November 11, 2013 • 36 mins
Engineering has some of the widest gender gaps among the STEM fields, despite having some of the most fascinating -- and lucrative -- career options. Cristen and Caroline explore women's contributions to engineering, why industrial engineering attracts the most women and female students' altruistic motivations for pursuing the challenging degree.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and this is the e in our
STEM series, which means we're talking about engineering today. That's right,
there's only one more episode left in our four part series,
(00:26):
which would be not yes, don't forget to tune back
in for that one, but for this one, we are
talking about the very multifaceted, surprisingly multifaceted. I'm sorry to
say that I did not realize that field of engineering.
And to keep things off with a fun linguistic fact
about engineering, It is derived from the Latin word ingenium,
which means skills, genius, and invention, no pressure. Isn't that beautiful?
(00:51):
That is beautiful? Who knew there was such beauty in
the very word engineering? But who also knew that there
were so many different aspects to it? Like I just said,
I mean, I engineering people out there are are engineering listeners.
I want to hear about all the different things that
you do, because there are so many different areas that
(01:11):
engineering majors can pursue. And I think what we're going
to get into a little bit is talking about the
importance of educating our students, not just our girls, but
our boys too, about the different options that they have
available to them once they go to college and pick
a specialization. Number one. One of the specializations that my
friend Clay, for instance, has pursued is civil engineering. UM.
(01:34):
That's one of the oldest disciplines within the engineering profession
and deals with designing and creating infrastructure like roads, bridges,
and ports, as well as energy and water systems. And
then there's things like mechanical engineering, which designs and analyzes
objects and systems in motion. You have environmental engineers who
work more outside looking at man's impact on nature, doing
(01:56):
things like restoration of areas after natural disasters. Then there's
biomedical engineering. This is one that has been really popular
of late to with women in college because it takes
the traditional engineering expertise and applies it to biology and medicine.
This is where you get into making life saving devices
(02:18):
like pacemakers. Yeah, and it's a field that I think
really takes a lot of flexibility and the ability to
kind of roll with the punches, because I think in
biomedical engineering in particular, you're you're really kind of creating
new technology as you go and so you've got to
kind of, as with all of these disciplines, you've got
to be able to pull from many different areas of
(02:39):
your education. Yeah, and beyond that, there's aerospace, agricultural, chemical, electrical,
health and safety, engineering and beyond and simply making kids aware,
Like you said, Caroline, of the vast fields you could
go into via engineering is one of the main keys
(03:00):
of getting girls from a younger age interested in this
e in stem. That's right, And let's talk about some
of the women who did get interested in the e UM.
Some of our trailblazers include Martha Coston, who UM, as
a twenty one year old widow with four children, helped
engineer a signal system so that ships could light up
(03:23):
their locations on land and see during the Civil War.
Just to give you some actual historical context, her husband
had designed this system that basically wouldn't function. It wouldn't work,
and so lo and behold, Martha Costin tweaks it and
the Navy ended up buying her system in eighteen fifty
nine for twenty thousand dollars. Yeah, and then moving into
(03:43):
the twentieth century, fans of the book and the two movies,
cheaper by the Dozen might be familiar with the name
Lillian Gilbrith. She was an industrial engineering genius and also
a mother of twelve. How those two things work together seamlessly,
I don't know, um. But in nineteen fifteen she earned
a PhD from Brown and then became the first female
(04:06):
member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. But what
her specialty was was industrial engineering. She's known as the
mother of modern management and the first Lady of engineering
because of all these innovations with that she used. Via
her industrial psychology degree that she earned. She was the
(04:26):
first person even to get that degree. Yeah, she used
a lot of her skills to focus on of all
things ergonomics, floor plans, and offices, even all the way
down to the very workflow, like as you go through
your day, so the way that your office was set up,
how you sat at your particular desk, and then the
work you did while you were there. She mapped it
(04:48):
out and according to Cheaper by the Dozen, she applied
and even tested out those kinds of industrial designs in
her home, which was kind of like a mini office
space when you have fourteen people plus running around there.
And then moving on to Maryland Jorgensen Reese who had
a deep love for math, but she didn't want to
be a teacher. She wanted to do something more with
(05:10):
her background, and so in nineteen fifty four, she became
California's first female fully licensed civil engineer, going on to
oversee Los Angeles's San Diego Santa Monica Freeway interchange. And
next up we have Beatrice A. Hicks, who was clearly
a genius. She not only just got a master's and physics,
(05:31):
she also pursued chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, and electrical engineering
and really just made her name as this engineering polly
math who could shape shift all of these different skills
that she had acquired for all of those different fields.
And in nineteen fifty she co founded the Society of
Women Engineers NICE, which still is around. Yeah. And then
(05:55):
we have Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards, who is the first
woman to graduate from m I T and also the
founder of home economics. But not what you would think
of as traditional stereotypical home economics, like baking a cake
or learning how to run the dishwasher. It's more like
focusing on safe food practices, healthy and affordable meal planning,
(06:16):
and being more efficient also in taking care of a
home and family. And those are just five names. There
are plenty more because there is a rich history of
women in engineering, but when we look at the picture today,
there aren't a ton of women who are pursuing these fields,
at least compared to men. And before we get into
(06:38):
today's women and engineering numbers, I first wanted to offer
up this quote from the magazine The Woman Engineer. This
is from one of its additions in nineteen nineteen, and
they wrote, the outlook for women in the engineering world
has become increasingly gloomy, and with the passing of the
Restoration of Pre War Practices Bill, the position seems a
(06:59):
little bliss And I thought that was kind of funny comparison.
That's nineteen nineteen and not that things are hopeless, but
still women are trying to figure out how exactly to
break into this still very male dominated industry. Absolutely, that
Pre War Practices Bill basically said that women kind of
(07:19):
just aren't allowed to work as engineers anymore because there
was they were all of these rules and regulations regarding unions,
and you had to be in a union to be
an engineer, but women weren't allowed in unions. So therefore,
thus ergo they could not be engineers. Yeah, and they
were suffering a lot because during World War One, similar
to what happened in World War Two, there were all
(07:41):
these dudes who left their jobs, and so these newly
minted women engineers were able to fill those ranks. But
then the war ends and the guys are like, you know,
on out, ladies, you know, back to your kitchens. Because
that was from a British publication, right, well, it's funny.
