<p>@marlene, I’m sure you daughter is very qualified. Good for her and all of her accomplishments. I am just going off of what I have seen in 3.5 years in the ME program her. Like I said, two of the smartest MEs I know are females. I’ve had them both in groups before and they were fantastic. </p>
<p>I had a conversation with one of them about females in engineering. She said she realized they had looser admission standards, and this annoyed her. She didn’t like how some of these girls existed to basically discredit all of the work she was doing. She also made a point that while they may have an easier time getting in at a company, they’ll have a tougher time climbing the ladder, due to being a female in a male dominated group. </p>
<p>I would much rather not list my race or gender on anything I apply to, that would have been great. If someone is truly an “equal opportunity employer” than they should be blind to everything. </p>
<p>Anyway, I am getting off topic. I did not mean to attack any of the accomplishments of any female engineers. I was just stating my observations, and the observations of others. I am all for increased diversity in not very diverse fields. But cramming these underrepresented groups in there just to say you are diverse is bad.</p>
<p>And then there’s this male engineer here that gets jealous that girls have it so easy to find a boyfriend in engineering. There needs to be more, because all of the girls I know in engineering are already taken. How special would it be to have a girlfriend that thinks alike and knows what it is like for her sex to be an engineer. (What if I had a daughter and wanted her to be math / science oriented as well as have genuine girl traits as well, who would know how to raise her best?)</p>
<p>When girls act desperate or at least jokingly be desperate, I suggest engineering, but they just don’t want to. :(</p>
<p>P.S.:
At my high school, except for Calculus BC every AP/honors class had girls outnumbering guys generally taking up 2/3s of the class to 5/6 of the class. Who was in the top 10? The top 9 were girls and number 10 was a guy. ~There’s far more AP/honors classes in social sciences, sciences excluding physics, and English subjects than math and physics…
School needs more guys in these AP/honors classes / in the upper percentiles.</p>
<p>I don’t get a lot of this fuss. 25 years ago, a lot of my girlfriends at Northwestern were engineers. They just went and … became engineers. Just like the rest of us went and became doctors, lawyers, business people, whatever it was that we wanted to be. Everyone faces work/life challenges, of course, but that’s not specific to any field. I feel like I’ve stepped back in time when I read these threads. I wasn’t an engineer, but I was a math major, and I just went and did a math major.</p>
<p>@thisismichigan - I don’t want an escalating argument, so will make one more comment and be done with it. </p>
<p>When my daughter is in a work group with a weaker member, she doesn’t look at that member and think it was because the college brought him/her in as a diversity candidate. She just does what needs to be done to get tasks accomplished.</p>
<p>My children went to a diverse, urban high school and it benefitted them in that they learned everyone does not come to school/workplace with same resources and backgrounds. It is too easy to stereotype students into certain groups when you know little about them.</p>
<p>I have a math-y but not science-y D and think she could have been a little more science-y with a better science department (for example, Biology said it was a lab but they did not dissect one living thing. still bitter about that.) I also had to intervene when the 8th grade teacher tracked her to general Biology and then said he tracked most of the 8th grade class to general biology, like that was a good excuse. If she’s crabby doing home it’s because there’s a non math component in a science course.</p>
<p>I think thisis close to what I see in my daughter’s high school. She is on the robotics team, on the build side (mechanisms). The vast majority of girls on the team are on the business side of the team - photography, graphics, marketing, team spirit, etc. I had assumed they were NOT interested in robotics or engineering. The surprising thing I found out from talking to other mothers and fathers, these girls are aiming to get engineering degrees. So, I asked the obvious question: why aren’t they on the build side of the team? I got some interesting but weird answers (“oh, it’s her first year” “that’s where she feels more comfortable” “she feels she can do more for the team on the business side”).</p>
<p>I know that the girls can succeed in engineering progams without the robotics building experience but this example points out how the genders are directed into separate areas on the same team.</p>
