• Many Women Leave Engineering, Blame The Work Culture
    86 replies, posted
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;45674183]Reading the article; one of the women they interviewed said this: She left due to male dominated culture (Male conversation topics, long hours, demanding lifestyle, and career focused expectations) While I agree that there are issues with sexism in the work place, long hours and a "demanding lifestyle" is the very nature of an engineer, being male doesn't exactly excuse you from either. The study argues that maybe employers desiring to keep people around should "rebalance work and home"; and while I agree completely, people need to also realize that the company exists to make money, not be convenient to you. People need to do a hell of a lot more research before they get into a field.[/QUOTE] Male conversation topics? What, you want guys talking about nail polish or something? (or other something women talk about)
[QUOTE=Devodiere;45674252]Also when the majority of people working there are male, does it count as sexism if they discuss male conversation topics? It just seems like something that occurs in any workplace dominated by one gender. A big part of these surveys is to be wary of the reasons people report things and if they actually lead back to the cause you're looking for. For issues like not getting promoted, you can easily blame it on something obvious like being female, but just as with everyone else who isn't promoted there's a million more factors at play and just believing it was due to gender discrimination doesn't make it so. Whether women face more or less discrimination is definitely something to be explored, but self-reporting is notoriously flawed.[/QUOTE] Tbh - I didn't see sexism used in the article. A different work culture is not necessarily sexism, which is I think why the article avoids the two. There's similar challenges facing men who probably enter fields like nursing and other fields which tend to be female dominated. [editline]14th August 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Zeke129;45675995]I've never heard of a Canadian university doing this. I'll be living on-campus, but it's in a three-bedroom apartment.[/QUOTE] Aren't a lot of dorms apartments anyway? Will admit though, still find the idea of a university campus kinda odd. Mostly because our unis tend to be spread over the whole city.
[QUOTE=Rocâ„¢;45687153]Male conversation topics? What, you want guys talking about nail polish or something? (or other something women talk about)[/QUOTE] To me, the conversation topics didn't nag at me, but the 'long hours, demanding life style' bit. I work about 45 to 50 hours at my job and love my job. I don't quite understand how that makes it a male-dominated culture when I see women working just about as many hours at the local coffee shops I frequent as well as a few restaurants, and they all have mixed feelings on their liking/disliking their jobs regardless of hours and life impact.
[QUOTE=mastoner20;45692710]To me, the conversation topics didn't nag at me, but the 'long hours, demanding life style' bit. I work about 45 to 50 hours at my job and love my job. I don't quite understand how that makes it a male-dominated culture when I see women working just about as many hours at the local coffee shops I frequent as well as a few restaurants, and they all have mixed feelings on their liking/disliking their jobs regardless of hours and life impact.[/QUOTE] In a 45-50+ hour career, a lot of women have to choose if they have children or not, since it is still kind of socially expected that women raise the children. Men generally don't have to choose between having a career and family, they can usually have both.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;45687253] Aren't a lot of dorms apartments anyway? [/QUOTE] Dorms here generally refer to a building where each floor is just rows and rows of bedrooms (and sometimes you don't even get your own) with a few communal washrooms on each floor. I suppose in a way it's a 20+ bedroom apartment, in the a way a prison also counts as that. Except in prison you don't have to go to the other side of the building to shit. [editline]14th August 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=A_Pigeon;45682782]Waterloo does afaik[/QUOTE] Ontario is the USA though
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45675995]I've never heard of a Canadian university doing this. I'll be living on-campus, but it's in a three-bedroom apartment.[/QUOTE] On the subject of living on campus your first year, definitely do it. The majority of my friends in college came from my 300 person dorm in freshman year. I even have a friend who grew up 5 minutes away from the college, and he still shelled out the money to live on campus the first year. Clubs and classes are great and all, but the acquaintances you make in your first year will pay off tenfold.
Girls aren't taught to think of Engineering as a suitable job for women and become foreigners in the male dominated environment. Guys aren't taught to think of Caretaking as a suitable job for men and become foreigners in the female dominated environment. I don't think this is a matter of discrimination as it is merely a feeling of not belonging with the rest.
[QUOTE=Coffee;45674432]It probably doesn't help that almost every engineering/computer science class at university is 100% male.[/QUOTE] I went to a uni open day a few weeks ago. 95% attending the seminar for computer science were guys and the few girls there were visibly timorous. It was kinda awful thinking that some of these neckbeards could be acquaintances within the next six months. [QUOTE=Swilly;45674676]I go to Clarkson, avoiding the discussion of that shithole, the place is filled with dude-bro, introverts, average joes all going through the differnet majors. The biggest thing making people drop out? [B]Fucking League of Legends.[/B][/QUOTE] I also saw this. Casual tournament posters on every wall and enough "Dat Ashe" shirts to clothe a third-world country.