I was talking to my roommate about the stuff and
I was reading him this quote from the Woman Engineer
(08:02):
and he's like, well, I mean, but it's gotten better, right, like,
you know, it's like it's probably approaching equal by now,
right And I was like, oh no, not even close.
And he looked confounded because he thought, well, I I
just thought that's the way that all of these things
were going, you know, that things are becoming more equal.
And I said, look, it's just as grim and gloomy,
(08:25):
you know now as it was just about. Yeah. Today
in the United States, women are earning around of the
bachelor's degrees in engineering, but a lot of times if
they're better at math, they might pursue biomedical sciences instead.
But the American Society for Engineering Education reported that in
two thousand nine, women were awarded twenty two point nine
(08:48):
percent of engineering doctorates, which was more than any other time.
So we're getting more PhD s. We aren't we are
looking into engineering, we're getting involved with this, but still
four times as many men are enrolling and engineering compared
to women, right, And the gap is smaller. Actually when
you look at computer science, there's just two times as many,
(09:11):
just two times men, right, right, Um, And so to
look a little bit closer at some of the gender
differences in this field. This is coming from the study
Pipeline or Personal Preference Women in Engineering two thousand from
two thousand eight. And that side note pipeline shold sound
familiar because we've talked about it in one of our
earlier STEM episodes. Basically, the idea that there is this funnel,
(09:34):
this pipeline of women from very young ages elementary school,
middle school, high school all the way through to the
doctoral degree level, and it's leaking the whole way basically,
like women start out getting the same grades as men,
having the same interest in science as men and math,
and then it slowly starts to dissipate. So that's that background. UM.
(09:57):
But so this study found out that twelve point three
percent of the about a thousand female participants had changed
majors to engineering, compared to six point six percent of
male participants. And I think that that had something to
do with, again, these girls coming to college and realizing
all of the different options that engineering offered them, and
(10:19):
so they said, oh, maybe this is a better fit
because again it's from like from the very get go
with engineering, well a little bit different from something like
straight up science, tech or math, whereas engineering, I feel
like there's not as much just public knowledge about what
all you can do with it. So they think that
(10:40):
that might be responsible for that larger percentage of women
switching into engineering. And they thought it was notable that
over half of the female study participants had engineers in
their families compared to forty six point two percent of men.
So they were also more women who seemed directly influenced
by just seeing engineers around them. Yeah, exactly, And I
(11:02):
mean talking about stereotypes of the field, you know, a
lot of what we read points out the fact that, um,
and this isn't just for women this is just kind
of for all students in general. There's this perception of
engineering being like I'm going to get my hands greasy
and dirty, I'm going to be lifting heavy things and
putting cogs into machines all day long, and you know,
and and so what we're trying to drive the point
(11:23):
that we're trying to drive across is that there is
so much more to engineering. And so the study also
looked at kind of a breakdown of what uh men
and women kind of veer toward within these fields, and
they found that women were more comfortable with lab work,
performing experiments, and writing, whereas men were more comfortable working
with tools, designing new things, working with computers, making presentations,
(11:47):
and working with machines. But I think it's worth noting, though,
that being comfortable with something doesn't necessarily mean the same
thing as being proficient as it because Civil environment mental
engineering professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Angela biel Felt,
said that quote, women tend to leave engineering with higher
(12:09):
grade point averages than the men, but they perceive that
their technical skills are sometimes different, and they're not different
in reality. And I think that gets to this issue
of socialization that has come up a lot in this
women and Stem conversation too, and that negative self assessment
that goes on. Yeah, and and that's something we've talked
(12:29):
about in these these episodes that you know, women and
girls tend to think that they need to be you know,
triple the engineer or the mathematician or the scientists, that
the man is just to be considered you know acceptable. Yeah,
I think it goes into what happens the mindset, the
Rube Goldberg machine that trips off in the brain when
(12:51):
you really start to make headway into what is considered
a really masculine pursuit. Right. And it's interesting to note
kind of almost the different polls of of engineering that
men and women go towards. Because in civil engineering classes,
you know my friend Clay, who is a man, uh,
(13:13):
in that field, it's going to be mostly guys, but
the female numbers increase in fields like environmental engineering. But
women's numbers increase in other fields of engineering, including environmental engineering,
but particularly industrial engineering. So again for those of you
who might not be familiar with industrial engineering, it's more
focused on human centered systems, looking at things like design,
(13:37):
improvement and installation. In terms of how that interacts with people, materials, equipment,
and energy, and more than any other field, industrial engineering
tends to have the largest concentration of women, at around
thirty two per cent. So there was a study that
came out called Women in Industrial Engineering Stereotypes, Persistence and Perspective,
(14:00):
and it came out in two thousand and twelve looking
at why that was, because this was part of a
larger body of research digging into the different engineering disciplines
to see what was really appealing to women and what wasn't,
what women were sticking with and what they weren't, and
engineering stood out to them as a quote unquote pocket
of success. And something that came up really quickly in
(14:22):
this paper was that there's a stereotype among engineering folk
that industrial engineering is proceed to be easy, or they
some sometimes call it imaginary engineering. Uh weah, I'm going
to make a lot of like disappointed flash disapproving noises
about that one, because don't you think that, okay, male
(14:45):
dominated field, section of male dominated field that has the
most women in it, the highest concentration of women. Women
then perceived, already in gender stereotypes, to be not as
scientific or mathematically minded. So then you have some ill
informed individuals out there thinking, well, if women can do it, well,
(15:09):
it isn't just the male students who are perpetuating the idea,
it's also the women who are saying this too in
the study. But I think you're totally on point because
one of the number one phrases that popped up when
these researchers were asking female industrial engineering students why they
