Women in Engineering. 61

[Compositepro]

I'm not a woman, and this topic is not of great interest to me, but this blog was quite interesting:

http://www.ecnmag.com/blogs/2015/06...asses?et_cid=4617690&et_rid=45570172&type=cta

 

[moltenmetal]

JNieman: I don't have anything to do with hiring people in the US- nor do I think that it is at all in the interest of an employer, or for an employee of either sex, to try to come back to work a week after a birth! I know many female engineers in the US who returned to work very rapidly- in six weeks or less- and as a parent, to me that seems very sad.

I never equated discrimination on the basis of skills with discrimination on the basis of gender- you drew that inference, and incorrectly I might add. In fact, if you read my post, I stated that we observe far more variability amongst engineering candidates as individuals than we do between the sexes, which in our minds proves that there is no performance difference between the sexes that matters to us from a hiring perspective- and that includes the potential time off for child-rearing. Furthermore, we make that assessment primarily by observing performance on the job while the candidates are co-op students here, rather than relying on interviews and other nearly useless recruitment tactics- that allows us to set aside irrelevant criteria that often stand out in an interview-based process (it's tough to fake your way through what amounts to two four-month interviews!).

I merely pointed out that in a milieu where there is a legal requirement to hold a job open for a parent on mat/pat leave for a full year for each child- and with a mean family size of 2 therefore likely TWO years- what sex you are and whether you are of child-rearing age becomes a material point to the likelihood of whether or not you'll be off for a year or more with a legal requirement for your job to be held open by the employer for your return. Is that a SMALL issue? We know we can work around it, and we get plenty of notice to plan, but we do not consider it a "small" issue! If you think employers don't consider that to be a potentially meaningful, material issue when making employment decisions, especially amongst small employers who have much less ability to react to big changes in their headcount, then you're kidding yourself. Is that an argument against the mat/pat leave law here, and the ~$10k worth of UI premiums that go along with it? Not in my view. But to expect that the issue will merely be ignored as minor/irrelevant is ABSURD.

Is that totally unfair discrimination against every woman who chooses not to or is unable to have children? Absolutely- no argument. How can you know that in advance? Clearly you can't! How can you know that the guy you hire won't end up taking the year off instead? You can't know that either, though the odds are pretty good that it will not be the case. Discrimination on this rather flimsy basis happens, guaranteed. Aside from being indignant, minimizing the REAL issue behind it and saying, "It shouldn't be allowed!", do you have any useful suggestions on what might be done about it?

A very similar argument comes up in relation to country of origin. Given equal education and years of experience- assuming those could ever be evaluated so objectively- the candidate who was educated in and who obtained their experience in the local labour market is actually more qualified than one who obtained both outside the local labour market. Rejecting the immigrant in favour of the local candidate in that case is not xenophobia- it's a minimization of an actual, real hiring risk, which is what hiring managers are tasked with as an objective.

It can be demonstrated that employers are often distracted by appearance, assertiveness, affability and articulateness, using these somewhat irrelevant factors as a proxy for real but difficult to measure true performance metrics. This is definitely true in the interview process (which is why we reject it whenever possible as noted above). In some organizations, these (mostly) irrelevant bases continue to influence consideration for promotions etc. and can determine an entire career path. You can learn to fake some of these, but in very practical terms you're stuck with others. Some are highly correlated with how wealthy your parents are, or other issues completely beyond your personal control.

So it goes- we don't live in a pure meritocracy, and never ever will. And even if we did, the attributes that make an ideal employee do not necessarily make an idea citizen and surely do not make an ideal parent.

 

[tstructural]

That's a great article. It falls in line with other "Women in Engineering" articles I've read.

My story - I decided back in my sophomore year in High School (1984) I wanted to be an Certified Public Accountant. I was good at math and my guidance counselor suggested it. I was working full time in an accounting office and taking college courses at night (appx 1988/1989). While working that full time job I realized I was bored not only at work but also in my college courses. I was talking about that problem with my peers at work when the bosses friend (who was in town for just one week) happened to walk past our office and heard me mention college. He poked his head in our office and asked to talk a little about my future. When I described my dilemma he asked if I liked science. "Absolutely I love science" I answered. You need to look into changing your major to engineering. I called a local college that luckily just happened to be having an open house for engineering and I took the tour - I was immediately drawn to buildings and bridges and knew I had found my new major.

