Girls in Engineering- Comic that explains it all

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Why is it the engineering community's job to attract young women to the field? Shouldn't we merely be presenting the facts to everyone and letting them make an informed decision?

The engineering community should attempt to market it self to young women for the same reason marketing for any community or business should market itself to a new demographic. The group (young women in this case) has a resource (brain power) that is needed by the organization.

Just because the info that engineering is a beneficial and profitable field to get into is out there doesn't mean that the people we want to have see it are seeing it. Even the best products in the world don't market them selves.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Why is it the engineering community's job to attract young women to the field? Shouldn't we merely be presenting the facts to everyone and letting them make an informed decision?

It might not be the responsibility of "the engineering community", but it's definitely in the interests of of FIRST to attract everyone. If that means targeted marketing, that's what we should do.

The goal is to change the culture. We have a pretty good idea what we want to change it to. However, it's not counterproductive to recognize what we want to change it from. We need to apply forces in the right places and in the right directions to make the changes. If that means implicitly acknowledging that society in general seems to make unnecessary distinctions between boys and girls, so be it. Just leave those distinctions in the background and don't give them undue attention. They aren't a law of nature; they are a feature of the culture. If absolutely everybody acts as if they do not exist, eventually they won't.

[Mikell Taylor]

James, that's a really interesting question. Here are my thoughts.

I think it's less that kids want to buy gendered stuff than it is that well-meaning grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, and friends buy them for them. One of my coworkers had a daughter two years ago and he and his wife were determined to raise her without pink girliness; they bought all her clothes in non-pink colors, painted the nursery green, etc. But all their family and friends, who knew they were having a girl, bought her pink stuff. And of course they're not going to say no to gifts, or throw away perfectly good baby stuff, so this kid is wearing a lot more pink than her parents intended. At some point, will she notice that she and the other girls at preschool wear a lot of pink, and the boys wear a lot of blue, and make some conclusions about that?

As far as toys go, again, I think it has to do with outside influences. I was born around the time Cabbage Patch Kids first became popular, and my aunt was determined to get me one; my mother actually tried to convince her she didn't want me to have one. My aunt finally snuck one to me, because "I needed a doll." (My mom compromised by getting it a spacesuit outfit) I'm the oldest kid in my family, and my parents - including my mother, who was in the first class of female navigators in the Air National Guard, so she was very non-traditional - did a great job of getting me all kinds of scientific stuff to play with as a kid, but never engineering stuff -- they just didn't know about it, or what kind of toys future engineers should have. (Note that my parents DID want me to be an engineer; Mom wanted an astronaut in the family. No kidding.) I never owned my own set of LEGO. My younger brother was given LEGO by family members once he was old enough, and I kind of played with them then, but by that point -- when I was six or so -- I knew what toys I thought I liked best, so I played with and asked for those, not for the "boy" toys my brother was always given. I remember my (male) FIRST mentors being shocked that not a single girl on my team had a clue what an Erector Set was.

I was also heavily influenced by what my friends had. My best friend had a Polly Pocket? Well then obviously I must too! Granted, it sat unused in my closet for all but approximately ten minutes of my ownership of it, but I had to have it!

As a side note, I remember a commercial I saw a couple years ago -- might have been Hasbro, actually -- that showed this multi-purpose toy for boys. There were knobs and buttons and shapes and all these exciting things. The commercial actually said, "He can ride around, learn his shapes, and build things -- everything little boys need know!" or something to that effect. The equivalent girls' toy had a separate commercial I found online. There were no shapes to play with and the thing was painted pink. The commercial made no mentioned of girls needing to learn to play with shapes. That really struck me (and ticked me off, but that's a separate issue).

I'm sure there are plenty of natural influences; as I stated earlier in the thread, it's not that I believe men and women are identical and we all think the same way; we have different biological influences we're all programmed to respond to, and those trickle up to interactions in our society. But I think there's a lot of obvious socialization going on that tends to influence people one way or another, for better or for worse, and we need to understand that and how it may influence people away from opportunities everyone should have.