(15:29):
were really into industrial engineering, and the phrase that kept
coming up was people oriented, which stands in such contrast
if you think of civil engineering, which is that really
male heavy pocket of engineering that's all about bridges and
roads that's paved away through the mountains. You know, it's
(15:50):
it's a it seems it does seem like it's more feminine, right, Yeah,
And and especially since those focus group participants cited things
like a proachable faculty um, inherent femininity with things like
scheduling efficiency and communication, but also so stuability. But I
thought it was interesting that it's the only engineering major
(16:12):
that gains women and men from the third semester through
six year graduation. So it's clearly not just women who
are all of a sudden going like, oh well, maybe
I like that instead, maybe I like that better. There
are clearly some men out there who are also thinking like, oh, well,
you know, maybe I don't want to just focus on
bridges and roads. Maybe I do like the people aspect
(16:32):
of that discipline. Not that Caroline and I have anything
against bridges and row No. I I am so thankful
when there are roads to drive on, and even more
thankful when there is a properly constructed and inspected bridge
across which I may drive. And this has been a
civil engineering salute. But but there is something though about
(16:56):
that people aspect and possibly the idea of how engineering
can solve problems for people, can help people, can literally
save lives that some who are really invested in attracting
more women to engineering want to hone in on. So
we're gonna get into that altruistic aspect of engineering when
(17:18):
we come right back from a quick break. So we
left off we were talking about how the altruistic element
of engineering could be used as a powerful recruitment tool
to get more girls and women interested in this field,
because research does consistently show that women are more drawn
to fields of study that they believe will contribute to
(17:42):
the social good. And it's the same thing within engineering
where if you break out all those different fields, women
do tend to be drawn to those areas that seem
to have a direct application on people's lives. And a
lot of times when you talk to women engineers and
asked them why they love doing what they do, they say, well,
I help people, I'm solving problems, I'm making people's lives
(18:04):
better with my work. Sure, and this was confirmed by
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers because there's this growth
in women pursuing mechanical engineering in the medical and energy
fields because of these strong societal ties and the clear
cut positive impact that it has on people. It's something
that see Diane Matt, the executive director of the Women
(18:25):
in Engineering Proactive Network, basically calls social relevance, saying that
women are drawn to this high social relevance in this field. Yeah,
and there's something we should talk about two. In regard
to this altruistic pull within STEM, some have said that
the biological sciences, for instance, tend to be uh tend
(18:46):
to have more women pursuing them working in them because
there seems to be a closer connection to having an
impact on other people's lives within that kind of work.
And obviously you can divert from there to biomedical things.
You want to become a doctor, you want to help people,
you want to save lives, etcetera. Same thing going on
within engineering. And there's even an Intel sponsored study that
(19:08):
asked teens to read a series of statements about engineering,
and the ones that motivated the girls the most were
about how surprise surprise engineering helps fix global problems like
clean water solutions. And I can understand that if I
was told when I was fifteen, hey, hey kid, you
want to solve some clean water issues? Tell my how
(19:30):
shign me up? Can I podcast it? Can I bring
the cat um? Well, So, now that we've talked about
this incredible altruistic angle and the fact that you really
can change lives and entire communities with your engineering background,
let's let's talk about some salaries. Yeah, you can also
make a lot of money. That's also something if someone
(19:51):
to tap me on the Sheila said, hey kid, you
want to save some lives and make a ton of
cash doing it. Yeah. The National Association of Colleges and
Employers shows u just how lucrative a career it can be.
I mean, engineering makes up like the top the top
like six I think jobs. So computer engineering you can
make over seventy thousand dollars, chemical engineering more than sixty six,
(20:15):
computer science more than sixty four. Yeah, and it goes
all the way down at the bottom of the barrel.
If we have civil engineering starting out at just fifty
seven six. Uh so even even that is really lucrative.
And uh it's too bad that there can't be more
quote unquote pockets of success like industrial engineering, because at
(20:39):
least according to a UK survey among three hundred female engineers,
the job satisfaction is really high. Although caveat, as you
there should always be a caveat with surveys. The survey
was sponsored by Atkins, which is an engineering firm, but
it found of women said their jobs were rewarding and
(21:01):
satisfying and didn't see gender as holding them back. But
it is worth noting that of these women they talked
to were inspired to pursue engineering thanks to a family member,
usually their dad, and were inspired by a teacher. So look,
I mean that is that is like tangible evidence of
(21:22):
how important it is to have people in our children's
lives inspiring them to go do something that maybe they
hadn't thought of how important it is just to normalize
an entire field of study. Yeah, and that's one of
the reasons why a lot of these respondents went on
to say that there needs to be a greater awareness
of what an engineer does, as we have hammered home
(21:45):
a number of times on the podcast and improved mentorship
for girls. And that was something too that came up
in our conversation a while ago with Goldie Blocks founder
Deborah Sterling, who was a Stanford engineer. She career did
this toy called Goldie Blocks, which is specifically designed to
get girls excited about engineering, to teach them engineering fundamentals
(22:08):
in a fun and engaging and girl friendly kind of way.
Because when she was growing up, even though she ended
up becoming an engineer, she would have had no idea
as a kid that that would even be a possibility
because in front of her all she saw or princesses
and barbies and pink things, and she was like, I
was building things with my barbies, but I didn't know
(22:29):
that that was engineering. And I think it wasn't until
high school that a teacher alerted her to that, well,
all of this stuff that we've been learning in our
stem episodes has really inspired me because Christmas time is
coming up and I have a five year old niece,
and I don't think they all listen to the podcast.
I think it's safe to talk about this. But um,
(22:50):
I found this dollhouse set that basically has a like
a battery pack attached to it, and you can run
these currents and actually light up your dollhouse and you
build walls, you hang lamps, you do all sorts of stuff.
And so she is into anything anything that is pink,
(23:11):
purple and sparkly, and so a dollhouse would be neat.
