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Unread 09-06-2010, 13:06
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Re: Girls in Engineering- Comic that explains it all

Quote:
Originally Posted by mikelowry View Post
We dont need more women engineers. Saying that we do is just placing more emphasis on the generality that doesnt matter. We are making gender a factor when it shouldn't be. What we need is more engineers, wether they be women or men, or if they are black, white, asian, hispanic, or whatever, it doesn't matter.

Granted, there are cultural norms that dissuade women from becoming engineers, and anything that is stopping individual people, women OR men, from becoming what they want, whatever they want, needs to be stopped.
I agree with you conceptually, and ideally. In practice, it is far, far easier said than done to change those cultural norms than to encourage and to a small extent incentivise women engineers, especially when you consider how subtle and far reaching some of these norms can be. In the context of FRC, teams push girls aside completely unintentionally all the time. So while we're changing the culture, we might as well use a temporary solution that will encourage more people to pursue a path others have (inadvertently or otherwise) shied them away from.

I wouldn't say race and gender are the same in this context. Personally, I think in some instances, race-based encouragement for careers like engineering is much more of a band-aid solution to a problem, and scholarships / aid based on socioeconomic status would be more accurate. But that's far too complicated for the short post I want to make here.
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