Women in Engineering: A Different Perspective

I went to engineering school at Rochester Institute of Technology. The school is named the Kate Gleason college of engineering – yes, named after a woman. In my year of mechanical engineering students (1993 – I was on the 10 year plan), we had maybe 4 or 5 females out of +/- 100 students. That’s not much, especially at an engineering school named after a woman.

I know there is a push to get women into technical jobs. I’m all for having more women working in engineering, but I think coercing them is the wrong thing to do. They shouldn’t be in engineering because someone somewhere in the government or public service feels slighted if everything is not exactly 50/50, or to counter the perception from some that women can’t do dirty men’s work.  Women should be in mechanical engineering or one of these other STEM fields because it’s what they want to do, and because they are good at it, not because of someone else’s conscience feels violated by nature.

Disclaimer: After most of my sentences here, you could place the words “on average”. I recognize that you can find specific women who thrive in very manly jobs, and men who are likewise not under the fat part of the bell curve. You find women who are bigger, stronger, have better moustaches, etc. than specific men. I’m not looking at individual extreme cases, I’m looking at averages of numbers of women that you might meet throughout the day.

It’s not a secret or a revelation that women are good at problem solving, math, creative pursuits, visualization, and organized thinking. These are all the things that are required to be good at engineering. When I see the concentrated effort to specifically recruit high school girls into STEM degree programs, I feel a little bad for the girls. She wants to take accounting, or nursing, or psychology, or medical technician work – all of which are commendable pursuits for anyone, but she has to listen to this impassioned harangue from someone who has a chip on their shoulder that doesn’t have anything to do with what the girl in question wants to do, or is even good at.

One of my favorite TV shows is Big Bang Theory, which of course features 2 female scientists – Bernadette, the microbiologist, and Amy, the (real life) brain scientist. They seemed to have naturally gone into their fields (unlike Leonard, who was pushed into science), but also do the dress-up thing as well. One memorable scene was when Amy was encouraging a bunch of young girls to go into the sciences while she was wearing a Snow White outfit and putting on make-up. Just to say, being a scientist is in no way incompatible with being a girly-girl. This clip is a little tongue-in-cheek. You gotta have a sense of humor.

Interestingly, Amy (Mayim Bialik) has spoken extensively in public about our topic here, girls in STEM.

When I think of how misguided pushing anyone into science is, I think of the scene where Leonard, Sheldon and Howard make fools of themselves in front of a classroom of uninterested girls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rITtvpKbJW8

It’s hard to think of a better way to discourage girls (or anyone for that matter) from doing science than this.

Here’s how I arrived at being an engineer: I lived in the boondocks, but I loved riding my bicycle. If my bike broke down, I couldn’t just take it in somewhere to get fixed, I had to fix it myself. So mechanical stuff became fun for me, because it gave me the independence that a bicycle gives a kid in the boondocks.

I went to the state employment offices and took tests to see what I was good at, and what I was interested in. The test said that my aptitudes and interests intersected at a few professions: editor, bricklayer, systems analyst (today’s IT pro), pilot, and engineer. That made it easy. These  tests really just amplify what you already know about yourself, and they are a good way of seeing things more clearly. This is what I would recommend for everyone starting out after high school, if they still give this type of test. Don’t let some two-bit activist with an over active conscience tell you what to do. If it turns out that you want to be an engineer and you have the aptitude to be good at that, then that’s what you should do.

Parents should really be having these discussions with kids, but parents sometimes abdicate their responsibilities. Observant parents can see the natural talent in their kids as well as their real interests. School career counselors should also be there to help. Kids don’t always know what they want or even what their options are, and parents should be the front line.

These days the “you can be whatever you want to be” thing is a little over-done. I wanted to be a musician. And I did become a musician for a short time. Until I figured out that I was really no good at it, and it was a terrible way to make a living in the first place. I was just not wired to be a musician. There was a huge disconnect between playing music in church, or in high school and playing music for a living. It was what I thought I wanted to do, but I was miserable when doing it.

For a while, I wanted to be  a philosopher. But the problem is that “philosopher” isn’t a real job, unless you write books, teach, or preach, or something else that makes philosophizing useful. I just didn’t know it wasn’t a real job.

I really didn’t know much about the working world, even as I was making decisions that would affect the rest of my life. We (as parents/professionals/public service/government) ought to do more when it comes to talking with kids about what kinds of things you can do for a living. I think we start pushing STEM before kids know what their choices are, and that’s not fair.