And if she can learn some spatial reasoning skills while
she does it, then that's even better. Yeah, and some
electrical engineering too. It sounds like, well, anti Caroline is
trying to get a little Sarah into some engineering. You're
planting the stem seeds, Caroline. Indeed, I ane um, but
(23:31):
we do have to bring our high down for a
moment and move away from that survey that was very happy,
go lucky, because that's not always the case with women
and engineering, as is expected when you go into these
fields that are very much in the words of a
female engineer boys clubs. Um, there was a University of
(23:56):
Wisconsin Milwaukee Center for the Study of the Workplace report
that came out in two thousand and eight looking at
women and engineering, and it found that, first of all,
a third of women graduating from engineering programs don't enter
engineering jobs because they see them as inflexible or non
supportive of women. Come on now, I mean, how many
(24:17):
times have we heard that about different I mean just
different arenas in general. Yeah, as far as I mean,
as far as supporting women goes. They also found that
half of women's surveyed who left engineering jobs did so
because of working conditions, too much travel, too little advancement
and pay, and one in three left because of a
hostile work environment. And there probably is a lot of
(24:39):
unconscious and conscious bias at work because these engineering fields
are still so male dominated. But female engineers who worked
in companies that valued and recognize their contributions, invested in
training and professional development expressed the greatest levels of satisfaction
within their jobs and careers. Which you could probably apply
that to any type of job that supports you and
(25:02):
wants to see you succeed. But in a realm like engineering,
it's so critical to set up support structures outside of
college at the end of the pipeline. Where the pipeline
is supposed to end up the pool, the engineering pool.
I'm not going to extend this pipeline metaphor any farther
(25:22):
because the gap is so huge, not just in the
United States but around the world. For instance, in in
the U s And Canada, in the engineering workforce, women
make up only but that's not as bad as it
is in the UK. No, the UK, it's only seven percent,
And in Australia women make up nine point six percent
(25:43):
of the engineering workforce, but it's awesome over in Latvia
which is thirty percent and Bulgaria which has twenty nine
point three percent. Yeah. I think that came up as
well in our tech episode because it's similar with computer
science where Eastern year up. They're all about getting some
women into some STEM and this probably is a reason
(26:07):
why we're seeing so much government initiative with getting girls
engaged in STEM because guess what folks of the engineering
workforce in China or women, Yeah, we're trailing. Yeah, we're trailing.
And people are seeing this as a potential detriment to
our economy because why do women in engineering matter on
(26:29):
a practical sense. It's not just because we want parody
for everything fifty fifty for all know, it has very
real world implications because diversity foster's innovation. We need innovation. Yeah,
like there was some percentage I can't remember, But our
g d P is actually suffering because of the fact
that we don't have the brightest minds in these fields,
(26:52):
in the stem fields and engineering in particular. And I'm
not that's not to say that the people in engineering
aren't right, but when you are only taking from one
cool of people, from one pipeline to bring that metaphor back, um,
that means that you're taking, yeah, the best, but then
you're also having to go down to fill the rest
of your spots too, maybe the middle of the pack.
(27:12):
But why don't you go over to the other pool
and take the top of their candidates also, because that
is the way that you get more innovation, right, And
even speaking more specifically to two women's involvement, there's even
some feminist theory of gender and engineering talking about how
the two really are interwoven because a lot of times
(27:34):
we're talking about all of these systems that are human centered,
and we're they're they're making things they're making those roads
and bridges and biomedical devices and clean water sheds, all
of those things for not just male consumers obviously, but
also for female consumers and for kids. And as Don Bonfield,
(27:56):
who's the VP of the Women's Engineering Society said, women
bring diversity that a non mixed team doesn't have. And
the skills that they bring include a desire to produce
an excellent product that delights to customer and solves a problem. Right,
I mean, just think about the items, to use a
general word, that we are not getting because some of
(28:17):
those great minds did not end up in engineering or
left engineering because it was unwelcoming. And I mean another
problem that you run into, like you said, I mean
you you you lose that innovation when you don't have
women's minds on the team as well. But you also
create problems. You're not just avoiding good solutions, you're creating
problems because we have the issue of air bags. What
(28:40):
about airbags? You say, well, because it was a male
team that created these safety devices, they were created from
male bodies, and so women and children in vehicles, Actually,
we're getting injured by the very safety devices that we're
supposed to save their lives. Yeah, and there have also
been issues of voice recognition software that only recognized male
(29:02):
voices because it was an all male team building them. Now,
clearly you could swing the other way and say that
you'd have similar problems crop up if you had all
female teams working on things. That's why the name of
the game is about diversity and bringing multiple minds to
the table to foster innovation. Because I think Dr Mary Gilly,
(29:26):
who works with e A Technology, said it best. She said,
we have more chances of better serving the needs of
society as a whole if those working in engineering reflect
across section of society. Yeah. And I mean Margaret Bailey,
who's a professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute
of Technology in New York, summed it up by saying, hey, look,
(29:47):
you're just going to see entirely different outcomes in general.
I mean you're going to see better products. I mean,
happier consumers, but also happier engineers. I mean, I think,
I think if there's a shift in this field, you know,
hopefully we can get more women involved and more of
(30:07):
the old guard more accepting and welcoming as well. Yeah,
and it's exciting to know that there are those Lilyan
Gilbreath's out there, those trailblazers who have done incredible things,
and that there are women working right now who are
doing incredible things, but we need more of them, which
is why I'm quitting the podcast to become an engineer.
(30:29):
No please, I'll tell you what it excited me. Honestly,
just learning about engineering. It honestly made me feel like
a senior in high school looking through the college pamphlets
thinking about, Oh, all these incredible things people are doing. Um,
but I do really want to hear from engineers out there, male, female, whomever,
(30:51):
because I would I would love to get an inside
view of what it is really like because there are
those vastly different workplace survey results saying oh, everything's great, No,
everything's terrible, huh. So let us know what it's like.
And also if there any notable women engineers that we
should promote, let us know all of your engineering thoughts.