Almost thirty years later I'm a structural engineer and absolutely love what I do - Yeah!

But like many of my female peers - I stumbled upon engineering and could easily have missed out.

We as women (and of course men can help with this too) need to make sure that the K-12 girls/young women understand that women are perfectly capable of being engineers. I also like the idea of teaching girls only classes - at least in the beginner level engineering courses. Not all young girls would need that but enough would feel more comfortable NOT asking 'stupid questions' in front of the boys. Again - I'm talking about introductory courses - if she can't speak up in front of men then she will have lots of problems later in the workforce.

 

[rconnor]

Molten,

I agree with you that, especially for small firms, parental leave can cause non-trivial business related concerns.

I feel that you also agree that discriminating against women (age 18 to 35?) because they have a statistically higher chance of taking parental leave is wrong.

But the crux of the matter is these two issues are not equal. Discriminating against women is a much bigger concern which trumps the business related concerns. Frankly, it’s such a perverse twisting of priorities when we’d consider the two to be equal. Note the “we” in the last sentence does not refer to you, molten, but to the culture of developed nations.

To put this in perspective, every aspect of us has been developed over billions of years of evolution for one main purpose – procreation of our genes. But now, this is seen as some nuisance to business. And while we certainly don’t want to prevent people from having kids, we just won’t hire them if they do…or, worse yet but more accurately, if the hiring manager thinks they will. We may not agree with this practice but, hey, a business has to make money, right? So, at the end of the day, we consider it “reasonable” or at least “understandable” that women can be discriminated against based off the single greatest biological driver in order to protect the profitability of businesses.

From a societal prospective, proper care and nurturing of young children (especially in the first 18 months) is essential in cognitive, emotional and social development. Most traits that make for positive, productive members of our society stem from this period of development. But again, the business (which has zero contingency plan…but, hey, that’s not the business’s problem, that’s the women’s problem) cannot handle having our employee away for 12 months, so we won’t hire them. And, again, we might not agree with this practice but it’s “understandable”.

This is wrong, very wrong.

What’s more, the entire logic behind not hiring a women because the hiring manager feels they might have a kid and might take maternity leave is so stupid. Under the same logic, I should never hire anyone incredibly bright and well-qualified. You see, incredibly bright and well-qualified people tend to get lots of good offers from other businesses which they might take at some point. So, you should never hire any incredibly bright and well-qualified people because they are flight risks. I mean, that’s worse than a 1 year leave of absence! Oh, and you better not hire fat people. Because, you see, fat people tend to die younger than healthy people. Having them die before they retire is a major inconvenience to your HR department. Think of all the paper work and finding a replacement; no thank you! Also, make sure to figure out if the candidate has a child with a severe ailment. Because parents with sick kids need to take lots of time off to take care of their kids. And god forbid the kid dies! Then you have multi-year bereavement leave on your hands! That’s such a nuisance! You know who are great employees? Migrant workers! Their residency is attached to their employment, so they cannot leave the company otherwise it’s bye-bye for them! Also, we can pay them pennies-on-the-dollar of what they are actually worth!

Unions and women’s rights groups have fought tirelessly to put in (and keep) legislation against such discriminatory practices. However, as you’ve rightly pointed out, these discriminatory practices still happen. You’ve asked, quite reasonably, what’s to be done about this?

The answer lies in attacking the very concept of equating the two issues (discriminatory hiring practices and business related concerns). Culturally, we’ve slowly fell into demonizing taking time off work to take care of your children or at the very least, institutionally, making women choose between career and family (while also, paradoxically, expecting them to do both). We’ve increasingly been putting pressure on the employee to work around child birth and raising and not putting pressure on the employer to work around their employees taking time off to birth and raise children (employees need to flexible, employers don’t). We need to change this culture. We need to enforce the anti-discrimination laws we have in place. We need to encourage women to go into whatever career they want and not allow discriminatory practices to dissuade them (which plays hand-in-hand with enforcing the laws). We need people to understand that we can appreciate that parental leave can cause business related concerns but we should not justify alleviating those issues at the expense of women’s rights and labour rights.