[QUOTE=Simski;45696374]Girls aren't taught to think of Engineering as a suitable job for women and become foreigners in the male dominated environment. Guys aren't taught to think of Caretaking as a suitable job for men and become foreigners in the female dominated environment. I don't think this is a matter of discrimination as it is merely a feeling of not belonging with the rest.[/QUOTE] Totally this. Gender roles are a serious issue that still exists and is a detriment to both males and females. This is why people say feminism is not only a case for female empowerment, but empowerment for males as well. That said, this article/study doesn't really tell us much we don't already know. A similar case could be made for males in female dominated fields (to a lesser extent, of course). The solution to this problem won't come from an exclusive change in the workplace, it needs to be everywhere. We need to stop making toys that are designed for specific genders, stuff like that Lego women scientists set is a good step, because when baby dolls are being marketed towards girls and firemen playsets being marketed towards boys, the problem grows into the problem we see exhibited in higher education and in the workforce.
[QUOTE=Valnar;45692820]In a 45-50+ hour career, a lot of women have to choose if they have children or not, since it is still kind of socially expected that women raise the children. Men generally don't have to choose between having a career and family, they can usually have both.[/QUOTE] [video=youtube;KUwjNBjqR-c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUwjNBjqR-c[/video]
[QUOTE=Simski;45696374]Girls aren't taught to think of Engineering as a suitable job for women and become foreigners in the male dominated environment. Guys aren't taught to think of Caretaking as a suitable job for men and become foreigners in the female dominated environment. I don't think this is a matter of discrimination as it is merely a feeling of not belonging with the rest.[/QUOTE] While this seems like correct reasoning, it simply doesn't follow the data. Generally, the more gender equality a country has, the less women there are in engineering fields. This is the opposite result that one would expect if women were kept out of those fields because of gender stereotypes within the culture. I had made up a graph based on official data in the past to show this correlation. Here it is if anyone is interested: [URL]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18R3scD_0N091TJwk1pcKDUw3deDhaA9yjaJSkwNjmTA/edit?usp=sharing[/URL] There are a few (3) outliers in the data, but if those are ignored, then the negative correlation between gender equality and women in engineering is pretty massive. Even with the outliers included the correlation clearly exists. If anything, this seems to indicate that the freer women are, the less likely they are to choose engineering as their career choice.
[QUOTE=sgman91;45698772]While this seems like correct reasoning, it simply doesn't follow the data. Generally, the more gender equality a country has, the less women there are in engineering fields. This is the opposite result that one would expect if women were kept out of those fields because of gender stereotypes within the culture. I had made up a graph based on official data in the past to show this correlation. Here it is if anyone is interested: [URL]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18R3scD_0N091TJwk1pcKDUw3deDhaA9yjaJSkwNjmTA/edit?usp=sharing[/URL] There are a few (3) outliers in the data, but if those are ignored, then the negative correlation between gender equality and women in engineering if pretty massive. Even with the outliers included the correlation clearly exists. If anything, this seems to indicate that the freer women are, the less likely they are to choose engineering as their career choice.[/QUOTE] One issue that I see with comparing GII and Percentage of women in engineering is that they seem to be measuring different things. GIL looks like it has to do with how much loss of achievement women have compared to men. [URL]http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/how-gii-calculated-and-what-are-its-main-findings-terms-national-and-regional-patterns[/URL] So a country might have a low GII which means that those women engineers don't have much loss of achievement, but women in that country may not be encouraged to become engineers.
[QUOTE=Valnar;45699262]One issue that I see with comparing GIL and Percentage of women in engineering is that they seem to be measuring different things. GIL looks like it has to do with how much loss of achievement women have compared to men. [URL]http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/how-gii-calculated-and-what-are-its-main-findings-terms-national-and-regional-patterns[/URL] So a country might have a low GIL which means that those women engineers don't have much loss of achievement, but women in that country may not be encouraged to become engineers.[/QUOTE] Can you explain the very consistent and massive negative correlation? Why would more female achievement in a society be correlated with less female achievement in engineering. If anything I would think that at least a small positive correlation should exist if gender stereotypes are to blame since women gaining achievement in normally male dominated roles is a sign of decreasing female gender stereotypes.
[QUOTE=sgman91;45699292]Can you explain the very consistent and massive negative correlation? Why would more female achievement in a society be correlated with less female achievement in engineering.[/QUOTE] It could honestly be a coincidence. The gii is an index for income inequality for all fields. It looks like they don't show granularity for different fields, like engineering, accounting, etc. Being an income inequality index, it misses out on other aspects of gender equality which they talk about on their website. [url]http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/what-are-limitations-gender-inequality-index[/url] This missing info can be relevant to explaining why women aren't in engineering as much. You are also comparing an index that looks at lot of fields of work to one specific field of work.