(31:13):
Mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters. You can also tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast or send us a message on Facebook. And
now back to our letters. So I've got a letter
here from MG who is a Mexican physicist, and she
(31:33):
had some thoughts on our women in Science episode, and
she said, while growing up, I didn't experience such a
strong gender bias in science education. I've always been good
in math, and I've always felt proud about it. But
once I was in the last year of high school,
the picture change. In Mexico, one has to choose a
major when applying to a university, and once in university,
(31:55):
one takes the corresponding courses. I e's not possible to
decide a major actor and old. I was very interested
in both math and physics, and before deciding which major
I would study, I went to the university to talk
with several researchers to make up my mind, and although
the information they gave me was useful, I was very
disappointed by the lack of women researchers. The ratio of
men to women researchers in physics and math, at least
(32:17):
in the university I attended, is around one and ten.
This uninspiring scenario prevailed during my undergraduate studies and my
master's studies, which I just finished Congratulations. Despite that, I'm
extremely motivated to pursue a life career in physics. And
from time to time not having female role models that
I can relate to is demotivating. I have many anecdotes
(32:39):
that I could share, but to be brief, my viewpoint
is that one of the main reasons there are a
few women in science is because of our culture. I
even dared a fingerpoint that the pervasive idea that the
ultimate some may say only purpose of women on earth
is to procreate has a bad impact on women's self
image since it tends to diminish any other achievement a
woman can have in her life. So thanks MG, and
(33:00):
congratulations on that. Physics masters. Well, I have a letter
here from Elizabeth. She is a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics
currently working at the Max Plank Institute for Astronomy. So
we I mean essentially have like a science celebrity writing
us right now, But she had some things to say.
She says this is purely anecdotal, but growing up in
(33:22):
a small town in Portugal, I was always very fascinated
by science, especially astronomy, and I did well in math
and physics at school. I have a twin brother who
himself has always been more inclined to the humanities. People
like friends teachers and family found it very puzzling and
kept commenting on how we could quote unquote reversed the
gender roles when we chose what to pursue in high
(33:43):
school and college. It seemed natural for some people that
I should have been the humanities inclined twin and my
brother should have been the science incline one. We weren't
raised in the most gender blind way. For example, I
played with a lot of pink stuff and ponies and barbies,
and my brother had the more masculine toys like robots
and legos, and overall I was very much encouraged to
pursue feminine activities like learning to cook and such. But
(34:05):
the fascination with nature, physics, and the beauty of the
night sky one over all of that. But I would
say I had to be quite strong willed to pursue
that interest against all stereotypes. Not to mention, after physicist
is not really a common career path in Portugal, let
alone in my small town. I am sure that girls
and women could be as good as boys and men,
and math and science, and any differences we see in
(34:26):
the student or scientist population results from ingrained sexist biases
in our culture, and these biases can be damaging at
any level. I have seen it through my school years
but also now my academic path. I am very lucky
to work in a research institute where a large fraction
of researchers or female not quite fifty though, and the
work environment is one of the most female friendly ones
(34:47):
I know. However, you can see how lifelong prejudices and
biases can affect specifically women. Typically, women are less vocal
and less dominant in discussions than men, even when they
have comparable scientific ex rotise. Women in academia definitely tend
to suffer from imposter syndrome more than men, as you
discussed in the line in episode, which I think is
(35:08):
a center of the field still being very male dominated.
Hopefully things are improving for the better as more and
more women get PhDs in science fields and more women's
scientists with visibility outside of academia equals more role models
for young girls, which is really good news. Good news indeed, Elizabeth,
thank you so much for writing and telling your story,
(35:29):
and thanks to all of the scientists that we've been
hearing from lately. We want to hear from everybody. Mom
Stuff Discovery dot Com is where you can send your letters.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
send us a message on Facebook like a stair while
you're at it. And for some more fun stuff, we're
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(35:50):
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It's YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You,
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(36:11):
com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and this is the e in our
STEM series, which means we're talking about engineering today. That's right,
there's only one more episode left in our four part series,
(00:26):
which would be not yes, don't forget to tune back
in for that one, but for this one, we are
talking about the very multifaceted, surprisingly multifaceted. I'm sorry to
say that I did not realize that field of engineering.
And to keep things off with a fun linguistic fact
about engineering, It is derived from the Latin word ingenium,
which means skills, genius, and invention, no pressure. Isn't that beautiful?
(00:51):
That is beautiful? Who knew there was such beauty in
the very word engineering? But who also knew that there
were so many different aspects to it? Like I just said,
I mean, I engineering people out there are are engineering listeners.
I want to hear about all the different things that
you do, because there are so many different areas that
(01:11):
engineering majors can pursue. And I think what we're going
to get into a little bit is talking about the
importance of educating our students, not just our girls, but
our boys too, about the different options that they have
available to them once they go to college and pick
a specialization. Number one. One of the specializations that my
friend Clay, for instance, has pursued is civil engineering. UM.
(01:34):
That's one of the oldest disciplines within the engineering profession
and deals with designing and creating infrastructure like roads, bridges,
and ports, as well as energy and water systems. And
then there's things like mechanical engineering, which designs and analyzes
objects and systems in motion. You have environmental engineers who
work more outside looking at man's impact on nature, doing
(01:56):
things like restoration of areas after natural disasters. Then there's
biomedical engineering. This is one that has been really popular
of late to with women in college because it takes
the traditional engineering expertise and applies it to biology and medicine.
This is where you get into making life saving devices
(02:18):
like pacemakers. Yeah, and it's a field that I think
really takes a lot of flexibility and the ability to
kind of roll with the punches, because I think in
biomedical engineering in particular, you're you're really kind of creating
new technology as you go and so you've got to
kind of, as with all of these disciplines, you've got
to be able to pull from many different areas of
(02:39):
your education. Yeah, and beyond that, there's aerospace, agricultural, chemical, electrical,
health and safety, engineering and beyond and simply making kids aware,
Like you said, Caroline, of the vast fields you could
go into via engineering is one of the main keys
(03:00):
of getting girls from a younger age interested in this
e in stem. That's right, And let's talk about some
of the women who did get interested in the e UM.