Ultimately, this is about giving women the legally-protected and culturally-supported freedom to pursue both a career and a family if they so choose to.

 

[KENAT]

So, other than unfunded mandates, what can/should society do to make it easier for businesses to work around parental leave - especially long term?

Setting up some kind of 'refresher training/education' or similar might be one thing but far from the panacea.

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[Panther140]

I think societal constructs play a role here, but I don't think that is the only factor in the overall trends that we see. I don't want to get into a huge essay about evolution, but try to look at these patterns from an evolutionary perspective as well. (Hint: gender roles play a huge part in reproduction, which is an enormous part of what influences evolution).

Keep in mind that you can draw a rational conclusion here without alienating women from engineering. It would be stupid to do that and I honestly don't know anybody who would raise eyebrows at a female for becoming an engineer. A male nurse or CNA, on the other hand??

I think its fair to say that women are more genetically predisposed to be care takers than males are, which is probably caused by their biological role in maternity. Those patterns lend themselves to medical and education field very well. No, these are not binding statements and they don't mean "women cant be engineers", so don't play the sexist card on me just so you don't have to ignore this idea! I hate that lol. If you want to get to the bottom of this you have to consider the idea that nature is a factor here...

Now lets talk about getting more women into the trades!

"Formal education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." ~ Joseph Stalin

 

[JNieman]

Humans are quite far from being controlled by evolutionary urges. So far that I think it's silly to pander to evolutionary concepts in tailoring modern society. That's the "lizard brain" in us which is a minor and very small part of what humanity's identity is. We've grown beyond standard evolutionary needs.

And who still bats an eye at male nurses?

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

 

[moltenmetal]

Discrimination on the basis of factors which do not affect job performance is wrong. Period. Full stop. Do we agree on that?

Discrimination on bases that affect a business financially is another matter- a much, much more complicated one.

Let's do some thought experiments here:

Is it wrong to select candidates from "better" schools preferentially to those from "poorer" schools, all other factors being equal? One can argue that the "better" schools are harder to get in to, and the entrance barrier therefore serves as a means of pre-selection amongst large numbers of candidates on the basis of actual merit- marks as well as other non-academic achievement- as well as (arguably) offering at least the potential of a superior education (attracting better or at least more renowned instructors etc.). However, in most places, where education is not fully subsidized by the state, favouring candidates from schools of higher reputation is, in fact, favouring one socioeconomic class over another- it's favouring a group whose parents are richer than the parents of another group. That's always wrong too, isn't it? Don't we believe in the equality of persons?

Is it always wrong for a business to consider physical beauty a criterion for hiring, in any role? 100%, in every case, or just in cases where the person has no public role?

What about disability? Physical disability? Mental disability, i.e. in the form of a learning disability?

I fully agree that discriminating against women of reproductive age solely as a result of concern over potential job interruption due to child-rearing is wrong, in absolute terms. I'd further argue that because we see much more variability in abilities between engineering candidates than we do between the sexes of candidates, doing so is ALSO a really bad business decision. I agree that educating the business "public" is a long-term path forward. I merely question whether or not it is reasonable to expect private businesses to be the means by which social changes toward a society which matches our ideals in regard to equality is realistic. To accomplish it, you'd need to replace the entire notion of "merit" in hiring with something else- or to redefine that notion of "merit" along lines which are not 100% aligned with the interests of those private businesses. What would replace that kind of "merit", or on the other hand, the reduction of hire risk etc., to achieve these societal equality goals is not at all clear to me. I can tell you that the methods which seem to be used in unionized environments are not all that egalitarian in practice! Rather, they're very often nepotistic, tolerant of mediocrity and protective of incompetence in my personal experience.