“Follow your passion” is something that we need to stop saying to people. Passion is not enough. You must also have some aptitude or qualification, in some cases you need the right temperament, or background. Gender is not a qualification, but there are other things that you may not be able to change that might push you in one direction or another. Passion makes for a good hobby, but not necessarily a good profession. I love being an amateur musician, but I was too idealistic about what kind of music I wanted to play to do it professionally. Being passionate/idealistic in a hobby is much easier.

…but because I’m married, I’m of course getting another opinion on this.

Kim, my wife, is an architect. When I think of architecture, I immediately think of Ayn Rand (who was a woman) and Dagny (who was her fictional woman railroad architect protagonist in Atlas Shrugged). So to me, my wife being an architect is completely natural. To Kim, however, she saw the road to becoming an architect somewhat of a struggle against stereotypes.

Kim participates in the Women in STEM program where she mentors a local female college student who is pursuing some sort of STEM career, and helps her through the hurdles that Kim ran into in the course of getting started out. The people she mentors have already chosen a STEM field, and Kim is just helping her with some real-world mentoring that kids often need. This is kind of an “old girl’s club” to give girls the same networking advantages that the much maligned “old boy’s club” gives boys. Kim feels that the organized promotion of females into jobs where there is a perceived lack of females is a good thing, because “girls are brought up to play with Barbies and dress-up. Boys are brought up to play with dump trucks (and bicycles, I might add)”.

Helping girls that have already made the choice to pursue STEM is a great thing. Sometimes the inequality can make girls feel lonely or self-conscious, and whatever we can do to help them through it or avoid it is helpful. So I applaud what Kim does, and hope programs like this have a real impact. Focusing on girls who have already made the choice is the right thing to do.

But I oppose pushing girls in general into STEM. Here’s why.

I don’t think it is any accident that people are born with different aptitudes. Its because as a society we need all kinds of people. We have people who are undertakers. Would you do that? I know I wouldn’t. But there are people who are interested in that work, and we need them. I couldn’t think of any punishment more severe than doing accounting work. Yet there are people who enjoy that, and we need them. I would make a terrible chef. I could not be an interior decorator. I would be the worst salesman on earth. People are different, and we need those differences. Differences are not something to be afraid or ashamed of. Differences make things interesting, and the world needs people who are different from one another. Evolution favors and promotes differences.

Women are different from men. This is not news to most of us, although there are some deniers out there. Biologically. Psychologically. Emotionally. Socially. These differences are real, but they do not disqualify women from being good at the skills needed to become scientists or engineers or architects or welders or mechanics or mathematicians or programmers. I agree that we benefit from multiple perspectives, but I’m not a believer in forced diversity. I think things will shake out naturally as they should. And no, I don’t believe a 50/50 balance or equal distribution is necessarily the right or the best outcome. Adding women to the STEM workforce will rejigger the balances, which is fine – remove the barriers and let it work itself out – find its natural balance. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be a forced march.

Why is there not a push to have more male waiters, or child care pros, or nurses, or teachers? There’s definitely a double standard here. And then why aren’t we concerned about having more female building maintenance workers or mechanics? Are we only interested in opening new fields for women when those jobs are higher pay, we aren’t going to look at opportunities across the board? This is part of the inequality problem. You can’t cherry pick a solution. If you want equality between the sexes, you have to take it across the board, the good and the bad. That’s what equality is.

Truthfully, we can’t argue that the sexes are equal, because we already know they are not, there are real differences, and the differences are good things. Equal access and equal opportunity is what we should offer to everyone, not just with gender differences, but all differences. You still have to make judgments based on qualifications, but everyone should get an equal shot and be judged on their ability to do the job.

I worked for a time in electronic assembly houses in California. They employed primarily women for delicate electronics work, often under a microscope with tweezers. There was a reason for that – women typically excel at fine detail. I also worked at a bank in the proof-and-encoding division, and that was 90% women. It was part time work that gave great pay and benefits. Should we push to get more men in there? Why? Do you really think we need ham-fisted assembly of micro-electronic devices? These people got jobs by excelling on a test, and it just happened that all the winners were women.

The real reason that you shouldn’t target women to promote STEM is that if we are going to end “the -isms” we have to stop using government regulation and irresponsible activism to perpetuate them. In the same way that you can’t end violence with violence, you can’t end sexism with sexism, or racism with racism. Pushing people into science because they are women is  sexist, and thus perpetuates sexism. Using racial quotas for education or employment or immigration is racist, and thus perpetuates state sponsored racism.

People should get into a particular field because they A) have an interest in it and B) have the aptitude for it. Not to ease someone’s over active and misplaced conscience. Is it a good thing for more women to be employed in STEM? Yes, definitely, but not because of a government mandate. Allow them to do it. Allow them to be interested and qualified. Hire them and pay them equally for the same position and experience level. Don’t push them or guilt them or allow activists to pressure them into it.