Some of our trailblazers include Martha Coston, who UM, as
a twenty one year old widow with four children, helped
engineer a signal system so that ships could light up
(03:23):
their locations on land and see during the Civil War.
Just to give you some actual historical context, her husband
had designed this system that basically wouldn't function. It wouldn't work,
and so lo and behold, Martha Costin tweaks it and
the Navy ended up buying her system in eighteen fifty
nine for twenty thousand dollars. Yeah, and then moving into
(03:43):
the twentieth century, fans of the book and the two movies,
cheaper by the Dozen might be familiar with the name
Lillian Gilbrith. She was an industrial engineering genius and also
a mother of twelve. How those two things work together seamlessly,
I don't know, um. But in nineteen fifteen she earned
a PhD from Brown and then became the first female
(04:06):
member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. But what
her specialty was was industrial engineering. She's known as the
mother of modern management and the first Lady of engineering
because of all these innovations with that she used. Via
her industrial psychology degree that she earned. She was the
(04:26):
first person even to get that degree. Yeah, she used
a lot of her skills to focus on of all
things ergonomics, floor plans, and offices, even all the way
down to the very workflow, like as you go through
your day, so the way that your office was set up,
how you sat at your particular desk, and then the
work you did while you were there. She mapped it
(04:48):
out and according to Cheaper by the Dozen, she applied
and even tested out those kinds of industrial designs in
her home, which was kind of like a mini office
space when you have fourteen people plus running around there.
And then moving on to Maryland Jorgensen Reese who had
a deep love for math, but she didn't want to
be a teacher. She wanted to do something more with
(05:10):
her background, and so in nineteen fifty four, she became
California's first female fully licensed civil engineer, going on to
oversee Los Angeles's San Diego Santa Monica Freeway interchange. And
next up we have Beatrice A. Hicks, who was clearly
a genius. She not only just got a master's and physics,
(05:31):
she also pursued chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, and electrical engineering
and really just made her name as this engineering polly
math who could shape shift all of these different skills
that she had acquired for all of those different fields.
And in nineteen fifty she co founded the Society of
Women Engineers NICE, which still is around. Yeah. And then
(05:55):
we have Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards, who is the first
woman to graduate from m I T and also the
founder of home economics. But not what you would think
of as traditional stereotypical home economics, like baking a cake
or learning how to run the dishwasher. It's more like
focusing on safe food practices, healthy and affordable meal planning,
(06:16):
and being more efficient also in taking care of a
home and family. And those are just five names. There
are plenty more because there is a rich history of
women in engineering, but when we look at the picture today,
there aren't a ton of women who are pursuing these fields,
at least compared to men. And before we get into
(06:38):
today's women and engineering numbers, I first wanted to offer
up this quote from the magazine The Woman Engineer. This
is from one of its additions in nineteen nineteen, and
they wrote, the outlook for women in the engineering world
has become increasingly gloomy, and with the passing of the
Restoration of Pre War Practices Bill, the position seems a
(06:59):
little bliss And I thought that was kind of funny comparison.
That's nineteen nineteen and not that things are hopeless, but
still women are trying to figure out how exactly to
break into this still very male dominated industry. Absolutely, that
Pre War Practices Bill basically said that women kind of
(07:19):
just aren't allowed to work as engineers anymore because there
was they were all of these rules and regulations regarding unions,
and you had to be in a union to be
an engineer, but women weren't allowed in unions. So therefore,
thus ergo they could not be engineers. Yeah, and they
were suffering a lot because during World War One, similar
to what happened in World War Two, there were all
(07:41):
these dudes who left their jobs, and so these newly
minted women engineers were able to fill those ranks. But
then the war ends and the guys are like, you know,
on out, ladies, you know, back to your kitchens. Because
that was from a British publication, right, well, it's funny.
I was talking to my roommate about the stuff and
I was reading him this quote from the Woman Engineer
(08:02):
and he's like, well, I mean, but it's gotten better, right, like,
you know, it's like it's probably approaching equal by now,
right And I was like, oh no, not even close.
And he looked confounded because he thought, well, I I
just thought that's the way that all of these things
were going, you know, that things are becoming more equal.
And I said, look, it's just as grim and gloomy,
(08:25):
you know now as it was just about. Yeah. Today
in the United States, women are earning around of the
bachelor's degrees in engineering, but a lot of times if
they're better at math, they might pursue biomedical sciences instead.
But the American Society for Engineering Education reported that in
two thousand nine, women were awarded twenty two point nine
(08:48):
percent of engineering doctorates, which was more than any other time.
So we're getting more PhD s. We aren't we are
looking into engineering, we're getting involved with this, but still
four times as many men are enrolling and engineering compared
to women, right, And the gap is smaller. Actually when
you look at computer science, there's just two times as many,
(09:11):
just two times men, right, right, Um, And so to
look a little bit closer at some of the gender
differences in this field. This is coming from the study
Pipeline or Personal Preference Women in Engineering two thousand from
two thousand eight. And that side note pipeline shold sound
familiar because we've talked about it in one of our
earlier STEM episodes. Basically, the idea that there is this funnel,
(09:34):
this pipeline of women from very young ages elementary school,
middle school, high school all the way through to the
doctoral degree level, and it's leaking the whole way basically,
like women start out getting the same grades as men,
having the same interest in science as men and math,
and then it slowly starts to dissipate. So that's that background. UM.
(09:57):
But so this study found out that twelve point three
percent of the about a thousand female participants had changed
majors to engineering, compared to six point six percent of
male participants. And I think that that had something to
do with, again, these girls coming to college and realizing
all of the different options that engineering offered them, and
(10:19):
so they said, oh, maybe this is a better fit
because again it's from like from the very get go
with engineering, well a little bit different from something like
straight up science, tech or math, whereas engineering, I feel
like there's not as much just public knowledge about what
all you can do with it. So they think that
(10:40):
that might be responsible for that larger percentage of women
switching into engineering. And they thought it was notable that
over half of the female study participants had engineers in
their families compared to forty six point two percent of men.
