This is probably the first time I've commented on the issue of women in engineering outside of 1-on-1 conversation. caffeinemonkey's post came at the right time, I guess
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It seems to me that the fact is, dicks or tits have nothing to do with engineering skills.
Maybe there are "predispositions", be them related to upbringing or the way the brain works, but it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is how good they do the job (or would be able to do the job, when it comes to being accepted into a university).
When a category of people is at a disadvantage, the proper solution is not to give them a handicap (such as a university that would accept a certain number of girls to "improve the situation", pushing out better male candidates), the solution is to find the root cause of their disadvantage and try to fix thatIf it turns out it's some brain structure thing, and that only a few girls have "weird brains" and are able to do good engineering work (I find that theory rather dubious, myself), if that's how it is, then too bad for them, sorry. That said, if there's such a difference, it's quite likely there's stuff most men would have a hard time wrapping their head, but that women could do better
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There is likely a whole family of problems at the root of this, not just one, and they won't be solved overnight. But speaking out when we see the kind of (exclusionary and unacceptable) behaviour morethanreal describes would at least be a start.
Certainly, although I was most thinking about the "positive discrimination" aspect that she mentions in the last paragraph, as well as the whole idea of "encouraging" women to go in engineering.
But I certainly agree that this kind of exclusionary behaviour is wrong, and I would certainly speak out against that. Whether women should be encouraged or not to go into engineering is one question, but I think it's pretty clear that they should not be discouraged.
Personally, I have more stories of men than women putting on enough of a show and then flaming out in some way, if only for the reason that there's just not that many women, simple probabilities... Here, it's a sort of permanent entertainment too, because they can't fire them, so they flame on and on and on... :-P
Speaking only for myself here, I found that story pretty offensive. Discredited and sexist theories based on genetic determinism are not exactly my idea of fun.
The stark imbalance of males and females in specific fields is a topic in which I have a high degree of interest and about which I have done considerable reading. One of the most insightful analyses I've come across is that gender roles which may now be defunct have nevertheless created a feedback loop in the certain professional cultures that now imposes a subtle cultural barrier to evening out the participation of men and women in these fields. For instance, in much of the world engineering was once considered a field suited primarily for men. When the rationale behind this bias was exposed as having no basis in fact and women were gradually permitted to enter the field, they found themselves in a culture that was unsurprisingly dominated by a very masculine perspective. This served to dissuade all but the most ardent prospective female engineers from pursuing a career where they would likely be steeped in a culture that has evolved with scant regard for issues generally of higher priority to the feminine psyche. While both sexes
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This 3-year old paper does a pretty god job of investigating the discrepancy and exploring ways to affect change. This essay doesn't deal with the topic of women in engineering per se but it has some interesting things to say about the interactions of women and the Web.
Very interesting topic. I just handed in a huge paper abour Women in the IT workplace for my Women in Technology list A elective. (difficulties they come across).email me if you want to read it, seeing that I've already thrown out my coursenotes. By far one of the more interesting courses I took at UW!
Preconceived notions about the reasons for a person's success are obviously bad. I think there may be something to the suggestion that men feel threatened by good, talented, female engineers. Uh oh! Somebody can be good-looking *and* a good engineer? I can only be the latter! Not to say that there are no good-looking male engineers, but there is some basis in reality for the engineer stereotypes :P From my perspective, I just want to work with awesome engineers. I don't care about their gender or how they look; I will spend more time looking at their code than their body, and I will appreciate them more for the beauty of their code
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Maybe there are "predispositions", be them related to upbringing or the way the brain works, but it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is how good they do the job (or would be able to do the job, when it comes to being accepted into a university).
When a category of people is at a disadvantage, the proper solution is not to give them a handicap (such as a university that would accept a certain number of girls to "improve the situation", pushing out better male candidates), the solution is to find the root cause of their disadvantage and try to fix thatIf it turns out it's some brain structure thing, and that only a few girls have "weird brains" and are able to do good engineering work (I find that theory rather dubious, myself), if that's how it is, then too bad for them, sorry. That said, if there's such a difference, it's quite likely there's stuff most men would have a hard time wrapping their head, but that women could do better ( ... )
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But I certainly agree that this kind of exclusionary behaviour is wrong, and I would certainly speak out against that. Whether women should be encouraged or not to go into engineering is one question, but I think it's pretty clear that they should not be discouraged.
Personally, I have more stories of men than women putting on enough of a show and then flaming out in some way, if only for the reason that there's just not that many women, simple probabilities... Here, it's a sort of permanent entertainment too, because they can't fire them, so they flame on and on and on... :-P
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This essay doesn't deal with the topic of women in engineering per se but it has some interesting things to say about the interactions of women and the Web.
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