<p>The culinary sciences is the field they belong in. More specifically, the kitchen, using that culinary science for real-application.</p>
<p>Many women excel in the application of edible semi-viscous fluids to porous insulators.</p>
<p>Porous insulators?</p>
<p>Maybe skin?</p>
<p>NeoDymium: If anything, attitudes like yours are what push women out of the field.</p>
<p>
A cheap dismissal that dodges the question of why women are so rare in engineering.</p>
<p>Every minority group is marginalized in one way or another. That doesn’t make them run away from engineering. That alone is not a good enough explanation for the rarity of women.</p>
<p>edible semi-viscous fluids on porous insulator = peanut butter and jelly on white bread.</p>
<p>"I’ve seen a fair share of STEM women, and here are the trends I’ve always noticed:
- Just about all of them are “slightly above average” when it comes to intelligence. Very few are either among the dumbest or among the smartest in any field I have seen.
- Very few of them are geeky. I’ve seen a much higher proportion of geekiness/obsessiveness among males. This is not to say I haven’t seen any women like that, but it is exceedingly rare. Most of them care about the field they are in, but they treat work like work.
- Almost none are suited for field work. Every one I have met would be best off either being a housewife or working a 100% desk job.
- They are much better than males at data crunching. Not sure if they are more patient or are just better at sifting through numbers and data and the like, but they outclass males by a large margin. Most STEM females I have met would make good secretaries, and I suspect that that plays no small part in their interest in biology/medicine (a largely informational rather than conceptual science). "</p>
<p>I have been working in technology for 20+ years and worked in high-tech most of those years. This is the same STEREOTYPING with absolutely zero basis gibberish that keeps US backward while Indian and Chinese women take over technology areas in the world while US falls far backward because women are being discouraged by stupid stereotyping.</p>
<p>No wonder I see so many more Asian female engineers and CS majors coming from other countries and doing far better than their American MALE counterparts.</p>
<p>I think that women still don’t think about going into STEM fields. The only reason that <em>I</em> did was that my dad was an engineering professor who told some students at a party that I would be the next engineer in the family. THAT is when the lightbulb went off. “Huh, I’m really good at math, so that would make sense.” </p>
<p>An engineering professor, who was in the National Academy of Engineering, told my concrete design class that he was glad to see more women engineering students, because of our attention to detail.</p>
<p>Women do leave the engineering field at a higher rate than men do, and are less likely to even enter it with an engineering degree.
<a href=“studyofwork.com - studyofwork Resources and Information.”>studyofwork.com - studyofwork Resources and Information.;
<p>Speaking as a woman engineer, I think it does a real disservice to women engineers to stereotype them as was done in post #14. I wouldn’t want to be your colleague or your boss or report to you. I think that not wanting to have to put up with attitudes like that on a day-to-day basis is one of the reasons why women do leave the engineering field.</p>
<p>
This is all based off of my personal experience. It’s true that most of it is not proven in any way (with the exception of point #4 - look at MaineLonghorn’s post, or even ask the CIAs opinion about women analysts), but I’m not claiming that all women are like that and we should therefore treat them accordingly. Most of the posts here reply to an OP that says “I have no special interest in this field, should I enter it?” with “do what you love” and such.</p>
<p>I question the notion that the China and India are more progressive than the US (along with the point that they are taking over - but I won’t argue that here). In India, it’s considered shameful and dangerous if your daughter “talks to boys” (parents are supposed to arrange marriages, and women are expected to be forever loyal to their husbands without any choice in the matter). China isn’t much better - a simple Google search will affirm that. I seriously doubt that anything such as my post is more harmful to the advancement of women in engineering than the kind of backward practices that those two nations are known for.</p>
<p>Do you work in Asia? If not, I’d say that perhaps you have a case of selection bias going on, because only the best workers (women included) from those countries would be brought to the US on a worker visa in the first place. I certainly haven’t seen the doom and gloom “foreigners are taking over” line have any factual basis.</p>
<p>
Actually, I think that’s a fairly reasonable sentiment to have. Yet I’ve heard far worse from many others about other minority groups, which still doesn’t discourage them from entering the field. There is something more going on here.</p>