So they were also more women who seemed directly influenced
by just seeing engineers around them. Yeah, exactly, And I
(11:02):
mean talking about stereotypes of the field, you know, a
lot of what we read points out the fact that, um,
and this isn't just for women this is just kind
of for all students in general. There's this perception of
engineering being like I'm going to get my hands greasy
and dirty, I'm going to be lifting heavy things and
putting cogs into machines all day long, and you know,
and and so what we're trying to drive the point
(11:23):
that we're trying to drive across is that there is
so much more to engineering. And so the study also
looked at kind of a breakdown of what uh men
and women kind of veer toward within these fields, and
they found that women were more comfortable with lab work,
performing experiments, and writing, whereas men were more comfortable working
with tools, designing new things, working with computers, making presentations,
(11:47):
and working with machines. But I think it's worth noting, though,
that being comfortable with something doesn't necessarily mean the same
thing as being proficient as it because Civil environment mental
engineering professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Angela biel Felt,
said that quote, women tend to leave engineering with higher
(12:09):
grade point averages than the men, but they perceive that
their technical skills are sometimes different, and they're not different
in reality. And I think that gets to this issue
of socialization that has come up a lot in this
women and Stem conversation too, and that negative self assessment
that goes on. Yeah, and and that's something we've talked
(12:29):
about in these these episodes that you know, women and
girls tend to think that they need to be you know,
triple the engineer or the mathematician or the scientists, that
the man is just to be considered you know acceptable. Yeah,
I think it goes into what happens the mindset, the
Rube Goldberg machine that trips off in the brain when
(12:51):
you really start to make headway into what is considered
a really masculine pursuit. Right. And it's interesting to note
kind of almost the different polls of of engineering that
men and women go towards. Because in civil engineering classes,
you know my friend Clay, who is a man, uh,
(13:13):
in that field, it's going to be mostly guys, but
the female numbers increase in fields like environmental engineering. But
women's numbers increase in other fields of engineering, including environmental engineering,
but particularly industrial engineering. So again for those of you
who might not be familiar with industrial engineering, it's more
focused on human centered systems, looking at things like design,
(13:37):
improvement and installation. In terms of how that interacts with people, materials, equipment,
and energy, and more than any other field, industrial engineering
tends to have the largest concentration of women, at around
thirty two per cent. So there was a study that
came out called Women in Industrial Engineering Stereotypes, Persistence and Perspective,
(14:00):
and it came out in two thousand and twelve looking
at why that was, because this was part of a
larger body of research digging into the different engineering disciplines
to see what was really appealing to women and what wasn't,
what women were sticking with and what they weren't, and
engineering stood out to them as a quote unquote pocket
of success. And something that came up really quickly in
(14:22):
this paper was that there's a stereotype among engineering folk
that industrial engineering is proceed to be easy, or they
some sometimes call it imaginary engineering. Uh weah, I'm going
to make a lot of like disappointed flash disapproving noises
about that one, because don't you think that, okay, male
(14:45):
dominated field, section of male dominated field that has the
most women in it, the highest concentration of women. Women
then perceived, already in gender stereotypes, to be not as
scientific or mathematically minded. So then you have some ill
informed individuals out there thinking, well, if women can do it, well,
(15:09):
it isn't just the male students who are perpetuating the idea,
it's also the women who are saying this too in
the study. But I think you're totally on point because
one of the number one phrases that popped up when
these researchers were asking female industrial engineering students why they
(15:29):
were really into industrial engineering, and the phrase that kept
coming up was people oriented, which stands in such contrast
if you think of civil engineering, which is that really
male heavy pocket of engineering that's all about bridges and
roads that's paved away through the mountains. You know, it's
(15:50):
it's a it seems it does seem like it's more feminine, right, Yeah,
And and especially since those focus group participants cited things
like a proachable faculty um, inherent femininity with things like
scheduling efficiency and communication, but also so stuability. But I
thought it was interesting that it's the only engineering major
(16:12):
that gains women and men from the third semester through
six year graduation. So it's clearly not just women who
are all of a sudden going like, oh well, maybe
I like that instead, maybe I like that better. There
are clearly some men out there who are also thinking like, oh, well,
you know, maybe I don't want to just focus on
bridges and roads. Maybe I do like the people aspect
(16:32):
of that discipline. Not that Caroline and I have anything
against bridges and row No. I I am so thankful
when there are roads to drive on, and even more
thankful when there is a properly constructed and inspected bridge
across which I may drive. And this has been a
civil engineering salute. But but there is something though about
(16:56):
that people aspect and possibly the idea of how engineering
can solve problems for people, can help people, can literally
save lives that some who are really invested in attracting
more women to engineering want to hone in on. So
we're gonna get into that altruistic aspect of engineering when
(17:18):
we come right back from a quick break. So we
left off we were talking about how the altruistic element
of engineering could be used as a powerful recruitment tool
to get more girls and women interested in this field,
because research does consistently show that women are more drawn
to fields of study that they believe will contribute to
(17:42):
the social good. And it's the same thing within engineering
where if you break out all those different fields, women
do tend to be drawn to those areas that seem
to have a direct application on people's lives. And a
lot of times when you talk to women engineers and
asked them why they love doing what they do, they say, well,
I help people, I'm solving problems, I'm making people's lives
(18:04):
better with my work. Sure, and this was confirmed by
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers because there's this growth
in women pursuing mechanical engineering in the medical and energy
fields because of these strong societal ties and the clear
cut positive impact that it has on people. It's something
that see Diane Matt, the executive director of the Women
(18:25):
in Engineering Proactive Network, basically calls social relevance, saying that
women are drawn to this high social relevance in this field. Yeah,
and there's something we should talk about two. In regard
to this altruistic pull within STEM, some have said that
the biological sciences, for instance, tend to be uh tend
(18:46):
to have more women pursuing them working in them because
there seems to be a closer connection to having an
impact on other people's lives within that kind of work.
