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Women Engineers.... 44

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What we need is less men. That way the m/f ratio would improve and we would not have oversupply resulting in lower salaries.

HAZOP at
 
%51.5 of the population of the US is female.

The m/f ratio is already such (although this is mostly due to a 5 year differance in life expetancy).

If you apply a correction to the the data for gender and the minority population of the US (%25.15 of the population are minorities). The total percentage of the US population that make up the groups of women and minorities is %64.45.



A question properly stated is a problem half solved.

Always remember, free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it!

 
I have worked with all sorts of engineers from different backgrounds and genders.

There are many different types of 'talent' and 'methology' which may/or may not be based on gender background.

But to risk making a stereotype, In my experience, women tend to be better with the people side of things than men. This is an important skill as we all have to deal with a client of one type or another.

I do agree though that diversity should not be sought for its own sake as this would be reverse discrimination.
 
I've worked with some good female engineers. Not many though. Most of the successful ones I come into contact with have self confidence skills that supersede their engineering skills.



- Steve
 
I disagree with the "while males" comments. In some countries like Canada we import so many "others" of so called "caliber" that white males are becoming rare in engineering.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against anyone at all as long as you can show your respect to others ect.. (and your worth sometimes)
The problem is that I have seen more and more lately that they discriminate against "European background" people to put their own peoples ahead despite not deserving it most of the time.
The extent of this is not the case in other countries like the US.

This is unfortunate. If this keeps going like this then it won't ever matter what skills you have or how good you are, all that will matter is who you know and what skin colour you have.
I don't think this was the intention of Canadian leaders when they made the policies they did ect. (although the caliber of leaders is another story....)
We should get over the fact that one guy burns in the sun [shadeshappy] and the other doesn't and just relax.





[peace]
Fe
 
OSPE is an organization to "advance the professional and economic interests of our members". So they go about it by increasing the supply of engineers, go figure.

HAZOP at
 
How are they increasing the supply?

[peace]
Fe
 
FeX32: by encouraging girls to learn about engineering, such that some may take it up as a career. Which increases the supply, which, owg would say, harms the "professional and economic interests of our members".

I've always felt that last part, about not encouraging newcomers in the interest of our own job security, particularly distasteful and short-sighted. As a young engineer myself, I know I have a lot to learn before I could reliably challenge my elders in this profession, and by the time I am ready, they're probably thinking more of retirement anyway.
 
I have no vested interest in engineering salaries. I am retired. I know that increasing the supply of a good (engineers), reduces the price(salary)of the good, all other things being equal. Of course if we get lucky and the economy booms, then it may be that having a large supply of engineers in Canada will be good for Canada. In that case I may benefit as a citizen. However it may not be good for the engineers. It seems to me that OSPE is working on increasing membership rather than pursuing its mandate.

HAZOP at
 
I graduated three years ago from Mechanical, in my classes we had between 5-10% females. We jokingly refer to Chem Eng as Fem-Eng since it was 60% female, environmental was even more. Computer or software was significantly less than Mechanical (if there was a girl in the class at all) and Civil was roughly 50/50.

My hypothesis is that women gravitate towards fields that have a direct benefit to society or to jobs that provide more of a "nurturing" role. They also seem to tend to take an education that will provide them with jobs that are located in a place that has a community feel.

Chemical engineers can participate in making drugs to benefit society (visions of lab coats) and labs tend to be in regular cities, civils can build hospitals and their jobs are found in regular office buildings, environmental is pretty obvious but a mechanical is viewed as dealing with cars or being out on oil rigs and software engineering brings up visions of dark rooms filled with monitors.

I took a job in Fort McMurray one co-op term where the female population is outnumbered 20-1. When I worked out there I felt no discrimination, in fact I usually had an easier time getting my work done because the guys were happy to talk to me. But a lot of girls asked me "how bad it was" they all envisioned a guys camp with disgusting showers and empty beer bottles everywhere. They didn't want to consider going out there because they did not envision a community that they were interested in living in.

Although I have encountered some discrimination at work because I'm a girl I find it is usually rare. To tell you the truth I think being a girl helps me because I find people are more helpful and I have an easier time getting conversation going. This fact tends to offset any negativity I run into.

I have more problems with discrimination outside of work than inside. I know more about car engines and car repairs than the vast majority of my male friends but I get a lot of problems when I try to buy a car or have a repair done in a shop. If I show up with my vehicle to a new shop and have a male along with me I would say 80% of the time they will go out of their way to talk directly to him and pretend I'm just along for the ride even though it’s my car!