<p>“In India, it’s considered shameful and dangerous if your daughter “talks to boys” (parents are supposed to arrange marriages, and women are expected to be forever loyal to their husbands without any choice in the matter). China isn’t much better - a simple Google search will affirm that.”</p>
<p>They take STEM education far more seriously and find it quite shameful also when their kids don’t get into engineering or medicine. The rule applies equally to boys and girls.</p>
<p>
They do have the “quite shameful if you don’t get into those fields” mentality. But at the same time, I have yet to see that this leads to better engineers and doctors. </p>
<p>I will assume that when you talk about Indian students, you probably meet mostly IIT grads. Here is what just about every IIT grad I knew who was willing to talk about it said about that chain of schools: “Freshmen admitted to IIT are about the equivalent of freshmen admitted to MIT. But while MIT truly makes great engineers out of their engineering students, the success of IIT students relies on their already substantial talent before being admitted.” I don’t really know enough about China to comment on their education.</p>
<p>Not to discount these two countries - I know for a fact that they produce plenty of capable engineers and doctors - but I suspect your experience is borne more of selection bias than a systemic difference in the quality of education.</p>
<p>In countries like Pakistan and India the stereotype is that women become doctors and that men become engineers. They are serious about that stereotype within their culture. China is a different story though.</p>
<p>My mom (who was born in 1925) was a mechanical engineer in the 40s and 50s. I believe WWII had something to do with it. My understanding is that she gravitated to technical writing and then management, both of which she was very good at, but in very male-dominated, defense-related heavy industry. </p>
<p>She left her career to raise five children after about 10 years, then, in her late 40s, went back to (graduate) school and had a second career in academia in the field of early childhood education. The engineering background may seem unrelated, but I’m sure her writing, problem-solving, and management background proved useful in her second career.</p>
<p>So, do what interests you and you never know what will happen in the long run, but it will work out.</p>
<p>"I will assume that when you talk about Indian students, you probably meet mostly IIT grads. "</p>
<p>IITs produce probably about 1% of all engineers in India (might be much higher these days since they added IIT classification to a whole bunch of colleges) while many of the lower tier schools generate the rest. Many of them are showing up in US working for the multinationals without ever going to college in US.</p>
<p>We don’t need all rocket scientist types to be taking on engineering or technology. It is not different from other fields where some are competent, some are not, some can make do and so on. </p>
<p>I work for a large multinational where our teams have employees in many countries. Many of the programming teams in China, India, Taiwan etc. have more equitable distributions of sexes while in US they seem quite lopsided. More often than not, those women who are on the teams in US happen to be foreign graduates which concerns me a great deal. I think they are not being encouraged to pursue engineering which is a disservice.</p>
<p>"In countries like Pakistan and India the stereotype is that women become doctors and that men become engineers. "</p>
<p>In India there are only so many free seats for engineering and medicine. Doing medicine costs a lot of money in India without a free seat and so many women go into Engineering knowing they may not be able to afford the fees if they can’t get a free seat.</p>
<p>
A disservice to whom?</p>
<p>To the US? I don’t think so. We’ve always had plenty of engineers, and the need for new engineers is not especially high. We’ve also never really had any quality issues; foreigners come here to receive a US education, not the other way around. Our infrastructure and technological development is sufficient to eliminate the need for many engineering jobs; the recession was in many ways a convenient mechanism that allowed big companies to get rid of jobs that they no longer needed. So if there is already an overabundance of qualified engineers, why do we need more of them?</p>
<p>To themselves? Unlikely. Asian women working in corporate Asia are visibly less happy than American women. Many of the wealthier women actually hire people to sit and listen to their problems because the culture’s general opinion about depression is “stop whining” (many more who aren’t wealthy certainly just keep their problems to themselves). Also, it’s not like anyone is actually stopping them from choosing to be engineers - most women with an engineering education simply decide that they do not want an engineering job and do something else instead.</p>
<p>To the future? No. Women are rather fairly represented in academia and R&D.</p>
<p>I don’t see why we need to encourage women. They certainly should be allowed to choose that option, but the benefit to both the women themselves and the country in general are questionable.</p>