One method would be to set a quota based on the current composition of the labour market in a particular profession, assuming you have data of sufficient quality to make that possible. Once you're a business of a certain size, you must by law have a staff which has the same proportion of (male/female, homo/trans/hetero, race x/y/z etc.) as is found in the general population. Each new hire would need to be selected only from that subset of candidates which meet your quota. That's still a merit-based process, but with an over-riding "egalitarian" principle. But you cannot in that case avoid the certainty that you will be rejecting candidates of superior objective merit, purely on the basis of criteria that do not materially affect job performance- a form of discrimination that we have already agreed is absolutely wrong!

In my mind, that is an extremely undesirable process, and outcome.

I honestly think we're headed in the right direction in the long term. Societal norms and values may change too slowly for some, but they do tend to change for the better. The public sphere can provide leadership, education and guidance without being prescriptive and heavy-handed (which inevitably generates a backlash which can be counterproductive to say the least). I also think we can do a lot of harm to what we desire- or seem to - a society based on true intrinsic merit rather than irrelevant criteria which in fact have nothing whatsoever to do with real merit- if we try to force an ill-conceived notion of equity that transcends merit.

 

[beej67]

So, other than unfunded mandates, what can/should society do to make it easier for businesses to work around parental leave - especially long term?

In my very humble opinion, we as a country need to decide what we willing to pay for a woman to take time off work and have a kid, and we should pay that to every woman out of the public dime, regardless of that woman's salary. Then if a company wants to do something else for her, the company can do that on a voluntary basis.

Forcing companies to bear burdens for women employees that they don't bear for male employees creates a disincentive to hiring women. If we want things to be fair, then we need to make them fair.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[JNieman]

In one extreme we have this anecdote Bill Gates has recited:

Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering.

And it's an important point, in my opinion. We can't create an environment that disenfranchises women from contributing their potential to entire industries. The last engineering firm I worked for was almost all male. For the first handful of years, the only women in the company worked in office administration capacities. When I left we had one young woman working as an EIT. Whenever the office admin ladies required maternity leave (three times for two women) it was no big deal and we all covered the extra work. One of the owners took over billing, we all shouldered the phones, someone else took care of payroll, we distributed clients by name and handled the correspondence that was done by the woman who was temporarily gone. When I took paternity leave, my workload was shouldered by others, and I was always on-hand to advise by phone, and on occasion I'd come into the office and assist.

In a small business, I think a good team environment can shoulder things in better ways than some large companies, because typically in a small business, you have more "multi-talented" people. Before we HAD the capacity to hire purely overhead administrators / office assistants, we all did those tasks ourselves. The workload were things we were trained on and still knew how to handle (or at least with some refresher training, we could) and things went smoothly.

Obviously for an engineer, it comes with different challenges than an office assistant, or a CAD drafter, or even a project manager. Someone in a design capacity on projects that may be spanning years... there are more difficulties. I do not believe they are insurmountable, however.

I've never been in the military, but I have worked with several Marines in my time. One of the phrases a couple of them taught me was "Semper Gumby" and at first it made me chuckle but it's actually a good, clever reminder about a very important credo, especially in small businesses. "Always be flexible" - don't be one of those types that sits there saying "That's not my job," or "It's not my problem". Instead accept the challenges in front of you and do what it takes to satisfy the currently unfulfilled requirements. If it is the labor or contributions of an employee, find a way to create redundancy for the sake of security.

Typically a person won't take leave from work until very, very late in pregnancy (assuming fair-enough health) or until after birth. So it's not like there isn't a large amount of warning that you're going to be in a bind.

You can hire a 'temp' or 'contractor' for many positions, if the rest of the company can't shoulder it alone.

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

 

[KENAT]

Just realized we've got a bit side tracked here, the issues related to women's role in reproduction aren't just confined to engineering, and yet in many other sectors the proportion of women has increased significantly - or in others they've been the majority for a long time.

So, presumably then at a fundamental level these issues are not insurmountable, unless there is something unique about engineering.

