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Why women didn't get into Engineering (self.TheBluePill)

Barneysparkyway past the wall が 投稿

My dad is an electrical engineer. I was born in the late 60's. He is a very sweet man but he grew up in his time.

I remember vividly telling him I wanted to be an engineer like him, I got a pat on the head and was told girls can't do that.

Today my brothers are both almost homeless losers, I retired at 45. I did give up on school but became a sussesful business woman without any help from my family. Without a doubt I was the most intelligent child raised with loser brothers.

But I wasn't encouraged. My dads wood shop was only for the boys, I could get hurt. BB guns were only for boys.

He is in his 90's now and has started to figure things out. I'm in charge of his estate, joint bank account, etc.

Brothers still try to Lord over me. Doesn't work so well when one has actually lived in a van down by the river. At least they both have trailers now. Dad used to pay for them to come visit. Now ( his decision ) if he pays for a plane ticket it comes out of their estate.

He knows I will treat them fairly, plane tickets and meals and hotels deducted. He's an engineer, he has a ledger.

If I had been born later I know I would have been the one in the wood shop, target practicing etc. My dad deeply regrets his ingranded sexist roots.

So that's why there are not a lot of women engineers who are older. We wanted to be, we were just told we couldn't.

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[–]girlCtrl-Cgirl interrupt 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, even 10-15 years younger... I've got a perfectly decent job now, in my mid-30s. I can't complain about that. It'd be even more decent if it'd ever been the thing I wanted to do. But, no. My dad was willing to engage some of my interest in such things, but he thought I ought to marry a programmer, not be one. He was killing time with me until my younger brother got old enough to do the cool stuff.

My brother is doing fine, but the unspoken acknowledgment of our whole lives has been that I'm the smart one but he'll be the one who actually does better. Some of that is to his credit: he got more of a work ethic because he had to actually work for his grades. But he's making twice what I do, which seems slightly disproportionate. We're both of us the raving success stories of our family, mind, so I feel guilty even thinking about complaining about the state of my life. At the same time, I wonder a lot about what might have happened if someone in my family had, when I was a kid, seriously entertained the idea that I was going to want a career.

Unfortunately, didn't ever get any kind of expression of regret about any of it.

[–]cateml 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm 30 and I still feel this somewhat.

I can't say I ever got the pat on the head 'no you can't be a good girl'. But it was very much not a career that people would suggest for me, even though it was something I was kind of inclined towards. I was always best at maths and physics, loved building things. My uncles were both engineers (back in the day when that meant leaving school at 14 and spending your life in a factory building and developing things richer born guys got the credit for). I remember one of my grandads especially, I'd help him out, and he'd always go on about how I had a 'talent' and an 'engineer brain' because of the way I approached problems.

Definitely it was like "you don't want to do those subjects, you should do something nicer". It was always helping professions, teaching, that kind of thing. If you were going to do maths/physics it was to be a maths/physics teacher.

Its funny because I grew up in, and my school was, quite a modern feminist 'career woman' thing - doctors and lawyers abound. But... and I don't know how much this was a gendered thing or just an era thing... the idea of going into science in an industry sense was never even spoken of - it literally never occurred to me because no one ever really talked about how one went about that. Science just meant academic scientist if you were really smart or science teacher. Definitely boys I knew said it was raised with them, though.

I mean the (totally different) path I went down is a great thing to do. And you know, maybe I'd have hated engineering. But its kind of annoying that something that, at least based on what I tend to be good at and I was good at growing up, I would probably have been better at and definitely would have paid more wasn't something I even entertained.

I've said this before, but I think its actually kind of negative for "STEM" (how I've come to hate that acronym) that its not become shorthand for 'thing smart people do to make lots of money, bow down inferior non STEMS'. Science and maths aren't intrinsically harder than any other disciplines - everything is hard if you truly apply and push yourself to reach the best of your abilities. I used to do science outreach in schools, and I lost count of the amount of kids (more often than not, girls) I came across who thought science wasn't for them because its for 'smart people', and they were good at art/writing and people who were good at those things weren't also 'science people', but then when I actually got them to engage they found they could do it just fine. Science, maths and technology aren't just about being a smug smartypants and making lots of money - they're just as important and enriching an aspect of education as literature, or music, or languages. And also sorts of 'types' can do well in them.