Can Work Environment Be Discouraging?

It is unrealistic to think that any given profession will be equally populated by men and women; some will tend to be male dominated, some female dominated. Anyone who says it is somehow 'bad' that engineering is male dominated must also say that it is 'bad' that some professions are female dominated, such as elementary school teaching, nursing, or working in a company's 'HR' department.

The linked article gave a number of reasons why women left the engineering profession, such as 'working conditions', 'pay', 'family issues', and so forth. Well, most of the men I know who left engineering left for those same reasons. Some examples: three left to become teachers (2 in high schools, one at a university), two moved into Marketing, one retired early due to a family health issue, one left to take over a family business.

Well, most of the men I know who left engineering left for those same reasons. Some examples: three left to become teachers (2 in high schools, one at a university), two moved into Marketing, one retired early due to a family health issue, one left to take over a family business.
Your data doesn't agree with the hypothesis and has thus been ignored.
Mrs cat just read me a bit from a book she's reading about bad research into gender stereotyping.
They were running a test to see if boys prefered tradionally 'male' toys and girls prefered 'girls' toys. In the test they found that all the kids went for the Lincoln Logs (which they clasified as an 'engineering/boys' toy) so they removed them from the test.
Incidently they found the girls played with the trucks if they were pink and sparkly... go girls.
Del (I went for the string and paper)

On average, the female mind seems better at repeating information than really understanding it. My ex could not figure out why she couldn't get her MA, just because she couldn't come up with anything original for a thesis paper. I had another female P. eng., a new neighbor, come running over because she was having a chimney fire. She had been using wood heat for years, and it was brand-new to me, but I tried closing the vents on her airtight stove and that was the correct procedure.

Real talent, like Hedy Lamarr, can break the stereotypes, after some skepticism and resistance with a flavour of prejudice, but any major talent faces resistance of one kind or another. Benedict Arnold is famous as a turncoat in the American Revolution, but for years he had been the best General for the rebels, routinely being court-maritalled by other Generals after each victory. Once, he even broke out of jail to turn the tide of a battle. Minor talents waste their brains on office politics instead of work wherever you go, and women demanding "equality" are one variety of that.

We are not identical, despite considerable overlap in the possible range of talents to confuse the issue. We are symbiotic when properly understood. An adopted child will blend into any culture except for changing their colour, etc, but few kids can be raised to emulate the other gender.

One of the reasons is Labour handling. Another is working under foolish MDs. A doctor can check a patient and prescribe medications but an engineer need workmen for doing most of the jobs. Doctor can take decisions independently while engineer is monitored by Management.

This is going to come off as prejudice, but i don't care. The world isn't fair and it shouldn't be. I read a report by a psychologist who made several interesting points regarding men and women, culture and why we do the things we do. His point was that culturally speaking, women play it safe. They are biologically predisposed to do so as it helps gaurantee the lives of offspring. Men are biologically predisposed to not play it safe. Hunting, making war, exploring, these sorts of things. It follows that intelligence and higher natural abilities would be rewarded through success of riskier endeavors while failure would carry the risk of wiping out those genes. So it stands that men have more intelligence in their numbers than women for the simple reason of evolution. He also pointed out that men have a greater propensity to stupidity and sociallially unacceptable behavior; nature rolling the dice if you will. If you look at the facts they closely mirror his thesis. There are many more men than women in jail, there are many more men born with below average intelligence, and there are many more men born with above average intelligence. History has also shown this. Think of all the genius' you can name. How many are women? And I solidly reject any argument that gender stereotypes played a role in the celebration of female genius as I have found genius tends to be uncovered one way or another regardless of social situation. So while i applaud any human being for doing the best they can, and I do believe women can make a valuable contribution to science and engineering, i believe their numbers in these fields, and their lack of stamina point to a lack of ability. Furthermore I believe this blog has an undertone of gender war and it erks me people keep trying to make the sexes equal. We never will be. We do make perfect compliments to each other, and neither would have survived without the other. Why isn't that enough?

