Feelings about more guys than girls in engineering classrooms

As you obviously know since you are taking the engineering class, engineering is not scary but rather important and awesome, and it’s definitely not only for guys.  I would love to tell you that being a woman in a male-dominated industry does not sometimes affect how I feel about my job, but I would be lying if I did.   Some days it doesn’t bother me at all, but some days I find myself extremely frustrated.  I have never worked for a female client or with a female contractor.  The only women I work with besides my teammates (my supervisor/project manager is a woman) are the secretaries for my clients and contractors.  This means that I often find myself being the only woman on conference calls and at meetings.  Despite being the most experienced engineer on my team, I feel that the things I say are questioned more often, and the things my less-experienced male coworkers say are more often taken as facts.  I feel that I have to work harder to gain the trust of my colleagues and clients than my male coworkers do.  It gets frustrating being expected to be the one to take notes at every meeting, being questioned, interrupted, talked over, sometimes even stared at, and being apologized to every time someone curses at a meeting.  I think this is a larger problem in our society, and you will see it to varying extents no matter what field you go into.  What I can tell you is that it’s worth it to stick with engineering.  It’s important, it’s fulfilling, and we absolutely need more women in the field.  The conversation about how women are treated differently than men in the workplace is finally becoming fair game for conversation.  It’s finally being talked about openly, which, to me, means that things can only get better.

I really look up to this one woman named Emily Roebling, who was instrumental in making sure the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC was completed in the late 1800s.  Her father-in-law designed the bridge but died well before the construction was finished.  When he died, his son (her husband) took over, and when he became too sick to leave his bed, Emily Roebling took over.  She taught herself engineering, went to meetings with politicians, and gave instruction to the all-male construction crew before women were even allowed to vote!  When the bridge was completed, she was the first person to cross it, holding a rooster as a symbol of victory.  Her story really strikes me because I don’t see the rooster as a victory for her or for the city or for anyone or anything in particular.  I see it as a symbol of victory for women.  She was able to go against a severely non-feminist culture and become a respected engineer for one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century.  If she could deal with all of that to [kind of literally] pave the way for us to be able to go into engineering, then we can certainly use these opportunities that she and many others created for us to make it an even easier choice for women in future generations to make.

I hope that you choose to stick with engineering, and I would be more than happy to talk to you more about this topic or any others you’re curious about!