And I don't want to accuse parents and grandparents and whomever else of ruining kids or anything. I know everyone has the best of intentions in mind. I just think it's easy to fall into stereotypes when it's constantly being marketed to you, and it takes awareness and work to help people work outside those boxes.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

I have a question for the women who have posted. There is no question that boys are more likely to buy engineering type toys than girls. I mean things like robot sets, Lego sets, etc. Why is this? Is there something in our culture that tells girls that building things is not feminine enough, or is it just marketing and branding?

A lot of it is in the packaging and what the product is capable of. I'll give 2 examples that I've witnessed:

1. our team has developed a camp that we offer several times a year to children of different ages. This amounts to about 1/2 of day for the 'beginners'. They are in small groups and each group works with one of our students as their mentor. Last summer I was at one of the camps and took some photos and I kept returning to this one small group - all girls. That's just how it worked out. I noticed that they had taken the legos they were using and made a face on the floor - big large face - and I was concerned about the actual building and programming of the project but the mentor seemed fine. Later, I asked about it - one of the girls had just started moving the pieces around to create the face while they were still working on their robot. The group had that as well as a robot, plus one of the girls had programmed it to play Happy Birthday. When they left the camp, the girls skipped out of the shop - happy. They had had a very productive and a very fun day. And their mentor had given them the space and guidance they needed to have that.

2. We sold Hexbugs as one of our fundraisers. I worked the table a couple of times and I noticed that the boys would come up and say, 'cool' and go running off to find the adult with the money so they could show them. The girls would watch/observe and then ask, 'what does it do?'. The girls seemed to want the bugs to perform a task rather than just move. When told what they would do, the common movement that I saw was a shrug and they'd kind of slide away, still thinking. One of our parents is really great at explaining the different Hexbugs and what they were capable of doing and it appeared that many of the young girls wanted a small task involved. We sold to both, boys and girls, but the girls seemed to ask more questions.

Many children are problem solvers. I think that is one reason that puzzles are so fun. That said, I have seen parents decide that a problem can only be solved a certain way and tell the child how to do it, rather than present the problem to be solved (or the opportunity) and let the child/children go for it.

You also have to look at the part of the marketing that sets up the product to be sold and how that impacts the sales in the media and also in the aisles of the stores. The team was doing a demo in the lobby of the movie theater when Wall-E was showing. I was standing over by the area where families were lining their children up to drive one of our BEST robots. A little girl had been waiting very patiently with her mom and I was getting concerned that our batteries were just about out of power so I began talking with the little girl about what she liked about Wall-E. She immediately, without any hesitation, said, 'he has a toy like mine - a square.' She was around 4. The toy she had that her mother said she has almost worn out was a Rubik's Cube. Did she find that toy on the Barbie aisle in a toy store or was she (or the giver) in a different aisle or area?

Jane

Edit: Mikell, high five!

--
Regarding the high maintenance comment.
Many girls and women are not high maintenance, have never been, and will never be. It is frustrating to hear, read, and contend with that comment/mentality. If males seek a high maintenance image/icon/role model as their ideal of what a woman is, then they are only looking at a small subset of the diverse interests, skills, talents, and demands that are available to women. If young girls and women are looking at icons to emulate that fit within that mindset, they are often looking at a role model that works in the extremes.

Over the past few years, I've heard the philosophy about not giving power to a word or a phrase. I don't buy it. If the suggestion is to listen to the phrase and then order the person who said it to go do something, then what messages are being encouraged/sent and - are they mixed messages? Why make the situation worse or add drama?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

If that means implicitly acknowledging that society in general seems to make unnecessary distinctions between boys and girls, so be it. Just leave those distinctions in the background and don't give them undue attention. They aren't a law of nature; they are a feature of the culture. If absolutely everybody acts as if they do not exist, eventually they won't.

This was what I was concerned about. The engineering community pressuring (for want of a better term) women to go into engineering the same way they have traditionally been pressured away from it. Is it better to steer someone away from a career they might like or into a career they might not like? To me they are two sides of the same coin and neither side is very good.