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[Panther140]

Humans will never ever be without the influence of evolution. Evolution is what MADE us this way. Until sexual attraction and genetic traits/genetics stop existing in humans, everything we do can be traced back to effects evolution has on us.


"Formal education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." ~ Joseph Stalin

 

[beej67]

Just realized we've got a bit side tracked here, the issues related to women's role in reproduction aren't just confined to engineering, and yet in many other sectors the proportion of women has increased significantly - or in others they've been the majority for a long time.

So, presumably then at a fundamental level these issues are not insurmountable, unless there is something unique about engineering.

I, as an engineer, would contend that most other professions are basically a bunch of BS. And that it's a lot easier to take 3 months off of a BS job than an engineering job.

I am willing to admit I have a biased perspective, though.





Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[SNORGY]

Especially since three months is the average length of the employment look-ahead for engineers at most of their places of work.

 

[SLTA]

After reading this thread, y'all seriously ask why women aren't keen on engineering? Good grief.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[SNORGY]

Don't get me wrong, SLTA.

My personal experience after 34 years has been that more than 90% of the female engineers I have ever worked with are better than 90% of all the male engineers I have ever worked with.

Oh no!

By that rationalization, there is a possibility that I might really be a woman.

Oh well. At least I'm not an MBA.

Seriously, though...

Some 20 years ago I worked at a place where a woman was hired as a project engineer. After 3 months, the classic "performance probationary period", she cleared her performance appraisal and within days applied for maternity leave. She was subsequently terminated and, allegedly, she sued for wrongful dismissal, and apparently, won. I'm not sure which side of the ordeal was the more scuzzy, but it's one of those situations where no matter what side you're on, stay neutral.

 

[moltenmetal]

It troubles me when our profession is sold like soap to candidates of either sex. We've been in an oversupply relative to demand for at least two decades, and yet there seems among some people an almost religious zeal for encouraging others to pursue our oversupplied profession. Worse still, I see people who are not members of our profession, recruiting people to join our profession, based on the false presumption that there are too few of us, or to achieve some political/social agenda. That is NOT in the interest of the candidates in my opinion. There's a huge difference between keeping options and opportunities open and equal, and falsely promoting a profession as "in demand" when the statistics conclusively prove otherwise!

The parental leave issue is a concern in every profession- I'm certain of that. In engineering, is this a factor in the persistence of the sex imbalance in our profession? Without a doubt. But because we have so little public role as a profession, the present sex imbalance doesn't trouble me any more than the fact that at present, the medical student population is more than 50% female. Are we missing out as a society because some exceptional candidates for our profession become discouraged due to ill treatment or selection bias arising from sex stereotyping? Absolutely- just like it's a certainty that we're still losing some exceptional candidates of both sexes as a result of economic disadvantage. It's tough to legislate changes in societal values and norms, though we do try- firing people because they need parental leave is no longer tolerated as an example, and that's a huge improvement.

The only profession where sex imbalance troubles me at present is teaching, where it can be shown that the lack of equality of mentorship/role modelling can be detrimental to the educational outcomes of either sex. Right now there are problems with too many females teaching elementary school (where arguably this issue matters most) and too few females teaching math and science in high schools- and that clearly has to have an effect on the number of females entering math/science oriented programs.

 

[kacarrol]

I think that one thing an employer could do is offer on site daycare. I bet employees would be happier to return to work, and work longer hours, if they knew their children were right there and you could drop in anytime to see them. Just to clarify, the parent would still be paying the fee for the daycare. I find it interesting that some other businesses have picked up on this, particularly GoodLife and Ikea, but I haven't seen any traction in the employment world.

 

[JNieman]

As a parent, that'd sure make my life immensely easier and make me a much more loyal employee. That value would be incredible.

_________________________________________
NX8.0, Solidworks 2014, AutoCAD, Enovia V5

 

[GregLocock]

Logically one might assume that industries with a high proportion of professional women (teaching, nursing) would be first in line to offer on-site childcare. Not round here.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[KENAT]

SLTA, I'm starting to think you may have a point. Sorry for my part in this.

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