<p>BB, I really don’t know. It may be self-directed. I’m not saying the girls are directed away; it’s more that the boys are directed toward build. In other words, if a boy joins the robotics team, the parent expects him to be involved in building or programming. But if a girl joins the robotics team, it’s okay she’s not directly involved.</p>
<p>What caught my eye was that the parents aren’t particularly concerned that their daughters are not on the build team. FWIW, there are 12 girls and 32 boys on the team. Only TWO girls are on the build side and another girl is on both build and business. There are boys on the business side but they usually are on both build and business. Maybe the boys are insistent about being on the build team while the girls want to do what’s needed. </p>
<p>There is absolutely no resistence to girls being on the team, build or business. My daughter had/has no problems being on the build team; she’s well-respected and many times, she’s the one troubleshooting the robot during competition.</p>
<p>Regarding robotics teams… Sometimes it’s just that the boys take over the hands on mechanical tasks. A lot of girls think they have to be competent before picking up a tool. I’ve seen girls working on build tasks and one of the male team members says “let me do that - I can get it done a lot quicker.” I don’t think the boys are deliberately excluding the girls from build tasks, but their overall demeanor is those tasks naturally belong to the guys. A girl on a robotics team-- or in engineering – needs to learn to be assertive.</p>
<p>I completely agree with marlene. As the only girl on lab teams, I relegated myself to making the plots. If I had a hard time with the hardware, the boys were there to “help” me right away, and I easily accepted their help. Studies show that in the working world, men jump into promotional opportunities more easily, while women tend to overthink it and wonder if they truly have the skills to do the job well. I have done this - dawdled so long making a decision and someone else less qualified than me took the job and did just fine in it. Men are risk-takers, and it often pays off. Women are careful. Yes, it’s a stereotype, but the robotics club is a perfect example.</p>
<p>I am aware of this tendency and perhaps a little sensitive to it. So, I work with my daughter to help her be more confident and assertive. The parents of the girls on the robotics team who choose the business side are accepting of it because they aren’t aware of what’s going on.</p>
<p>This is a very interesting thread. Marlene, I agree with your take. We find that most of the kids in the highest math track at my daughter’s school are boys. The math track is billed as very difficult and many kids are dissuaded from joining it. What’s interesting is that regardless of their performance in the class, the boys are more confident about their ability to handle the rigor of the class and tend to stay with it. Girls drop out in disproportionate numbers and far too quickly.</p>
<p>I think this is a very interesting possibility. I do think that many boys are dissuaded from going into the arts and humanities even if they are interested and gifted in these areas because of a parallel cultural prejudice. At any rate I do not think that the feminization of the arts and humanities, which is the flip side of the masculinization of STEM, is a good thing.</p>
<p>VMT, what you’re describing is something I have witnessed in myself and more recently in my eldest daughter and something that takes place in all fields. When D was called for an interview spot on something she’d written about, she hesitated, thinking she was not sufficiently expert to “qualify” for the spot. She watched, amazed and a little annoyed, as the males in her workplace with even less knowledge, confidently volunteered to take the interview and “coach” her. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think it would be better for the more outspoken and overconfident men (and women) to take a step back rather than encourage those who are more honestly self-reflective to take a blind step forward. But, as to the overthinking and excessive self-criticism, I agree that it’s a tendency to battle and battle hard.</p>
<p>I suspect that sometimes the issue on a robotics team would be that the girls are multi-talented, but the guys are mostly interested in the mechanics and are not interested in other roles.</p>
<p>“Frankly, I think it would be better for the more outspoken and overconfident men (and women) to take a step back rather than encourage those who are more honestly self-reflective to take a blind step forward.”</p>
<p>Why not the other way around? Or how about no adjusting either way? </p>
