When interviewing for an internship at a financial firm, female students are often aware a male-dominated workplace awaits them. It is no secret that the majority of those working at large investment firms are male. When one student asked each of her interviewers what percentage of their firm’s employees are women the responses were consistent: about 25% in Research, 10% in Sales and Trading.

These statistics do not deter the many female Columbia students applying for these internships. When asked whether she is concerned about working in a male-dominated environment, one student replied, “A lot of workplaces are like that. I don’t think about it.” Another student was slightly more wary: “I mean, I’d rather work at a firm that hires more women, and I do look into that, but it’s not a deciding factor when I’m choosing between job offers.” One student even found the gender ratio encouraging, saying, “It’s that much more of a compliment when you do get the job.” Gender biases are not exactly at the forefront of undergraduates’ minds when considering internships, and where students are conscious of them they seem to avoid the idea that these biases can do them any harm.

A friend of mine received a startling reminder that perhaps she should be conscious of the gender dynamics in a potential workplace. After returning to her dorm from an interview with a prestigious investment firm, she discovered the reason her interviewer had been chuckling throughout the fifteen minutes: a button of her blouse had popped open, exposing her bra and cleavage. Her panic increased with the realization that this mishap could have been seen as deliberate indecency. It is this possibility that makes the experience so shameful.

Funnily enough, my friend got the job. Still, the experience is made no less humiliating by the job offer. Now the nagging question in her mind is, “Why did they hire me?” Was it her knowledge of economics, her sex appeal, or some combination of the two? One hopes that an interviewer could distinguish between an accidentally exposed chest and a deliberately displayed one. But if exposed cleavage is thought to give the intelligent and qualified female student an edge in the competition, a job offer following an accidentally exposed chest can be just as degrading as the exposure itself.

Unusual circumstances forced my friend to recognize that gender matters in the real world. Perhaps her shock at this experience came from the fact that, for better or worse, we feel relatively safe in our undergraduate environment from the dangers of such judgment. We tend to believe that male and female students are on an equal playing field. Though, in a quick interview at the Career Center, where Columbia’s relative safety zone meets the inequalities of the financial world, one can be jolted. It is the hope of all female students that an exposed chest would not affect the evaluation of a student anywhere else on Columbia’s campus.

But how helpful is it to think of the Career Center as the meeting point of Columbia’s diversity and the financial world’s thinly-veiled inequalities? Columbia College and major financial firms alike produce statements that imply gender bias is a non-issue. Potential Columbia students read on Columbia’s website that “diversity has long been recognized as one of Columbia’s hallmarks.” Goldman Sachs boasts of initiatives designed to “increase [their] commitment to recruiting women, students from ethnic minorities and those with disabilities.” We want to believe these statements, though we know that biases can exist anywhere, and we should be aware of their potential to present themselves in any situation. Of the possibility of interviewers behaving inappropriately towards female interviewees the Career Center denies having had “any problems,” claiming that “a rigorous policy that governs the on-campus recruiting program which is designed to only bring legitimate organizations to campus” has prevented such inappropriate behavior from occurring. Such an incident reminds us how unquestioning we can be of claims that discrimination is a non issue when we want to believe an elite institution will welcome us for all the right reasons.

Fortunately, Columbia does not provide undergraduates the experience of single sex environment. It should, however, remind us not to let the good intentions of an institution dull our awareness of gender biases. We shouldn’t rely on blouses to pop open in order for these biases to be revealed.