Good luck to all the fantastic women I’ve been reading about on CC as they finish their applications.
I encouraged my DD to pursue engineering, knowing it wasn’t the easy path. She joined SWE (Society of Women Engineers) to network and learn from more experienced engineers. She has also participated in more formal mentor programs, paired up with working engineers. A lot of awesome women have already entered the field, and they have much to teach.
We stand on the shoulders of giants…
I’d recommend a woman in STEM field spend about 5 minutes patting herself on the back for overcoming all these 1950s stereotypical obstacles and then get back to the job at hand, and I am a woman in the STEM field. I worked for people who were in college in the 50s and yes, they had to do this. But as Gator says … there are giants that we can rely on. SWE is an excellent resource as are women you meet in your life who have the career you want.
Sure there are people who want to hold you back, and sure there will be obstacles, and sure there will be people who don’t like your leadership skills, but in a way that is their problem. Demand the difficult assignments, the merit increases, the increasing responsibilities. Keep learning throughout your career.
Also, if your daughter is feeling any of these obstacles … go to their schools and complain. Demand your gifted in math daughter be put in the correct classes. If she wants to get dirty, let her get dirty (they invented soap and orange cleanser for a reason). Push both your sons and daughters to look beyond their stereotypical roles and be the best of both stereotype roles. Teach your boys to be respectful of women as equals. Maybe reach out to schools to do STEM programs and make sure there are girls there. If your girls feel isolated in their math and science classes, first go complain to the school … there is no way that a math or science class shouldn’t be 40% women at the minimum. Then maybe find her some girlfriends with similar interests or encourage her to join the robotics club. Most boys will not actively shun your daughter and maybe she can be a way to keep bringing women into the field.
The good thing about a lot of STEM jobs is that there is actually a correct answer, there are actually things that need to get done properly. If a woman can do that, or a green alien, many STEM people will not notice and/or care. Better than some vague “she looks like a leader” …
You have to be careful with one person’s observations that his female peers are or were treated differently. The world changes quickly and STEM is not exempt. Women can be as enthusiastic- and aggressive, visionary, and accomplished- as their male counterparts. Some mighty fine, very well prepared STEM applications are coming from young women who were not held back by old fashioned notions, who were rightly encouraged in their math/sci classes in hs and by others who mentored them along the way.
And you will see even more of them.
Someone’s going to be having a lot of fun out there in Cheney this weekend.
In truth, more than any of these stereotypes, I found that the prospect of motherhood is really what makes women less willing to go into STEM. There were plenty of women in all of my classes, and they were honestly quite well-adjusted and never really felt out of place, although it is true that there were less of them. While the pressure is certainly there, however, I don’t think that gender stereotypes play as big a role as they used to. Instead, the bigger issue is that STEM careers require a very substantial and inflexible time commitment, which may be a problem for women who want to have children and play a part in raising them.
A work policy that is very child-friendly would do a lot to make this issue vanish. Oddly enough, in countries where there is a strong focus on accommodating motherhood (with longer periods of allowed maternity leave, more stable healthcare, flexible and stable work), some universities had the opposite problem - there were too many females in the program and they had to convince their best male students not to leave (many went into military service and decided not to finish their education).
STEM majors may be conducive to part-time work or contract work. Again, if you can get the job done, people may just not care that you are working evenings from home … Many women engineers I know worked part time for up to a decade and while their careers may have been slightly delayed, many were not.
Times are changing fast. I am not sure the original article was not “microaggression”.
It’s definitely getting better over time - probably why we see more women now than we did before.
Working days from home would also be very nice. The career impediments of doing that are self-evident though.
I thought we had maybe jumped the shark as a forum when they changed the layout and we lost a bunch of posters. Now I am concerned we may have jumped the shark again if we are seriously discussing “microaggressions” in an engineering forum.
Good grief, I was a female engineering student 35 years ago and did just fine. I don’t see why girls should have any problem at all going into engineering.
@boneh3ad I was just stirring a pot a bit … but honestly, the original comment was a bit patronizing . Would a woman engineering student want to hear this from their classmate, or would they just want to be treated fairly? Easy enough for the guys to pipe down and let the girl speak in class.
Agree with MaineLonghorn, I also have been working for 30 years as an engineer and it is mostly just fine. I think there are still some “traditional” families that may not be pushing their girls to take advanced STEM classes in middle or high school, that was never the case in my family.
Working from home aka telecommuting is becoming popular with employers because it reduces office space cost. It has some negatives in that you do not socialize much and may not build bonds with your colleagues, but both those can be improved and assuming you are not 1000s of miles away from your workplace, you can go in maybe once a week and get that done. You do have to get work done.
What is good about engineering work is there are some problems that take months of analysis and design work, lots of it involving serious face time with your computer. So working from home or working at 9pm when your kids are asleep is quite doable.
Stereotypes are just that, stereotypes. Whether females are encouraged in science and engineering depends on the family and school, and the general culture.
I am tired of people whining about their gender as if it is their destiny.
I don’t see STEM careers as any more inflexible than medicine, law, accounting, etc.
Nor do I, intparent. If anything, medicine and law are super demanding early on, and accounting is killer during the long tax season and during audits. And so many engineers are working in a corporate environment, getting home for dinner. There can be projects that demand long days, sure. Or last minute crises. Or that client in a time zone half a world away. And it’s just not uncommon, nowadays, for women to work hard and have their kids a few years after establishing themselves. It’s also less unusual than in our parents’ day for spouses to take a more active role.
I think we have to watch out for stereotypes of all sorts.
Engineers who make it into management or project management or senior technical roles can have really high demands on their time and lots of travel. But there are plenty of mid-level jobs that can tolerate a work-life balance.
Two-income families are pretty stressful, especially if both want a high level job. The active role (by stereo-typically dad) is sort of the minimum to make this work. So, yes, there are women who can’t make this work and take years off from work, including engineering. I have seen a fairly high percentage of (women) engineers return successfully and many work part-time during their children’s young years (0-6).
I think schools should be proactive in finding girls in elementary and middle school who have high STEM potential and if necessary talk the parents into trying it out including pointing out the obvious potential for higher earnings (and as someone once pointed out to me, in a culture with 50% divorce rate, your daughter could very well be supporting herself and your grandchildren, so higher potential income is a good thing).
So maybe the issue is that he is being patronizing of college women in STEM fields (aka girls now women who have made it through the gauntlet), which is related to “microaggression” in that it seems fairly innocent, until you realize it is both annoying to the woman and indicative that you may actually believe or believe others believe the very things you are talking about. Enough of this …
Women getting ready to go to college with some STEM background, go for it ! Don’t let these bozos talk you out of it, and if you have a comment to make in class, do it. Get some practice in speaking up in college so you can walk into a room at your first job and talk and immediately tell them you are not decorative or a novelty or a token or otherwise damaged but because you deserve to be there.
Mainelonghorn, I glad you didn’t have the experience of the ladies at my alma mater almost 30 years ago, There were professors teaching the freshmen engineering fundamentals who expected the class to dress “professionally”. For the guys it was painless - no jeans, and a button up shirt. For the ladies a skirt/dress was required. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but it was a little comical to watch the girls standing in the hall to pull a skirt from their backpack and put it on over a pair of shorts.
Seriously. Give it a rest people…