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Women Engineers.... 44

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beej67's observation certainly holds true in the UK where the education system has been manipulated to remove competition and to eliminate any concept of 'pass' or 'fail', or at least to eliminate the 'fail' aspect. The end product of the system, regardless of gender, is full of a sense of entitlement and of the expectation of a well-paid job, yet the same people know less and less every year. Recruitment is becoming a thoroughly depressing experience.

My wife is a teacher and she tries very hard to do her job well, but the problems with education seem to originate up at the top of the system where the policies are set, not among the front-line staff trying to teach in the ever-growing tangle of bureaucracy and socialist B.S.


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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
 
The Teachers Federation here was hijacked by radical feminists quite some time ago with the impact of changing curriculum and school systems to avoid competition, loosers, diminished self esteem by students, minimise accountability, and intoduce an unfathomable method of reporting performance etc etc.

It was really to avoid scrutiny of individual teacher performance.

Luckily for my daughter, they still retained a fair dinkum selective school network, whereby if you consistently performed in the top 10%ile you qualified for the elite, selective school. There the discipline was strict, competition strong and if you did not like it you could always choose the main stream school across the road.


My High School English suffered by having to read novels like Wuthering Heights. I never did manage to read it. Neither did most of the other boys in the class. I have heard there was a resurgence in boys performance in English when Harry Potter made the reading curriculum as most actually read it.



Regards
Pat
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Pat,

For me it was "A Tale of Two Cities" which I never read to completion. I was somewhat surprised when I got a grade D for English Lit, because I'd written a lengthy treatise on the ending of the book even though I've never read it. I assume I got no marks at all for that, so I guess I did ok on the Shakespeare part of the exam - at least I had read the set text. A 'D' was far higher than I expected (or deserved) but the subject was utterly irrelevant to anything I wanted to study.


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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
 
"I often wonder if woman leave engineering because they may have more financial freedom to do so. I am sure a higher percentage of female engineers are married with working spouses than the other way around (i.e. male engineers with working spouses) and so it is not such a drain on a household income for one of the couple to change careers when there are two people earning in the household."

My admittedly anecdotal experience, having married an engineer and getting to know quite a few more through her, has me agreeing with that, Turbokiwi.

"Also many men I work with feel the responsability (real or imaginary) of being the main breadwinner and much provide for their family and hence would put up with much more crap than some of us females would."

Mmmm...maybe so. I know a few (ok several, but not a majority) of male engineers that are complete bounders, and have committed serial monogamy. But, in general, I think people who study engineering, both sexes, are more practically-minded than other people. The old saw about the engineer who put the little black book into a spreadsheet and did a cost-benefit analysis to choose his(her?) best mate is probably closer to the truth than we engineers would like to admit. Maybe we are willing not to put up with more crap, but to work a little more when dating to find less crap-filled spouses?
 
Blag. NEver mind that last paragraph, I misread what you were talking about Turbokiwi. It's late afternoon after two weeks of 12 hour days, and I'm started to get seriously brain-fogged. Logging off now before I completely step on my own...you know.
 
I've heard some men, fathers and not fathers, managers and not managers complain about maternity leave and its "negative" impact on business, morale, fairness, etc. It seems procreation is not high on some people's list of priorities and they don't understand what's involved with it. Makes me wonder about the quality of their home life.

I've met men who left engineering or the corporate climate because they got fed up with the minutiae. They understood they had other opportunities in life and didn't mind taking the risk.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
 
I think that goes back to poorly written public policy. Unless I'm mistaken, when someone in the national guard gets called overseas, the government pays their way and the corporation is only required to hold their spot for them when they get back. If the government wants to value maternity leave in the same way (which IMO it should) then the government should pick up the tab for the leave time, and merely require the company to hold the spot. Laws that force the company to pay for the leave are the problem, because then hiring women becomes a liability over hiring men.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -
 
beej has a point. While the creating of children is a necessary and valuable thing to the community, it should not be the financial responsibility of employers as that will surely lead to employers being tempted to not risk that financial burden. It is very normal for people to see certain things as good, but they still don't want to be the ones paying dearly for it.

Government funded leave time and employers responsibility limited to holding the spot open seems fair as the broader community who gets the advantage, then shares the costs. Even that is a cost to the individual employeer, but probably not so high as to temp employers to discriminate against fertile women so as to avoid that risk.

