OT - More about Engineers

On 8/4/03 8:16 AM,"PaulaB" posted:

Ellice wrote in message
...
On 8/3/03 9:35 PM,"PaulaB" posted:

My DH is the head of a structural engineering department at a large
consulting firm (many other depts than structural and he's not in the
biggest office). Currently he is over 7 people; 3 of them are female.
His very best EVER draftsperson is retiring soon and she is a 72 yo
female. She is a whiz with the Autocad and other computer drafting
programs and he is wondering if one person will be enough to replace
her. So at his workplace, at least, the ratio is not terribly
lopsided. Just .02. Paula B.

That's great. But, the draftsperson, who undoubtedly is very good at what
she does, isn't an engineer. That said, my dad had a great draftsperson
about 50 years ago, that was a woman, with an engineering degree. But his
boss wouldn't let him hire her as an engineer, and he always felt bad about
that.

Well, I know that! Duh. But I thought it was interesting that Monica
is still in her career of choice, which was certainly nearly all
male-dominated back when she started. Paula B.

Sorry - but a lot of people actually don't know that. Or at least make the
assumption that it's all pretty much the same. I just mentioned it as the
discussion had been about female percentage in engineering - not a slur at
you. It is interesting that she's stayed with that for so long. You have to
be a very detail oriented person to be a succesful draftsperson. Maybe you
can get her to take up stitching with you.

ellice

On 8/4/03 12:39 PM, in article , "Ellice"
wrote:

On 8/4/03 8:16 AM,"PaulaB" posted:

Ellice wrote in message
...
On 8/3/03 9:35 PM,"PaulaB" posted:

My DH is the head of a structural engineering department at a large
consulting firm (many other depts than structural and he's not in the
biggest office). Currently he is over 7 people; 3 of them are female.
His very best EVER draftsperson is retiring soon and she is a 72 yo
female. She is a whiz with the Autocad and other computer drafting
programs and he is wondering if one person will be enough to replace
her. So at his workplace, at least, the ratio is not terribly
lopsided. Just .02. Paula B.

That's great. But, the draftsperson, who undoubtedly is very good at what
she does, isn't an engineer. That said, my dad had a great draftsperson
about 50 years ago, that was a woman, with an engineering degree. But his
boss wouldn't let him hire her as an engineer, and he always felt bad about
that.

Well, I know that! Duh. But I thought it was interesting that Monica
is still in her career of choice, which was certainly nearly all
male-dominated back when she started. Paula B.

Sorry - but a lot of people actually don't know that. Or at least make the
assumption that it's all pretty much the same. I just mentioned it as the
discussion had been about female percentage in engineering - not a slur at
you. It is interesting that she's stayed with that for so long. You have to
be a very detail oriented person to be a succesful draftsperson. Maybe you
can get her to take up stitching with you.

ellice


If you thinking woman leave engineering quickly, you should see the world of
the experimental and theoretical physicist. Of the time I was involved, I
was hardly the only one to fall by the wayside. Only 2 of 30 or so I knew
first hand, stayed with it through to the Ph.D and post grad work required
to land a university job or a research position. And one of them left after
being denied tenure for not publishing enough. I think she is writing code
someplace now for tons more money and fewer hours.

Cheryl

Karen C - California wrote:

Unfortunately, she's not alone. As an adult, I got to know another woman,
whose father was an engineer, who was also allowed to slack off in that
subject because girls didn't need to know much math. If it's no big deal
to an engineer that his daughter is failing math, then who *is* going to
impress on girls that this is an important subject?

Ooooh, oooh, Me. Me! My daughter has already been put in advanced math
classes (for someone in second grade, I think that is pretty good). She
is also reading at a fifth (or higher, that was a year ago) grade level.
Yeah. I am proud of her. AND, I let her know. Her brother is heading
toward good math skills as well (entering first grade, and he can
already multiply (six times four is twentyfour, and he was figuring out
how many mini marshmallows he could have, at six minis to one large, and
he gets four large). I am good at math, but not the algebraic sort. My
mother's mother had a degree in maths and chemistry (obtained in the
late twenties/early thirties, so you now know about one of the
trailblazers), my Dad is an engineer, and DH is a physicist. I
periodically get out my algebra textbooks, dust them off, and work on
another go-round, but it is not my strong suit. Still, DD will be
benefitting from those who blazed a trail before her, including her
grandmother, and her aunt (my brother's wife), who is also an engineer.

Elizabeth

One of my friends, an otherwise bright girl, had some difficulty with Math,
but
didn't work at overcoming it. Her other grades were good enough to please
her
parents, who didn't think it was all that important for a girl to have more
than rudimentary math skills.


Not knowing enough math can do more than shut you out of a job that requires
math -- it can cut you out of other jobs, as well. My younger sister (the one
with the highest IQ in my family) got into trouble in high school algebra. So
she signed herself out, without even bringing it up to my parents (yeah, I'd
really like to know how she did it, myself, but she did!) and took "consumer
math." When she had trouble with chemistry (and you WILL have trouble in
chemistry if you don't have the math) she opted out of that, too. After
graduating, she started at a community college, but it wasn't long before she
flunked the math courses -- again, without letting my parents know! My younger
sister found out about it when she started at the same community college, and
ratted her out. Eventually, she became a legal secretary and right now she is
an event planner for a medical school. A decent job for someone without a
college degree, but when you consider that she wanted to be a lawyer and
practice international law...well, you really have to tough things out
sometimes.

Katrina L.

