Women in Engineering

MWolf
Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:14:08 +0000

My wife did her undergraduate in CS + math at Hebrew University, and did her PhD at UIUC in CS.

However, when she started at Leningrad (now St Petersburg) State University, she had to deal with unashamed and blatant misogyny from faculty. In one of her core courses, she had a professor fail her on the final (which were oral) on a minor typo in a formula which took her TA 10 minutes to find. When she retook the test (every student can retake it), despite providing perfect responses, she still only got a B, and was told that she was “smart for a woman”. BTW, the professor was Jewish, so she thought that finally she wouldn’t have to deal with antisemitism. She left after a year to immigrate to Israel, where she did her BSc in CS and math.

When we cam to the USA, and she started her PhD, she was unhappy how the “Women in Engineering” was run, which was mostly to complain, but seemed to have no interest in finding solutions or empowering women, so she and a friend established “Women in CS”, which was pretty successful and is still active.

She did have to deal with all sorts of crap, like the male students who claimed that, every time she got any sort of award that “it’s because you are a woman”. Luckily, her adviser was not at all like that, and she had a good core group of friends and colleagues.

As a faculty member, in a department which is actually very women-friendly, she still had to deal with making sure that she was not saddled with more than her fair share of service, like being the same number of regular committees as everybody else, and then ALSO being put on any diversity or women’s issues committee. There was also a number of cases of blatant misogyny in other departments in the College, with ME being the biggest offender.

At conferences she has had to deal with the fact that men will think that the fact that she is talking shop with them at a social demonstrates an interest in have sex with them. She was also talked over, had her ideas belittled, or was ignored and then had her ideas credited to a man who just repeated them. Luckily, she makes allies and doesn’t take crap, and will call men out for bad behavior, for claiming her ideas, etc.

As a senior faculty and being well established, things are easier, but she still had to tell a colleague that, when introducing the members of a Q & A panel, it was inappropriate that all the men were introduced as Dr this or that, Professor this or that, also mentioning where they worked, while she, the only woman on the panel, was introduced by her first name, without mentioning a title or degree or where she was working. She still gets mansplainers, and has had the dubious “pleasure” of telling a man who was quoting an article to her to help his 'splaination, that she was the lead author on that article.

She is doing good work getting more representation of high ranking women in professional societies, and as invited speakers at conferences. She noticed that, when deciding on invited speakers, women were rarely, if ever, considered. It wasn’t even that they were considered and rejected because they were women - they weren’t even considered. When my wife would mention the names of a few women who were appropriate, the response was, almost invariably, “I didn’t even think of her”. It all stems from the fact that, in engineering, women are assumed to be less than men. In general, a woman is considered to be inferior to a man with the same, and often lesser, accomplishments.

She has been extremely successful, overall, and has recently started her position as the director of a major research institute at large state Flagship, so things are going well for her. She is still very active in issues of women in STEM, and often volunteers to speak at middle schools and high schools.

A woman can be successful, but she needs far thicker skin than her male peers, needs to be more aggressive, more ambitious, and more talented for the same level of success. A woman will benefit less from a network of male colleagues than will a male peer.

On the up side, there are more men out there who understand this and are actively working to reduce bias and to increase the number and the profile of women in engineering. Another positive trend is that women in STEM are networking with each other and helping each other a lot more than they were back in the 1990s and 2000s.

PS. This is all stuff from what she has said, as well as stuff which I have seen as an observer.