I am a female. I am an engineering student. I am proud of it, and I encourage all elementary, middle and high school girls who want to become engineers to follow their dreams. As much as I would like to see females pursue engineering as a profession, I feel that the concern on part of governments and university administrations to increase female enrollment in engineering is superfluous.
We live in a society where men and women have equal opportunities to get an education and build their careers, unlike medieval times where women were specifically prohibited from going to school and working due to societal taboos. In an environment where both genders are being equally encouraged to pursue any given field of study, if there are less females in any field of study or workplace, why are we identifying this as a serious problem to which a solution should be sought?
Every year there are reports and articles written over how the female population is one-tenth of a percentage less or more than what it was the previous year. There are many organizations and groups, both governmental and non-governmental controlled, trying to come up with recommendations and projects geared towards increasing female enrollment in engineering programs. What surprises me is that I have never seen any initiative to learn WHY there are fewer females in engineering from the perspective of females. I fail to understand how anyone expects to find a way to increase female enrollment without attempting to understand the root cause(s). When I look at this situation, the only thing that comes to my mind is that most females don’t want to be engineers. Period. Just because someone can choose engineering doesn’t mean he/she wants to or has to.
Sometimes I feel that the society has branded ‘male’ as the ideal human being and the females are being challenged to become the ideal human being, and this accounts for a push to increase female proportions in male dominated fields. Professions such as nursing are predominantly practiced by females. I have never seen a concern to raise the male proportion of nurses. It has become easier for males to freely practice nursing now as it was say 20 years ago, again due to fewer stereotypes, but they aren’t on the hook to prove that they can do what females are doing.
Having said that, I still support groups like Women in Engineering (WIE) and appreciate their efforts. In universities, where currently females are in the minority, it is essential to have a body that represents their interests, ensures a healthy learning environment and tries to prevent stereotypes from developing. Similarly, female high school students should be encouraged to pursue engineering if they are genuinely interested but are intimidated by the fact that they will be outnumbered by male students in class, or that the smaller proportion of females in engineering implies that it is abnormal to have interest in engineering as profession.
In a nutshell, the focus should be to encourage females who are interested in engineering not to be held back by societal norms and pursue an engineering discipline of their choice, rather than forcibly persuading females to pursue engineering to boost up the numbers or using the male ideal to create artificial interest for the engineering profession.
Am3stewa
I appreciate you writing this, but there are a few issues I’d like to address.
First, women weren't simply kept out of the classroom or workforce due to societal taboos. Stigma was part of it, but there were real legal and administrative restrictions on the freedom of female citizens. In the medieval times for example, women weren't allowed to vote. If a woman was married, she could not own property or file a lawsuit, as her legal identity ceased to exist at the time of marriage. Any property that she inherited would be property of the husband. Women weren't held back by taboos alone, they were explicitly barred from institutions of higher education. This tradition was hard to die, seeing as women weren't admitted into Oxford University until 1920. Enough history though.
Secondly, there are actually numerous programs to encourage more men to join the ranks of nursing despite what you have heard. Men are by far the most underutilised resource for future nurses. It can be argued that there is a lack of health professionals, and one way to help improve our health care system is increase the number of nurses. Increasing the number of male nurses increases the number of overall nurses. Recruiting men into nursing is a pretty logical step, so nursing schools pursue it.
I actually have friends, both male and female, who are going through nursing school right now. There have actually been studies about why men choose to be doctors and not nurses. One of the reasons is that when you think of a nurse, you picture a woman. The stereotypes we have about professions are based on our consumption of media and our personal experiences. Most people have met female nurses, there are shows about female nurses, and there are even fetishes about nursing uniforms (but I won't get into the damaging effects the sexualisation of the profession has had on modern nurses right here). Not too many people have encountered male nurses, and when they are depicted in movies (think Meet the Parents) it's always a point of contention or butt of a joke. Somebody invariably asks the male nurse why he wouldn't rather be a doctor. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s what happens.
It even sounds superfluous for me to say female nurse. If I just said nurse, most people would picture a female. The problem this article failed to address is that when I say engineer, the majority of people picture a male. It’s the same when I say mathematician, or physicist. The problem is that young women in high school, who are excelling at math and science, often don't consider engineering as a viable career because they can’t picture themselves in that field. Oftentimes they don't know what an engineer does, or they've never met one.
Even worse is that many young girls are allowed to drop math at a young age so when the time comes to fill out university applications, they don’t have the necessary courses or background. I don’t think anyone should be forced to learn something they don’t want to, but there are societal factors that cause more young girls to give up math than boys and this can hold them back for career prospects.
From a very young age, children are socialised into thinking that math and science (especially physics) is something for boys. It happens in a number of ways (role models, media, gendered toys and advertising, our own parents, and teachers) but the general lesson most Westerners learn as kids is thus: boys are good at math and girls can be too, but that makes her special. It is expected of boys to be good at math. When a young girl doesn’t perform, her teachers/parents are more likely to say that math/science/physics is just not her thing but that’s okay because she’s a girl and doesn’t have to be good at ____. So they let her drop it. I will quickly mention the fact that a generation ago, many Western women had to fight to be allowed into high school calculus and physics classes and that it’s still happening all over the world today, especially by persons of colour.
Studies have shown that this socialisation can play a big role in not just who pursues engineering, but who sticks with it. Currently, women have a lower retention rate in engineering programs. That means more women are dropping out. Some would use this as evidence that women aren’t as naturally suited for engineering as men. However, that is bull as the reason has more to do with sociology than evolution. Studies and interviews of real engineering students have shown that a young man who finds his engineering courses very tough is more likely to view it as a challenge to be worked through. However when a woman runs into trouble during her courses, she is more likely to think that she’s just not smart/talented enough, that she wasn’t as smart as everyone always told her she was and will drop out. This sucks and needs to change, but ignoring the problem won’t help.
I will also quickly mention the hostile, aggressive, male-dominated environment that women, queer, and POC faced and still have to face either on campus or in the workplace. The homophobic, racist, sexist, violent, rape-culture references that populate many of the traditional engineering songs is testament to what they faced only a generation ago and continue to work against. Remember, it was not too long ago that a man slaughtered 14 women because they dared to study engineering.
It is because of these issues that groups like WIE exist. Engineering is a growing, dynamic profession that can help change the world for the better (or just make some cool stuff.) By showing young girls that there are women in engineering who are successful and interesting and don’t pander to the stereotypes of WIE, it helps young women (and men) see that they can be in engineering too. No profession should be gendered and I am excited for the day when I'm not a female engineer, but just an engineer plain and simple.
1ccyblaze
this woman hates men.