Girls in Engineering- Comic that explains it all

[mikelowry]

Gender stereotyping is the same as racial stereotyping, in that it will never disappear until we make it a non-factor.

Generally, women tend to be different than men. No one can dispute that. But individually, there is as much difference between members of the same sex as there is between members of opposite sexes. So much so, that the generality doesn't matter.

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.

[Kitmor]

Originally Posted by mikelowry

Gender stereotyping is the same as racial
Generally, women tend to be different than men. No one can dispute that. But individually, there is as much difference between members of the same sex as there is between members of opposite sexes. So much so, that the generality doesn't matter.

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.

I agree with you 100% on that. As a guy who is attending his first year of college this fall, I find the way people are going about support women in engineering quite disturbing. I have found that more than half of all the specifically engineering related scholarships available are for women only. Is this how we want to encourage women to go into engineering, especially bribe them? Do we want people studying engineering because they will not have to pay as much for school? Women and men are different, and while I do agree there are social pressures on women not to go into engineering, I don't see how these scholarships are doing anything to encourage interest in engineering.

I know I'll get some hate for this, but as a guy, at least from an education standpoint, I feel that we are considered less important than women because "Men can do whatever they want." And I believe this borders on reverse discrimination.

Just my opinion.
-Kit

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by mikelowry

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.