forgot that you are a woman or a man. That is not important for the work. 

• What has been your best satisfaction as a women engineer?

I work in this field for seven years and I’m still happy, I’m still passionate. I think passion is really important if you want to continue.

• What is your next challenge?

If you can still continue work like before, and if you can live with passion in your life, I think the next challenge would be to meet again in ten years!