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This article is about the stereotypes that keep women away from engineering. The amount of women that are in the engineering field is staggeringly low, and also a very unfortunate to society in general. Women bring a different perspective to most things than men, so not having their input has a drastic effect. Since the engineering field is one that requires peer editing of ideas, and the more people there are to brainstorm the further technology advances, especially when there are many different perspectives dissecting the same ideas.
The causes of women not being in engineering is both self-inflicted and society-imposed. A large reason is that many women feel like their performance in the classes must be better than their male colleagues because if not they will be looked down upon. Society also pictures women still in generic jobs and lifestyles. They are pictured as teachers and nurses, and even still stay-at-home moms.
This article outlines many different ways to combat these stereotypes. This includes ideas such as being more personal with all students so that women don’t feel singled out or all alone, and making teachers aware of how they teach the class so that they do not make subconscious comments that could be taken as sexist.
I firmly believe that women must be encouraged to be engineers. Their different perspectives, and attitudes help to advance the technology in ways that the male-dominated society may not have thought of.
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I definitely agree with what you are saying in your blog. In our field, imagination and creativity led us to the inventions that may revolutionize the world. Everyone has a different perspective of the world and the issues that take place within it. To leave a group of people out causes engineering to lose a possibly crucial change to the way we view the world. As you stated in your article, some pressures of society causes this exclusion of women engineers but there is no excuse for these pressures and should definitely be changed. Hopefully in the future, more women will be engineers and I believe this will cause the introduction to newer and never thought of creations that will shape our society technologically and socially.
ReplyDeleteKyle is right. Engineering is mainly a male career. Females tend to wander away from engineering for many reasons. I do not agree with Kyle, however, when he says that women should be encouraged to be engineers. I tend to believe that society seeks balance and that the market’s (labor market in this case) “invisible hand”, as Adam Smith called it in his book ‘The Wealth of Nations’, leads to the best outcome. If more women engineers were really needed in the labor market, their salaries would go up which would consequently result in more women being engineers. Men and women have different perspectives and ways of thinking and analyzing data, I tend to think; and apparently society, companies, and the labor market in general agree with me; that women’s way of thinking are not suitable for engineering majors.
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