The only way to eliminate or at least offset that last cost would be for governments to compensate employers for employing fertile women or subsidising them for the costs of holding a job open. Hmmmm that is getting a bit extreme left, even for me.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &
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I can see why American employers are less tolerant of maternity leave - in the UK at least part of maternity pay is covered by the government and the employer is required to hold the post open. The employer can chose to offer additional enhanced materity pay, this tends to be larger companies that can afford to do this, but this usually ties the woman into returning to work for a defined length of time.
 
Not saying it is a bad idea - but having the government pay makes me wonder - WHO PAYS THE GOVT?? YOU AND I DO!!

Had kind of distant relative give birth at about 17 years old to twins - both have medical problems - she has no husband, job, insurance, etc. AND SHE IS PROUD OF HER GOVT subsistence!!! Who is paying - look in the mirror.
 
That is quite a different case to paid maternity leave with an intention and desire to return to work and is frankly a bull$h!!t red herring to the argument.

Government paid maternity spreads the load of the cost of paid maternity leave fairly across the community. It is the community at large who benefits from capable responsible people propagating.



Regards
Pat
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IF SHE HAD A JOB - I would not be so intolerant - because she would have "paid" in to begin with. BUT SHE has no job and maybe the best she can do - is flipping burgers. No education and probably never will!!
 
*gets on soapbox*

ok, Mike? "If she had a job"? Clearly you don't have any children, so you have no idea how HARD it is to take care of one kid, let alone two, and again let alone with medical problems, and ESPECIALLY on your own.

Who exactly would you want to take care of her kids while she got this job? And how exactly would she pay for it? We looked at our finances, and I was basically working to pay daycare on an engineer's salary. Maybe she's just doing the best she can. Whichever it is, I'm sure your attitude doesn't inspire her to better herself or her kids' situation.

*exits soapbox*
 
Perhaps she should not have had children she couldn't afford to raise. Had she not had a "safety net" to fall into she might have made more responsible reproductive decisions.

"On the human scale, the laws of Newtonian Physics are non-negotiable"
 
Wow...just wow...

Dwallace and Mike, I think you guys listen to too much Rush Limbaugh.

So people make a mistake when they are 17 (and I love how you but all the blame on the women) and you believe they should be destined to a life of poverty? Also, you seem to not care that the children will grow up in terrible conditions if no financial support is provided. This will, in turn, lead to a higher probability that the children will turn to drugs/crime later in life which your tax dollars will to pay (jail/outreach/rehab)...probably 4x the cost of any child support the government would offer in the first place.


Also, I sure as heck hope both Mike and Dwallace were on Wall Street protesting the bank bail outs or at the White House protesting the war in Iraq if you are so protective of your tax dollars. I certainly hope that you'd prioritize the health and safety of a mother and her children over bank CEO's and Bush's world policing.
 
Life is too dynamic for mere man to control everything.

My mother didn't marry until she was 28 years old. My dad was the biggest mistake of her life. He was a real smooth talker hiding a beast underneath the good lookin' facade. She ended up with three kids she couldn't support. We all worked and from a young age. My dad was a no account to his dying day.

Mother's family helped us and we all worked. We did without. We never took government assistance because we all worked. It helped me learn team work and I have Mother and my aunts and uncles to thank for that. I have them to thank for my work ethic, too. Aunt Loucille didn't spare her hand on my butt, when I needed it.

It always takes a man and a woman to procreate. Ensure your attitudes are not like the scribes and Pharisees in John 8:1-11. I wonder if Jesus wrote the names of her suitors in the dirt to pierce their consciences. There is nothing new under the sun.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
 
Pamela.

I entirely agree with the basis of your post, but not everyone has the family support and to quote an old John Wayne movie, the true grit to successfully follow that path. Some do need assistance.

I for one am prepared to offer some support to my fellow man.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &
for site rules
 
Nicely put Pat. I feel the same way, and for engineering type reasons in addition to compassionate ones. It's like when you get start getting cracks in a bridge deck. The most economical thing to do is to put some money into repairing them while they are young rather than wait for them to corrode and fester and take the whole bridge down.
 
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