[QUOTE=Coffee;45674432]It probably doesn't help that almost every engineering/computer science class at university is 100% male.[/QUOTE] Do you not see the blatant flaw in your logic? women don't want to take engineering classes because there aren't enough women in the class -> There aren't enough women in the class because women don't want to take engineering classes
Some notes as a software engineer: 1. When I tried Electric Engineering (Technion) something like 20% of the students were female, including my then girlfriend. 2. In Software Science (Haifa University) it was closer to 30%-40% female students. 3. LinkedIn tells me all the girls I knew in school got better jobs than me (Intel, Google, Elbit, etc.) 4. In the first company I worked for the division manager was female, as was my team leader. About 40% of the software team were females. 5. I figured it was more typical for defense companies because of the steady work hours and relative job security, however: 6. In my next company the CEO was (and still is) female, as is the CEO of the daughter company. The software team is also 40%-50% female. 7. We did a lot of projects for various larger companies where indeed plenty of developers and software managers were, you guessed it, female. 8. I now work for SanDisk, where for some reason there are far fewer female developers. The ones there are still hardcore. 9. In most companies I worked for work hours are generally flexible enough that male or female you can manage to get home in reasonable hours and actually, you know, raise children. Overtime is usually reserved for emergencies and specific, limited periods in the development cycle. In some defense companies they even have a policy of letting mothers of young children leave an hour early. 10. People who don't have a problem putting in lots and lots of overtime do indeed get to do plenty of overtime. They aren't usually the first one to get promoted. You get promoted for being good enough at software management, of for being a good politician. The latter type is usually the type that gets other people to do overtime and take the credit. 11. Regarding "male conversation topics", in my experience once enough of the workforce makes it past 30 conversation topics usually involve children (and aw god childbirth), holidays abroad and politics. And apparently once enough people make it past 40 it's pretty much all diets and healthy lifestyle stuff. 12. Finally, while I'm a card carrying nerd, most software people I ever worked with are just normal people with reasonable hygiene and are mostly married. I never met an alcoholic programmer. Not even a Russian one. Also I'm married with children too.
[QUOTE=ScumBunny;45701181]12. Finally, while I'm a card carrying nerd, most software people I ever worked with are just normal people with reasonable hygiene and are mostly married. I never met an alcoholic programmer. Not even a Russian one. Also I'm married with children too.[/QUOTE] This one is one of those stereotypes you don't see in the wild any more. Back when programming was some arcane art, sure you'd get the weirdy beardies who drink a lot and have no concept of hygiene programming software for your company. But now that computers are so ingrained and anybody can learn to program (maybe not engineer software, but program at least) by themselves, the weirder programmers tend to end up holed away at home posting on Reddit or something. They stopped existing in jobs because they just don't tend to get on with teams, something core to programming in the modern world.
[QUOTE=Swilly;45674614]The most annoying engineers I've found are the ones that think because they're an engineer they can comment on Quantum Physics, Psychology or my personal favorite, History of Media. Not because they've taken any of those classes, because 'I'm an Engineer, I know what I'm talking about'.[/QUOTE] Shut up, what do you know, Im an engineering and i actually -do- know what im talking about, As an engineer, i can confirm that all engineers do infact know what they are talking about -whatever- the topic, simply because we are engineers. ------------------------- Well to be honest, I think many engineers do know quite a bit spreadout throughout topics, especially the ones with access to the internet, The amount of stuff you end up reading you do tend to pick up bits and bobs here and there. For example, did you know that Magnetic Amplifiers were used in German V2 rockets? along with older turret aiming systems, rather then vacuum tubes as Magnetic amplifiers are far more reliable......? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A MAGNETIC AMPLIFIER IS?!?!?!? NO? OF COURSE NOT, I DO HOWEVER, BECAUSE IM A MOTHERF**KING ENGINEER!
[QUOTE=Valnar;45699958]It could honestly be a coincidence. The gii is an index for income inequality for all fields. It looks like they don't show granularity for different fields, like engineering, accounting, etc. Being an income inequality index, it misses out on other aspects of gender equality which they talk about on their website. [url]http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/what-are-limitations-gender-inequality-index[/url] This missing info can be relevant to explaining why women aren't in engineering as much. You are also comparing an index that looks at lot of fields of work to one specific field of work.[/QUOTE] So you're saying that they are unrelated topics? If they are related, at all, they should have either some common cause or be a cause for each other. I would be happy to redo the data if you have a better indicator of equality.
[QUOTE=nuttyboffin;45701810]Shut up, what do you know, Im an engineering and i actually -do- know what im talking about, As an engineer, i can confirm that all engineers do infact know what they are talking about -whatever- the topic, simply because we are engineers. ------------------------- Well to be honest, I think many engineers do know quite a bit spreadout throughout topics, especially the ones with access to the internet, The amount of stuff you end up reading you do tend to pick up bits and bobs here and there. For example, did you know that Magnetic Amplifiers were used in German V2 rockets? along with older turret aiming systems, rather then vacuum tubes as Magnetic amplifiers are far more reliable......? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A MAGNETIC AMPLIFIER IS?!?!?!? NO? OF COURSE NOT, I DO HOWEVER, BECAUSE IM A MOTHERF**KING ENGINEER![/QUOTE] [video=youtube;rp8hvyjZWHs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp8hvyjZWHs[/video]
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