Need an honest answer 33

[sns777]

What do you think of women engineers? Or is it impossible to make such a generalization?

I am a female engineer, 35, married with children so I work only part time, (four days a week). I sometimes feel like I do not get the big important jobs to work on and this is frustrating, personally and professionally. Granted not getting the big jobs is probably due to me working only part time rather than me being female. But I still wonder.

Also I feel my boss doesn't like working with me. Every project I have worked on with him, he transfers the job to someone else eventually (mostly male engineers, but he did once give one job to another female engineer). What gives?

A male opinion and suggestions would be appreciated. I hope I did not offend anyone. I am just trying to figure out what to do. Or is it all in my head?

 

[debodine]

It is so easy (and human) to lump people together based on a common characteristic and think that it is valid to apply a judgment of one person in that group to the whole group...and so wrong.

For example, if I do not enjoy working with a person because I consider them to be an incompetent engineer based on the quality of their work, that is a value judgment and it is appropriate for me to modify my behavior towards them accordingly. For example, I may not hand critical projects to that person because of my mistrust of their ability. (Of course, if I am any kind of leader at all, I will also be attempting to train and encourage them to grow and improve, but that's a story for a different forum).

BUT, and this is a very BIG BUT...the instant I apply the "incompetent" label to any other person because they share a characteristic with the person whom I have determined to be incompetent, I AM WRONG.

For example, if the person whom I have determined to be incompetent is blonde, one-armed, Norwegian, tall, female, and wears blue, if I then consider all blondes to be incompetent engineers, or all one-armed persons to be incompetent engineers, or all Norwegians to be incompetent engineers, ad nauseum, I am very very very wrong.

I turn 50 years old this year, and I am aware that some of my most detested but deep rooted prejudices still well up inside and embarrass me with the fact that they still exist. You would think I could have conquered them all by now.

This may apply to your boss, gabbott. Though I have worked with (and for!) some highly competent female engineers, there are times I am uncomfortable because my "old" beliefs pop back into my mind. He may actually be embarrassed at his prejudices (if it is prejudice on his part) and people tend to avoid those who make them feel embarrassed.

I have also NOT worked with (or for) part-time managers, supervisors, project engineers or team leaders, so I would have a tendency there to be uncertain about part time engineers as well. And it has been my observation that part time engineers do not typically get selected as team leaders, project engineers, supervisors or managers. Of course I have not seen it all, just sharing my own experience.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Hg... _I_ don't lump people together for classification purposes, but HR weenies _do_.

It's easier to understand after 'sensitivity training'.

A person who behaves in a reasonable way has nothing to fear from the law.

A person who behaves in a reasonable way has everything to fear from their own HR department.

That's another discussion.




Mike Halloran
NOT speaking for
DeAngelo Marine Exhaust Inc.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA

 

[HgTX]

Mike--amen to that! I've come close to getting in trouble in EEO training classes.

Hg

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[IRstuff]

Well, either wrong or prescient...

While generalization is generally bad, people with similiar problems do tend to have similar behaviors.

If spouse abusers share similar traits, why not incompetent engineers?

At least, in my own experience, I've noticed that people who boast about their contributions to previous projects tend to either:
> actually have done little in real work
or,
> actually was never involved in that project at all.

The latter is a real situation where a new employee, fairly high on the food chain boasted about his having solved problems on a project at his previous company. Only thing was, that was also my previous company and a project that I worked on. I had never, ever seen him involved in anything related to that project during the crisis period that he supposedly solved.

TTFN

 

[epoisses]

Generalization is a very handy typically human thing to do, it saves lots of brain computing time. It's not very pleasant for the object of generalization if it happens to be a person...

I think the predominant phenomenon is that people who boast about having been deeply involved in whatever project trigger investigations by their colleagues annoyed by all the boasting. I've met people who didn't boast at all but kept very quiet... who had not achieved anything significant either. I tend to think that the two are orthogonal.

But like it or not, boasting does do miracles with ill-informed senior managers...

 

[HgTX]

IRStuff--depends on the characteristic.