When I first started repairing cars I had a lot of problems with the local guys as they just didn't believe that I was interested. Then a couple of them asked me to come help with their cars, in modified cars with tight restrictions under the hood a tiny pair of hands is a big benefit! On the other hand I needed them to help with getting the transmission out. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

I think in the end we should be trying to promote people equally and encouraging those that have the right skill set into one area or another that would suit them. That way you will get people in the jobs that they will do well in. I don't think that we need to specifically focus on getting women into engineering, I think the numbers prove that they are going into it they are just picky about which one they get into. When promoting certain types of engineering you may have to have a variety of job examples to make sure you don't exclude different groups (women may be more interested in mechanical if they knew they could have a role in developing artificial hearts) but that's the only way I think it should be tailored differently.
 
Nice post Kacarrol.

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Thanks for the post Kacarrol. Glad to hear you enjoyed Fort Mac. It must have progressed quite a bit since the sixties.

HAZOP at
 
I started out in the all male, all anglo engineering world and now I work in an engineering world that is so mixed and diverse that as an anglo male, I am in the minority.

I ended up having all daughters so that gave me some sensitivity to wanting that my girls would receive any and every opportunity that they should have.

I work around some sharp and I mean sharp female engineers, and some are top level managers. I guess wanting my daughters to excell makes me really respect female engineers that excell.

You can't hide from the gender differences however. KACarrol gets to it with the small hands, vs. transmission comment. Also, men and women think with different sides of the brain. You can't change that. But living in a house full of women as my children grew up helps me realize that women engineers are going to be more emotional and make decisions based more on emotion than logic. Sometimes that is an advantage. The old all male world was just too logical some times.

I have seen some Project Managers make some male engineers pretty mad, but none of them cried. Maybe they broke a hand on the crapper wall in the bathroom, but didn't cry. Maybe the women engineers are luckier that they can cry and release their emotions and don't have to wear their hand in a cast for 6 weeks.

I work for a large company where discrimination is a no-no so women get the opportunities they should. It is real and I think it is good.

I like this new world. I welcome the female contingent. Bring it on girls and kick butt.

rmw
 
I would say that any attempts to to bring the numbers of race/sex/ect to some sort of normal distribution will only result in blowback.

If you force people together, you will cause an opposite reaction. The majority being discriminated against will look at all of the minority being promoted as though they were placed there because of a requirement, not because of their own merit. Likewise, the minority individual will either grow a sense of entitlement which will embolden both them and the majority to conflict, or lead them to question their own self worth, not knowing if they were hired to fill a quota or because they had merit. This outcome is shown by the results of forced integration of all types and brands today.

The alternative is to let people interact and hire as they please. Ultimately peaceful and voluntary cooperation and interaction over time is what breaks down barriers that may exist in the form of prejudice.

This applies to the "sex war" as well, and the voluntary interaction here is absolutely critical, because like it or not men and women are different. Some may not think it fair that they have to work extra to prove themselves capable at what was traditionally a male or female task, but every person has to work the cards they are delt. Proving you are capable, not forcing others to accept that you are, but proving, will benifit all those who come after you.

Additionally, above where I dicuss the means to reach some diversity goal, we should not forget the definition of the goal itself. I find "social engineering" to be a profoundly immoral pursuit. Humanity is too large, complex, and filled with too many perfectly unique individuals going different directions for different reasons for me to be foolish enough to think I can poke it in the right places and get desired change, and I would require a mighty narcisictic streak to think I knew what best shape humanity should take.
 
I think that, given the situation with price competition from engineers in the developing world, we need to encourage innovators of all sexes, races and ages to enter the engineering workforce.

Given that, I find both the SWE and other special-interest organizations such as NSBE are both outdated and offensive. The danger to opportunity in the West is not because of sexism and racism, rather because our shareholders are willing to farm out our work to developing and mostly less competent low-cost suppliers to improve quarterly stock performance. Infighting and promotion of special interests in the West does nothing but decrease productivity with SWE, NSBE, etc meetings during work hours and hurt our mutual cause.
 
This is a problem to know how to view any positive affirmative actions... or how to use them to achieve a desirable outcome.

If it is about filling quotas, where performance and skills count less than if someone can help fill a quota, I would be concerned. The net effect is to lower standards.

On the other hand, if when you look at engineering and see over-the-top unacceptable behaviour that makes life very uncomfortable for female engineers, such that they choose not to enter the profession, I am all for any action that addresses such behaviour. I would hope that all that is needed is to make sure sex discrimination laws are enforced and a policy within HR and with management that says they won't tolerate discriminatory behaviour.
Of course, the trouble with any such legislation is that the people who actually make allegations about such behaviour are as often as not trouble makers or opportunists and that those who really should use the system to correct bad behaviour and attitudes decide the easiest path for them is an alternative occupation.

So if it isn't the case here that women are being kept out of engineering because of discrimination, but that because of the attitudes encountered, women are choosing not to enter engineering then that is a problem that really does need addressing.

On the one hand quota filling will drag down standards where as by making engineering a more sensitive and receptive career which encourages the best to stay with it then standards will rise.

The trouble is how do you change the situation?

JMW
 
So indme thinks that the way to deal with cheaper competition from overseas is to introduce cheaper competition at home.

Interesting perspective.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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