Great thread for all you engineering gals out there.
Love it!
That is great! Long overdue!
I can’t wait to share this with my daughter. Thank you. 
I don’t get it. An engineer wears a T-shirt? Or a spaghetti strap dress?
Engineers I know would not get away with that choice of clothing. Even a student intern would be told to dress professionally. If they weren’t at work, who cares if they are engineers or not? Engineers do wear bathing suits when they go to the beach.
“Like when male colleagues threw dollar bills at her in the office.”
And where is the lawsuit for sexual harassment? I don’t get how it is assumed that “all men are alike” but we have to judge all women to be individuals…
Please show your daughters this instead:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/women/grid.html
Fantastic!
Looks like most in the article are in computer science and engineering, and many are in the San Francisco or San Jose areas. T-shirts are rather common for people to wear to work in such contexts.
Of course, some areas or industries have more conservative viewpoints with respect to how one dresses.
Made me smile.
Not “instead,” RH, but in addition. So many 16 year old hs gals can’t relate to their mother’s or grandmother’s role models. And so many companies allow all sorts of dress, with emphasis on getting the job done. There’s a little bit of sexism in assuming a woman has to dress plain. Or that the photos in the first link are what they wear to work.
West coast engineering is pretty casual in dress. Tank tops, Birkenstocks…, and thats for the men!. But that said, I mentioned the throwing of dollar bills to my husband, and he agreed, that would not happen twice in a large company. Those involved would be sanctioned, and probably reassigned.
ROTFLOL. I know many, many, many folks at JPL on both a professional and personal basis, including many of the women in the link below. I can assure you that there are many, many, many engineers there, both male and female, who wear t-shirts. And shorts. And yes, there are female technical folks at JPL who wear spaghetti strap dresses.
The pictures you are seeing from that link are formal portraits, and (with the notable exception of one individual in that link who has always been known for her fashion sense–especially notable because she is very much the exception) not necessarily representative of “dressing professionally”–for ANY gender–at JPL or in similar environments.
Professional dress standards do of course vary from office to office.
Reminds me of the hashtag “ITooAmHarvard.”
I always knew there were women in the field, but surprised to see older people still working in engineering. I was told employers look for young grads to replace their old-timers.
Right, but for instance my H works at Boeing, and quite a few people are in their 70’s.
They will retire eventually, probably.
I’m not sure that the dollar bills thing was about. Was that to suggest that she’s really a pole dancer? If so, what the heck was HR doing when this was going on?
this didn’t even go on when I worked in the industry 20+ years ago.
We were sometimes subjected to, “oh you’re a cute little girl” sort of thing from the old guys, but certainly not from peers.
lol…I remember when H and I got engaged. He was in the dept next to mine. My boss made some remark at raise time like, “Oh, you don’t need to get a big raise, you’re getting a second income.” HOWEVER, H’s boss told HIM, “I know that you’re getting married, so you can count on getting a big raise.”
Hmmmph!
I know, right? 'Cause every place engineers work has a purely formal dress code—it’s all business suits, all the time!
ETA: [/sarcasm], in case it wasn’t obvious.
Must be horrifying to some of the people who post on the “how people should dress” threads that sometimes come up.
Other females and I always wore a skirt suit, but that sort of thing is relaxed now. We did it mostly to give the appearance of authority when we had to go into the factory to determine and set an eng’g change. Once form, fit or function changed, we had to to change the part number and halt production and process the eng’g change and get the needed signatures. Back then, if we waltzed in wearing today’s corporate casual, I don’t think we would have been taken seriously.
of course, we also dressed that way especially when we had to meet with the Customer, which was the Air Force.
When I was 22, a male engineer asked me if I was “daddy’s little helper” when I accompanied him on a site visit. I said, “I’m working on my master’s degree in structural engineering, so I guess I am.”
The engineers I’ve worked with over the years had all manners of dress, depending on the situation. Suits were worn in headquarters or meeting customers. When working in the lab, in the field, etc., it’s usually T-shirts or polos with jeans. In the field it’s Ts and shorts (if it isn’t freezing outside).
[QUOTE=""]
Tank tops, Birkenstocks...,
[/QUOTE]
Try Birkenstocks with socks - that is so wrong…
T-shirt is the norm. My kid had nice clothes but not too dressy, she had to go to Target for more t-shirts. She didn’t want to look out of place.