All three of my most incompetent co-workers had dark hair. Guess I better hire only blondes from now on.

Hg

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[TPNY]

Touché, HgTX.

I've been following this thread for a while, but haven't commented yet, just to see what topics would come up. Being a young woman in the engineering field, I have only experienced the prejudices and demeaning behavior from older men who are NOT engineers. My visits to job sites usually include condescending comments or behavior from the supers, GC's, subs, etc. Sometimes I get the feeling they are saying, "a

http://www...

how cute, she thinks she's an engineer." (Of course it doesn't help that I'm petite). It takes talking through the project and the issues before they realize that I know what I'm talking about and then some. I never got that treatment from fellow engineers, nor have any my undergrad and grad professors ever treated me that way. It is frustrating trying to present an accurate first impression that protrays what you know and what you can do for a project when people have predetermined assumptions based on gender and appearance.

By the way HgTX, glad to know that you're hiring blondes!

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, you can take it to an absurd conclusion, but that doesn't make the technique invalid.

FBI profiling is all about finding generic traits of certain criminal behavior.

TTFN

 

[TPNY]

I doubt that most engineers have the psycho-analytical abilities to qualify as an FBI profiler. If they do, then they probably aren't the ones making erroneous assumptions about one's intelligence based solely on gender.

 

[EddyC]

I have no problems with female engineers. Its the female clerical staff that scare & offend me. They seem to think that they're self-employed. They only pay attention to the bosses (sometimes). I have seen this with 3 different employers. Probably has something to do with their educational level.

Zo40,

Think about the educational & intelligence level of those men that you get to interact with at a construction site. The only thing that they read regularly is probably the label on a beer bottle. Even though I'm male, I am slender of build and I think that they laugh at me behind my back.

 

[TPNY]

Now look who's stereotyping!
(I'm just kidding, EddyC. Thank you for the sympathy!)

I'm just complaining about the frustration and annoyance of dealing with it 90% of the time. Even my dad (who is also an engineer) is from the "old school," but he's come around recently... actually he still has the same old beliefs, but to him I'm "the exception."

 

[BobPE]

You bring up a good point Zo40, people outside our profession do have a different view of us as engineers, and espically those that do not fit the stereotypical role of an engineer, women in this case. Some of my best project managers are women. Some of my best hires to date have also been women (hair color was not a key in my selection process though...LOL)

I have confronted contractors and vendors that want to play the sexist game when it has involved my engineers that happen to be female. It is not very comfortable for the contractors when I take them on publically and explain the atmosphere that will surround a job. I do this from a manager perspective, not a male protect female perspective. I think knowing the difference is something we need to all strive to get better at. I feel that my people are my responsibility and that my work places will essentially be blind to sex, color, etc. We all get lauged at behind our backs, and as engineers, there probably isn't much that we can do about that, we are cursed...lol...But in public, there is something we can do and we should not be afraid to make a stand or support others that make a stand.

As for your case gabbott, I agree that the part time status is the biggest hold back in your situation. I too, as a manager, will divert projects away from part timers and instead, relagate them to task work on projects.

Bob

 

[EddyC]

One of the complaints that I hear from younger male engineers in Consulting Engineering environments is that they would like a better male/female balance in the workplace. Younger people prefer to be able to interact with the opposite gender as they are at a pre-marital stage in their lives. Something to think about.

 

[HgTX]

Eddy--Male OR female secretary who doesn't have to answer to anyone is a longstanding truth. It says so in Dilbert, so it must be so.

http://www.jokes2go.com/02/10/j10.html

Hg

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[casseopeia]

Gabbott,

Have you thought about asking your boss why the reassignments, without first making an assumption as to why it might be happening?

Say something like "I would really like to see these projects to the end, but it seems that they get reassigned at a certain stage. What can I do to keep a project to its conclusion? I'm really jazzed about this project... can I keep it."

Then see what the response is.

 

[kchayfie]

The things I hate about being a female engineer

1) telling people I just met what I do for a living and having them respond with a comment about how unusual it is to be a woman in engineering.