<p>In one ofy freshman engineering courses, we had some acting group on campus do a skit about working in a team. 3 guys and 1 girl, in an engineering project group. All 3 of the guys had some issue (too controlling, lazy, not showing up on time, etc). The girls “issue” was that she was the quiet one. They said she had all of the right ideas, smart, guard working, etc, just quiet. The advice given was for everyone to go out of their way to ask her how she was doing, what she thought, what her ideas were. It was like they wanted us to cater to this quiet one in the group (I think they assumed it would be a female, since they’d be one of only a few). Our professor even went out of the way to say the girls couldn’t just write the report or whatever. This guy had two daughters, was the head Prof in GEECS or whatever. He wasn’t letting anything happen. </p>
<p>How often in a real business setting will everyone wait for the quiet one? (guy or girl). The two female Mech Es I know are definitely not quiet. They will make sure they’re heard. I think this is a good skill for everyone. </p>
<p>I think its a skill. One should learn through college work groups how to make their opinions heard. If there are a handful of slow racers, the fast ones shouldn’t run backwards to make it more fair. Just my opinion. Nothing really gender specific. </p>
<p>@Marlene, I’m not looking for a debate either. Nothing I am saying is discrediting your daughter. I’m telling you my experience and the experience of others through 3.5 years. It may be an issue as long as universities pimp diversity. Who knows.</p>
<p>Colorado_mom - you are right. I see this all the time in the robotics group I work with. Even though the girls can handle the technical tasks, they spend less time on them as they are asked to do the presentation and marketing tasks because the boys just don’t represent the team as well.</p>
<p>In fact, my feeling is some of the more “polished” girls have even less chance to do the tech work because they are busy handling the other work that needs to be done and are used to pleasing people who ask them to do it. We as adult leaders need to be aware of this and not take advantage of the girls’ good nature. Sometimes, for expediency’s sake, we ask the same kids to do the same tasks over and over. We need to remember that we should enourage all the students to develop a range of skills. Some of the boys need to develop soft skills as much as some of the girls need technical skills.</p>
<p>Michigan, the expectation is * always * that the quiet one must learn to speak up. I don’t disagree that speaking up is a good thing but I’ve seen my share of overconfident, less able people speaking up too soon and insisting on having their way when a moment of reflection and humility would be a lot more appropriate. I’d love to see a little push in the other direction too. It’s cost my daughter time on labs when she’s been vocal just because a lab partner wouldn’t yield or listen. It’s also a skill to listen to what others have to say, even if they aren’t speaking loudly.</p>
<p>In your skit, you depict the girl in the lab group as the quiet one with intelligence and good ideas. The boys are lazy, controlling, not showing up on time. Wouldn’t it make some sense to take the time to listen to what the quiet, smart, disciplined girl had to say? Lol! She sounds like the key to the group’s success. You can see it as catering to her style or as self-interest. </p>
<p>Just fyi, a good business leader does not overpower his people. It’s an important skill to listen to what each group member has to say and to respect a variety of styles. There are plenty of smart, quiet men who work in STEM-related businesses!</p>
<p>Part of that skit was just to mention how our school, at least early on in engineering, doesn’t want to paint females in any negative light. I don’t think it was any coincidence who the “right” one was in the scene.</p>
<p>And yes, it doesn’t matter if it is the quiet of loud one with the right idea. Both are valid. It was just made to sound like they wanted everyone to flow down and cater to whomever that quiet one is. </p>
<p>Also, in the skit one of the guys was doing all the work, not trusting anyone, just doing it all himself (etc) and was doing it right ,(I think). They just wanted to bring home the point that you needed to give everyone a chance. Which is totally right, to an extent. </p>
<p>I am not saying a business leader should overpower his employees. I’m not saying there aren’t guys that are quiet. I’m saying you can’t expect groups to cater to the quiet one. </p>
<p>Maybe that’s a more male idea. Maybe that’s why there aren’t many female engineers. Like I said though, the rally smart female engineers I know won’t just sit back and take **** from anyone. You need to develop the ability to speak for yourself.</p>
<p>“How often in a real business setting will everyone wait for the quiet one? (guy or girl).” </p>
<p>I’m a female engineer. Over the past 30 years I’ve worked with lots of engineers and programmers of both genders (but mostly guys). It’s not the same as a business setting… projects tended to be longer term. Often the most brilliant and productive coworkers were fairly quiet. Teams can benefit from a mix of traits and skills, especially if there is an effective project manager.</p>