You should read the book Mrs Cat was reading.
There are a few flaws in your post, a noteable one be the assertion that women have less stamina than men. I think the reverse is true.
I do take your general point that we should celebrate the differences and stop worrying bout it.
We should also take care to avoid stereotyping... I remember as a kid being aware that I "shouldn't" play with a cut out dolly and clothes toy as it was 'girlie'.
I did want to play with it... see it's scarred me for life, that's why I wear ladies underware.
Del

Co-Evolution Quarterly #36 has a nice collection of articles on men taking risks. If there were two primitive tribes, and each needed volunteers for a dangerous job critical to group survival, such that the population was reduced by 25% in a season, the group with the all-male volunteers would rebound in population much quicker.

Other interesting bits of data: Newsweek recently reported that, on average, both men and women want to be offered 20% more money to work for a female boss. There are just more ways to get into trouble, I guess. Still, it means that there is a solid economic foundation to the "glass ceiling." A woman in charge must tend to run up the personnel expenses faster than the average bureaucrat.

Also, when modern kids interact on-line, they sometimes appear as "avatars" - assumed identities. The interesting bit is that some select an avatar of the opposite gender, and so you can test the same kid's mathematical ability as either a boy or a girl. The avatars show the same male superiority in math. Why would boys do worse when imitating girls, and girls blossom as boys? My guess is that refusing to admit to understanding math is one more way to prevail in an argument. This works well for a tactical advantage in a marital dispute, but just gums up the works in engineering.

Re: Introducing women to an all-male environment. One time, a little start-up bought the cheapest desks available. Things grew, and several employees were hired, mostly engineers and secretaries. Then the boss decided to spruce up the office a bit, and sprung for adding "privacy panels" to the front of the secretaries' desks, hiding their knees. Engineer productivity went up 20%.

Another firm had a policy regarding unusually attractive applicants for secretary jobs. "Hire them - we'll teach 'em to type!" - on the theory that the company would do better at attracting engineers. One day, a very handsome engineer was in for a job interview, and the HR guy got a note from his secretary: "Hire him - we'll teach him engineering!"

I think I should clarify my "lack of stamina" comment. I was simply stating that they tend not to stay in engineering fields. Their reasoning for leaving engineering I am not prepared to speak intelligently about, whether it is to have a family, pursue another career or whatever. Perhaps it wasn't the best argument for my case, but I made it and feel comfortable leaving it as is. Del I am certainly interested in reading the book you suggested but atm i do not remember if you named it in your previous post. Could you do so now please?

Gee, I can't imagine that there's any bias faced by women in engineering, on the basis of the comments here on the "feminine mind", intelligence, and cetera. According to this study, you can reduce test scores by 10-15% just by repeating negative stereotypes to the student, to remind them they are second class. So for the man whose math skills and intellect are marginal, it's a survival skill to make derogatory remarks about women's abilities.

The effects of education on women are a hazard.

I've been reading and learning from this site for a few of years and have never felt the need to post but... the real question is... do you really have to ask this question when you see the responses that have been posted!!!!!! As anyone in this field knows the job is stressful enough without this type of prejudice from your coworkers (and yes do I dare say it) male subordinates. The moderators should be ashamed that they have allowed this BS stereotyping to take place on a professional site. I hope that some of these comments were made in jest for if not they certainly do not reflect male intellectual superiority.

I should add that I'm 62, one of the first men to be raised by a feminist. Until six years ago, I was mostly hanging out with feminists, giving them the benefit of the doubt and some time to get their bearings. Over the years, I have worked with or for several women I'd be happy to hire, recommend, or work with again. However, I've finally learned to admit to myself that someone saying that she is qualified by being a woman, not by being exceptional is someone out to grind her own axe, not perform in an organization. To borrow a phrase, when it comes to logic, many women just don't get it. To mistake rationalizing for rationality is intellectual squalor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Vid: http://www.wimp.com/superiorityillusion/

Easyway,

There are always people who take advantage of 'causes' to further their own ambitions or to make claims that are not justified. That doesn't give license to generalize about the social group they belong to (women) in the way that you did in your post.

Frankly, if those remarks were made about people of a certain race, for example, it would have been stripped out of here in no time. Gender, apparently, is still grounds to make slurs without any consequences. The site is a loser, and engineering maybe is a loser, for displaying this prejudice against women. You should review what you said there, and apologize.

On this issue I'm as unrepentant as a new non-smoker. Women are not a race, they are a gender, and as such, have evolved different abilities. People are based on a system that only tends to group characteristics by gender, even getting sexual attraction "wrong" 10% of the time. So there will always be women who are suited to engineering, but they will always be a minority.