2) having my language corrected when I refer to myself as a draughtsman ("draughtsperson") or a chairman ("chair person") or whatever. Maybe its just because I'm too lazy to say the extra syllable but draughtsman just trips off the tongue better.

3) not getting to hear the really good jokes because the guy from the 'old guard' won't say rude things in front of a lady.

Things are definitely getting better though. The grey-haired brigade (sorry to bring it back to hair colour) who can't get used to working with women are fast approaching retirement age and the rest are mostly able to at least pretend we're all equal - and some of them even believe it!

 

[HgTX]

kchayfie #3: I hate that!! I hate the whole "pardon my French" thing, especially from people who know I have a mouth like a sailor. (Though some of them were conditioned by their mommas who beat them for cussing in front of the ladies, or so they tell me, so it's cruel of me to expect them to act any different now.)

#2: Sheesh. How unfeminist to presume to tell a woman how unfeminist her language is. Another one that bothers me is when someone uses the word "he" and then trips themselves up to inject "or she" right after. "He or she" used fluently is fine and dandy, but to make a big production of *trying* to say it is worse than just using the masculine, because it overtly emphasizes women's minority status.

#1: Doesn't bother me (despite my last sentence in #2 above; I guess cocktail party conversation is subject to different standards from professional conduct). It *is* unusual. It's kind of fun to be unusual.

Then there's the shocked "Wow, you actually do know what you're talking about!" which is simultaneously gratifying and annoying (and applicable both to women and to the young or green). What I've been getting lately is a moderate version of that--several times over the last year or two, someone I've never met before has come up to me after a meeting and praised me about how knowledgeable and competent I seem to be. I can't help wondering if they are just trying to encourage an up-and-coming young person or if it really is more of a "contrary to expectations" reaction. Probably a little of both.

To Zo40: I could lose my NOW card over this, but there are worse things than being thought of as cute, as long as they still do what you say. (Likewise with the whole "honey/sweetie" thing--"Honey, how many holes do you want dug and how deep do you want them?" gets me the holes dug just fine and quite possibly faster.) In the right environment it can even be useful--guys are less likely to get confrontational with someone who reminds them of their little niece. For every guy who thinks he can push women around, there's another who has a full arsenal of bullying tactics he's used to using on males but can't bring himself to use on women.

Hg

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[casseopeia]

I might as well chime in, too!

#1 - Doesn't bother me, but I usually roll my eyes. Can't help it. I think most people actually mean well, even if it comes out a bit clumsy.

#2 - We call our 'draftspeople' CAD monkeys.

#3 - I REALLY HATE THAT!!!! Guys, we WANT to hear the good jokes.

To Zo40, I think it actually gets better as you get older, or maybe you just get better at deflecting, I don't know. When I was in my 20's and going to construction sites, I felt intimidated. Things kind of turned around by the time I hit 30. I used to think, at least I'm not petite! I can look many of the guys eye-to-eye. I think being a petite woman may be a bit of a disadvantage, but I'm sure it can be overcome. Find what works for you and your personality. Humor usually works for me. "I'd love to sit here all day and talk about my a**, but the boss says I have to write a progress report about the building."

.

 

[sns777]

When I started engineering 11 years ago, I thought prejudice was fading and nearly a thing of the past. Apparently I was being overly optimistic.

Things I hate about being a female engineer;

1. When a young inexperienced male engineer doesn't know something, he is "green." When a young inexperienced female engineer doesn't know something, she is a "dumb blond" or "clueless."

2. Constantly having to prove, day after day, week after week, ad nauseum, that you do in fact know something.

3. Walking into a room, and the room suddenly qetting quiet.

4. The strained looks and/or comments I get when someone finds out what I do for a living.

Sometimes I just get so fed up I just feel like saying screw engineering! its just not worth it and going and do something else. Then I calm down, remember that not everybody is an asshole and keep on going.

I do agree with HgTX that a little of the cute jokes and "honeys" here and there is not the end of the world. I can deal with that.

 

[sns777]

Oh yeah and we DO want to hear the good jokes!