First things first. Female engineers are awesome, and they are doing an excellent job in every discipline of engineering. Without them, the Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) could never advance as fast as it is doing nowadays. But, how many times have you seen the female students being singled out and their work seen with overly critical eyes because of their feminity? Quite a lot I guess despite the increasing number of them present in these courses. They have to prove themselves over and over again just because their peers tend to think they cannot do it as good as male counterparts. Moreover, they do it just because of some screwed up gender bigotry towards females just like when they drive.
Both genders are equally at fault for creating sex-based biases and jokes that typically tend to become conventions about how we see the world around us. Men are generally perceived as clumsy and insensitive while women are associated with being, well, women, and we need to remove these biases in our workplaces if we want a better productive workforce.
Recently, a mechanical engineering senior at the Eastern Washington University wrote a comprehensive open letter regarding gender biases he sees in STEM fields and sent it to the editor of the College Newspaper The Easterner. He addressed to all women in the campus and told them how they were treated with bias at different levels and thus they weren’t equal at all. Although it may seem feministic, the root of the problem is buried far beneath what normally appears to us. Here is the complete letter:
So, you see the kind of bias we are talking about? It starts from the elementary school onwards and females never eventually stop facing it. STEM fields need to focus on this matter and showcase the brilliant work women scientists, engineers and mathematicians have been doing for all these years. This way we can help future Marie Curies and Hypatias to make the world a better place! What do you think? Let us know in the comments!
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This guy is so biased in his narrow minded view. Half the stuff he has mentioned are also experienced by male students and are equally applicable to all other minorities (migrants, lgbt, disabled students, etc) and not just women. For example, certain moniorities are also discouraged from engaging in science subjects. Teachers hardly overlook students because of their gender – it’s because of their intelligence level – not all males are engineers. Being rejected by peers because of interests applies to male engineers more than anyone else – girls tend to stick together more than boys- it is the male engineer types that get rejected stereotypically. I could go on but you get the idea. This guys just lost the plot about male engineers and probably thinks male engineers are cool – yeah right! Lol
This is something I had thought of but did not put it together in a way that this gentleman did. He is right about and the excuses and fears that others have placed on us to stop women from getting these.