Ellice wrote in message ...
On 8/4/03 8:16 AM,"PaulaB" posted:

Ellice wrote in message
...
On 8/3/03 9:35 PM,"PaulaB" posted:

My DH is the head of a structural engineering department at a large
consulting firm (many other depts than structural and he's not in the
biggest office). Currently he is over 7 people; 3 of them are female.
His very best EVER draftsperson is retiring soon and she is a 72 yo
female. She is a whiz with the Autocad and other computer drafting
programs and he is wondering if one person will be enough to replace
her. So at his workplace, at least, the ratio is not terribly
lopsided. Just .02. Paula B.

That's great. But, the draftsperson, who undoubtedly is very good at what
she does, isn't an engineer. That said, my dad had a great draftsperson
about 50 years ago, that was a woman, with an engineering degree. But his
boss wouldn't let him hire her as an engineer, and he always felt bad about
that.

Well, I know that! Duh. But I thought it was interesting that Monica
is still in her career of choice, which was certainly nearly all
male-dominated back when she started. Paula B.

Sorry - but a lot of people actually don't know that. Or at least make the
assumption that it's all pretty much the same. I just mentioned it as the
discussion had been about female percentage in engineering - not a slur at
you. It is interesting that she's stayed with that for so long. You have to
be a very detail oriented person to be a succesful draftsperson. Maybe you
can get her to take up stitching with you.

ellice

My apologies! I really posted in haste. Of course I do know that
since I've been married to my engineer DH for 22 years! I should not
have been so snotty. Paula B.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. When I started in engineering at
university in Ontario, we had 10% of our first year class were women and
were highly praised for having the highest percentage of women in
engineering in the province. As for the source of my facts, I was one
of the first year representatives on the engineers council, so I was in
a direct position to know. It is much less stigmatized now than in the
past, but the numbers are still NOT up to par. Promoting science to
young girls is something I feel very strongly about.
Re-lurking
Heather

F.James Cripwell wrote:

When I went to my grand-daughter's graduation, I noticed that most
of the honour students were female. I posted about it on rctn, and since
this have done a bit of enquiring. You may well find your information
about females not going into sciences and engineering is out of date.
There seem to be major changes going on, *right now* in fields where
females are doing better than males. Science and engineering are some of
these. I would suggest you get some extremely up-to-date information on
this, and it will probably surprise you. I have heard that in some
universities, females now are 50% of the freshman engineering
students. And the proportion of females to males still seems to be
increasing, in engineering and sciences.



Beth Katz ) writes:


My sisters are both civil engineers. One founded her own traffic
engineering company and is doing quite well. The other works in
evaluating projects for their environmental consequences. Both are
great engineers with a much better fashion and social sense than
I have as a computer science professor.

While I've known engineers and scientists who fit these jokes
wonderfully, I've seen far more engineers and scientists who
are fascinating individuals. Yes, they/we look at the world a
bit differently, but the world needs a wide variety of people.

I'm posting in this thread to remind everyone of the subtle effects
of such stereotyping in jokes.

There are far too few women going into engineering and the sciences.
Girls in middle school and earlier hear these jokes or subtle snippets
of them and get discouraged from continuing math and science study.
Many pre-teen and teen girls want to be like everyone else or at
least not the object of ridicule. The message they get is that
being an engineer is nerdy and undesirable. Some of them decide
to do it anyway. But others take another path.

There have been studies of computer classes in high schools
where the guys think they know the material well and the girls
think that they don't know it very well at all. But in reality,
they know it about equally. So the guys continue on and the girls
get discouraged. And our university computer science classes have
maybe 3-4 women and 20-some men. The jokes certainly aren't the
only problem, but they are a reflection of society's stereotypes.

Yes, I forwarded the first set of jokes to my family. But I work
against those stereotypes with my kids and other young people.

Singing Peggy Seeger's "I'm Gonna be an Engineer":

Flying Folk Army's version of the song (3.8MB takes a while to load):
http://www.flyingfolk.ca/audio/engineer.mp3

--
Beth Katz







--
Jim Cripwell.
The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of one's life, any
time that is spent in stitching.
Adapted from a sign on The Cobb, Lyme Regis, England.

One of my friends, an otherwise bright girl, had some difficulty with Math,
but
didn't work at overcoming it. Her other grades were good enough to please
her
parents, who didn't think it was all that important for a girl to have more
than rudimentary math skills.

I was HORRID at Math in grammar school; in fact, all the way up through 8th
grade. It took me forever to figure out things like telling time & counting
money and I remember sobbing over multiplication and long division as my mom
(with infinite patience) tried to help me with my homework. Our work paid
off, though. When I hit Algebra in 9th grade, the little light bulb in my
head went on and it all made sense. I never was good at those Logic word
problems or those stupid problems about Joe & Bob filling a swimming pool
with two different sized hoses, but understood enough Math to make it
through Trig. & Calculus and to get by in my Chemistry & Physics classes.
What annoyed me later was that none of the problems in the books (Algebra,
for instance) seemed to have anything to do with real life so that many
students wondered why they were being asked to learn it. They should
involve problems like drip rates or medication dosages, for example, so that
students can see how they are used in the professional world.

I'm very happy that my parents didn't just say: "Well she does so well at
reading that we won't worry about her Math skills".

My DH, who barely made it through high school, and would have failed
completely if not for P.E. and Shop :-) used more Trigonometry in his
years in Precision Sheet Metal than I ever forgot. Sheet metal CNC
programming pays very well - without necessarily needing a college degree of
any kind - and kids who are borderline in school might consider taking that
extra Math class if they realized that not all jobs using Math need a
college education. Who'da thunk that all that stuff about tangents and
angles would have a practical use??? :-))))

Liz from Humbug