If a child is raised by parents of another race, he or she can easily be indistinguishable from natural children except by colour. However, you can only raise a girl to act like a boy or vice versa if the child is either predisposed that way, as in about 10% of births, or ambivalent about sexual identification, as in another 10-20%. That is a lot of chances, but should not be considered the norm for us all to strive for.

I tried to believe the opposite for fifty years, and it just got crazier in my head. The turning point for me came in a "support" group I belonged to. (At need, the women got support, while the men got their probationary status reviewed.) One of the women came in all excited by the news that a troupe of baboons had decided that none of the males was a suitable leader, and was doing without one for a while. This was great news for the women who dreamed of a world with mostly women, and enough gays to donate sperm. I happened to have available an excellent article on baboons, co-written by a man and a woman, detailing how they regulate their infant survival rate to match the food available. Female infanticide of others' babies was a major factor. The woman with the original story, and ALL of her friends decided to never read primate studies again. That is when I realized that it was hopeless for me to wait for women to see the logical corollaries of equality, which should sometimes favour men. When feminism was born, the question of nature vs nurture was wide open. Since then, sociobiology has done a tremendous job of explaining behaviour. By ignoring it, the women's movement has turned from a force for justice into a sexist cult.

We are all "damaged" to some extent by our up bringing. Growing up in a 'radical environment' is obviously likely to result in complete rejection of those values.

The trick is to realise the pendulum needs to settle to midway.

I see you recognising this in a number of statements, but are still convinced there are "set models" of vocational aptitude .

It is my belief there aren't. There are just individuals with degrees of aptitude for 'needed roles'. Gender is a false measure. It just happens to an easy physical distinction - (except when it's not)

It's always been interesting that "sexists" exist on "both sides" - but of what?

Well of "sex", as in "who is on top in bed" I guess, rather than "work" or "aptitude" or "efficiency" or "progress" or "discovery" - which have little 'statistically' to do with gender if you evaluate by "impact".

E.g. Madam Curie - nuclear industry. Florence Nightingale - too much to list, but do you have to be female to nurse? No, just have the smarts and aptitude.

The upbringing and culture you're describing is a cult - some kind of 'early feminist tribal society' counterculture. It is just as far from the social norms and laws to which the majority have voted and subscribed, as any 'male supremacist' cult. The women you describe do not represent the typical female who is seeking equal treatment in her education and career. As you pointed out yourself, the male in that 'cult' is not an equal either.

This is not what we have agreed as a society. We have agreed that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men do in our society and made it a law, and we have also agreed to remove any lingering impediments to women's full participation in domains from which they were excluded by our past culture.

As for sociobiology, it is as much a cult as any fundamentalist religion. It uses "scientific" trappings to try to legitimize political agendas which have been repudiated again and again. Everyone knows, these people start with conclusions and then concoct a pseudoscientific experiment to produce the desired results.

Where exactly do your "10%" statistics come from, which you quote with such conviction? It seems to me that you have not succeeded in shaking off the 'cult' mentality, you have fallen for the reverse extreme and worse yet, using statistics which I believe are bogus to make a cult belief look like "science" or fact. I expect better than that in the discourse at CR4.

This study is far from "systematic".

My feeling is if you asked males; the 'reasons' would be the same.

Do half the male graduates make it?

I doubt it.

The whole "study"(& OP) is just reinforcing to women that they won't make it in engineering. At the same time it 'presents' to the Neanderthal that his views are the majority.

Total back step.

I think that some assumptions have been made that are not substantiated within the original context of the question posed (not a shining example of scientific reasoning). No where does it state that the women are going into this field are not qualified. In fact the opposite is stated "after obtaining the necessary degrees". The question posed was why do women find the work environment discouraging? The answer is simple... the arrogance that women should be "tolerated and given the benefit of the doubt". The fact that business professionals can generalize a gender as unable to think creatively, to be irrational, and unable to use deductive reasoning skills is the reason. The assumption that women get jobs because they are women is offensive... if anything the opposite is true. Women need to fight for a place not because they are not qualified but because they are perceived as unqualified by the chauvinistic views displayed here. Do you always stereotype people who disagree with you? I do not feel that I am a women's liber simply because I see prejudice as wrong. I strongly believe that the most qualified person should get the job (male or female). The difference between my view and some of those posted is that I believe the best applicant should earn the job and not that it should be awarded to the best MAN for the job.