For reference, I do think that we have a stereotype to change. I do think we need more women in engineering but I have some concerns about pressuring anyone to do something they may not enjoy.

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

2. We sold Hexbugs as one of our fundraisers. I worked the table a couple of times and I noticed that the boys would come up and say, 'cool' and go running off to find the adult with the money so they could show them. The girls would watch/observe and then ask, 'what does it do?'. The girls seemed to want the bugs to perform a task rather than just move. When told what they would do, the common movement that I saw was a shrug and they'd kind of slide away, still thinking. One of our parents is really great at explaining the different Hexbugs and what they were capable of doing and it appeared that many of the young girls wanted a small task involved.

This is an interesting observation. I am not really sure what to make of it though. What I find interesting about it is how it compares to Zhu Zhu pets. Which offer essentially the same play pattern as Hex Bugs but come in a more relate able wrapper (they look like hamsters). The Zhu Zhu pets were extremely popular with girls (and fairly popular with boys). I wonder how much of this (if any) relates to media. There is little media for girls that give them a reference for robotic bugs, however there is plenty that give them a reference for small animals.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by JamesBrown

There is little media for girls that give them a reference for robotic bugs, however there is plenty that give them a reference for small animals.

Media manipulates. That is its job. It does it well.

That's why there is such a need for wise mentors in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math.

Jane

P.S. When responsible media learns to help children explore the possibilities of thinking - then they will be working with the mentors and not in direct opposition.

[oddjob]

The stereotypes are there because they reflect actual circumstances. Until this generation, most females were stay at home mothers, and hence, young girls were given baby dolls to dress and toy kitchens to set appropriate expectations. Meanwhile, the boys had toy soldiers and cars so they could learn to fight in war and drive to work. As society changes, the stereotypes WILL change over time. Even so, on average, there are real measurable differences in brain development for males and females so what exactly is "equality"?

Obviously we are talking about most of the modern societies, not the parts of the world where women can't show their face in public, can't attend school, are forced into arranged marriages to bigamists, "honor" killings if they don't conform, etc.. That clash of civilizations has not been resolving itself peacefully, but keep hope alive and it's perfectly ok to judge one is better than the other.

[JamesCH95]

Both of my parents are PhD engineers. My mom is also PE, has a couple patents, and has won several awards related to her research. When I was 7 I told my mom "You know mom, boys can be engineers too" after the 3rd SWE conference I had been to. Clearly I do not have prejudices against women, let alone women in engineering.

I want to just share two anecdotal experiences:

In my senior design class we split into three teams to design machines that all had to perform a similar task. It just so happened that (in teams of five) there were no girls on one team, two girls on one team, and four girls on the third team. I know from observation that on the team with four girls, the girls spent an inordinate amount of time arguing about what to do and did not finish their project by the end of the semester. The team with 2 girls finished, but the machine broke on test day. The all-male team finished (barely) and their machine survived test day.

A contrasting story:

I also was a designer for my college's Chem-E car team. In that competition the team was roughly half-girls. They dominated both the design presentation, the safety presentation, and ran the pit and car preparation with an iron fist. In two years our team had a top-10 finish and were national champions with a nation safety award and national+regional design presentation awards.

My point with these two stories is that many people are biased by their own experiences. I know the single guy on the design team was totally fed up with all the girls on his design team that wasted a ton of time needlessly arguing, whereas I was incredibly proud of the girls on on the chem-e car team and would work with them again in a heartbeat.

Perspective is everything, and I think precious few people have had the unique perspective I grew up with. Don't get too worked up at male engineers who might have a slanted view on women in engineering, work to show them that they are wrong.

Also: don't argue with stupid, there are some things you can't fix. *don't feed the troll*

[Madison]

Originally Posted by JamesCH95

Both of my parents are PhD engineers. My mom is also PE, has a couple patents, and has won several awards related to her research. When I was 7 I told my mom "You know mom, boys can be engineers too" after the 3rd SWE conference I had been to. Clearly I do not have prejudices against women, let alone women in engineering.

I want to just share two anecdotal experiences:

In my senior design class we split into three teams to design machines that all had to perform a similar task. It just so happened that (in teams of five) there were no girls on one team, two girls on one team, and four girls on the third team. I know from observation that on the team with four girls, the girls spent an inordinate amount of time arguing about what to do and did not finish their project by the end of the semester. The team with 2 girls finished, but the machine broke on test day. The all-male team finished (barely) and their machine survived test day.

A contrasting story:

I also was a designer for my college's Chem-E car team. In that competition the team was roughly half-girls. They dominated both the design presentation, the safety presentation, and ran the pit and car preparation with an iron fist. In two years our team had a top-10 finish and were national champions with a nation safety award and national+regional design presentation awards.

My point with these two stories is that many people are biased by their own experiences. I know the single guy on the design team was totally fed up with all the girls on his design team that wasted a ton of time needlessly arguing, whereas I was incredibly proud of the girls on on the chem-e car team and would work with them again in a heartbeat.

Perspective is everything, and I think precious few people have had the unique perspective I grew up with. Don't get too worked up at male engineers who might have a slanted view on women in engineering, work to show them that they are wrong.

Also: don't argue with stupid, there are some things you can't fix. *don't feed the troll*

In my mind, these groups represent different mixes of people and personalities and the gender of the participants probably had little to do with how successful they were.

[rotolomi]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Now is it really bad for not conforming to society and saying what is "politically" correct?

edit: you know what really pisses me off? calling me an idiot for expressing my ideas and opinions, I think YOU are the ignorant one here buddy. Keep more open minded will ya? Just because I do not agree with the majority of the group does not mean I am neither ignorant or an idiot, sure arrogant I agree on. But never idiot or ignorant.

It's really quite funny that YOU are telling someone else to be more "open minded", when you're the one who isn't open to accepting women as engineers. No one here is trying to stop you from sharing your opinion, but what is trying to be said is that you need to create a respectable argument before you try and pass something off as intelligent fact. I think we all need a reminder that your opinion is not always the right one, and opinion is NEVER fact. Your opinion is not idiotic, nor are you. Your argument is idiotic and ignorant. "'Monthly problems' that hugely effect relationships between coworkers"? You clearly are not exposed to women often, it's not like we transform into a werewolf for a week every 30 days.
Now, no one's stopping you from sharing your opinion, and no one's stopping you from looking like an ignorant idiot as you attempt to back up your opinion with weak generalized assumptions. But no one will respect your opinion, and we will most certainly not respect you.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Madison

In my mind, these groups represent different mixes of people and personalities and the gender of the participants probably had little to do with how successful they were.

I do not disagree with you, correlation does not mean causation. My point is that it is very easy to reach a different/incorrect conclusion if you only have half of a data set.

[MadeAtMidnight]

Changes in any field takes time, but over 50% of our last medical student class are female.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

This was what I was concerned about. The engineering community pressuring (for want of a better term) women to go into engineering the same way they have traditionally been pressured away from it. Is it better to steer someone away from a career they might like or into a career they might not like? To me they are two sides of the same coin and neither side is very good.

For reference, I do think that we have a stereotype to change. I do think we need more women in engineering but I have some concerns about pressuring anyone to do something they may not enjoy.

On the same token, it is a lot easier to subtly and unconsciously pressure women into not pursing engineering than it is to do the opposite. In the limited context of a FIRST team, how many robotics team leaders honestly believe they do nothing to dissuade women from joining any build team, but still end up with male dominated subgroups, all of the women brushed aside into Chairman's or safety work?

[kjolana1124]

I don't have a long paragraph on the subject, nor a lot of time to read though all the posts (though I may in the future so I may be quoting old points ) But I have two points about this:

A. People on the team have asked me why I was there because our shop doesn't have a kitchen. Even if it's a joke...really guys?

B. New music video I found today on the whole "celebrating female stupidity" point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUz0g2yJ7Mw