And obviously you can divert from there to biomedical things.
You want to become a doctor, you want to help people,
you want to save lives, etcetera. Same thing going on
within engineering. And there's even an Intel sponsored study that
(19:08):
asked teens to read a series of statements about engineering,
and the ones that motivated the girls the most were
about how surprise surprise engineering helps fix global problems like
clean water solutions. And I can understand that if I
was told when I was fifteen, hey, hey kid, you
want to solve some clean water issues? Tell my how
(19:30):
shign me up? Can I podcast it? Can I bring
the cat um? Well, So, now that we've talked about
this incredible altruistic angle and the fact that you really
can change lives and entire communities with your engineering background,
let's let's talk about some salaries. Yeah, you can also
make a lot of money. That's also something if someone
(19:51):
to tap me on the Sheila said, hey kid, you
want to save some lives and make a ton of
cash doing it. Yeah. The National Association of Colleges and
Employers shows u just how lucrative a career it can be.
I mean, engineering makes up like the top the top
like six I think jobs. So computer engineering you can
make over seventy thousand dollars, chemical engineering more than sixty six,
(20:15):
computer science more than sixty four. Yeah, and it goes
all the way down at the bottom of the barrel.
If we have civil engineering starting out at just fifty
seven six. Uh so even even that is really lucrative.
And uh it's too bad that there can't be more
quote unquote pockets of success like industrial engineering, because at
(20:39):
least according to a UK survey among three hundred female engineers,
the job satisfaction is really high. Although caveat, as you
there should always be a caveat with surveys. The survey
was sponsored by Atkins, which is an engineering firm, but
it found of women said their jobs were rewarding and
(21:01):
satisfying and didn't see gender as holding them back. But
it is worth noting that of these women they talked
to were inspired to pursue engineering thanks to a family member,
usually their dad, and were inspired by a teacher. So look,
I mean that is that is like tangible evidence of
(21:22):
how important it is to have people in our children's
lives inspiring them to go do something that maybe they
hadn't thought of how important it is just to normalize
an entire field of study. Yeah, and that's one of
the reasons why a lot of these respondents went on
to say that there needs to be a greater awareness
of what an engineer does, as we have hammered home
(21:45):
a number of times on the podcast and improved mentorship
for girls. And that was something too that came up
in our conversation a while ago with Goldie Blocks founder
Deborah Sterling, who was a Stanford engineer. She career did
this toy called Goldie Blocks, which is specifically designed to
get girls excited about engineering, to teach them engineering fundamentals
(22:08):
in a fun and engaging and girl friendly kind of way.
Because when she was growing up, even though she ended
up becoming an engineer, she would have had no idea
as a kid that that would even be a possibility
because in front of her all she saw or princesses
and barbies and pink things, and she was like, I
was building things with my barbies, but I didn't know
(22:29):
that that was engineering. And I think it wasn't until
high school that a teacher alerted her to that, well,
all of this stuff that we've been learning in our
stem episodes has really inspired me because Christmas time is
coming up and I have a five year old niece,
and I don't think they all listen to the podcast.
I think it's safe to talk about this. But um,
(22:50):
I found this dollhouse set that basically has a like
a battery pack attached to it, and you can run
these currents and actually light up your dollhouse and you
build walls, you hang lamps, you do all sorts of stuff.
And so she is into anything anything that is pink,
(23:11):
purple and sparkly, and so a dollhouse would be neat.
And if she can learn some spatial reasoning skills while
she does it, then that's even better. Yeah, and some
electrical engineering too. It sounds like, well, anti Caroline is
trying to get a little Sarah into some engineering. You're
planting the stem seeds, Caroline. Indeed, I ane um, but
(23:31):
we do have to bring our high down for a
moment and move away from that survey that was very happy,
go lucky, because that's not always the case with women
and engineering, as is expected when you go into these
fields that are very much in the words of a
female engineer boys clubs. Um, there was a University of
(23:56):
Wisconsin Milwaukee Center for the Study of the Workplace report
that came out in two thousand and eight looking at
women and engineering, and it found that, first of all,
a third of women graduating from engineering programs don't enter
engineering jobs because they see them as inflexible or non
supportive of women. Come on now, I mean, how many
(24:17):
times have we heard that about different I mean just
different arenas in general. Yeah, as far as I mean,
as far as supporting women goes. They also found that
half of women's surveyed who left engineering jobs did so
because of working conditions, too much travel, too little advancement
and pay, and one in three left because of a
hostile work environment. And there probably is a lot of
(24:39):
unconscious and conscious bias at work because these engineering fields
are still so male dominated. But female engineers who worked
in companies that valued and recognize their contributions, invested in
training and professional development expressed the greatest levels of satisfaction
within their jobs and careers. Which you could probably apply
that to any type of job that supports you and
(25:02):
wants to see you succeed. But in a realm like engineering,
it's so critical to set up support structures outside of
college at the end of the pipeline. Where the pipeline
is supposed to end up the pool, the engineering pool.
I'm not going to extend this pipeline metaphor any farther
(25:22):
because the gap is so huge, not just in the
United States but around the world. For instance, in in
the U s And Canada, in the engineering workforce, women
make up only but that's not as bad as it
is in the UK. No, the UK, it's only seven percent,
And in Australia women make up nine point six percent
(25:43):
of the engineering workforce, but it's awesome over in Latvia
which is thirty percent and Bulgaria which has twenty nine
point three percent. Yeah. I think that came up as
well in our tech episode because it's similar with computer
science where Eastern year up. They're all about getting some
women into some STEM and this probably is a reason
(26:07):
why we're seeing so much government initiative with getting girls
engaged in STEM because guess what folks of the engineering
workforce in China or women, Yeah, we're trailing. Yeah, we're trailing.
And people are seeing this as a potential detriment to
our economy because why do women in engineering matter on
(26:29):
a practical sense. It's not just because we want parody
for everything fifty fifty for all know, it has very
real world implications because diversity foster's innovation. We need innovation. Yeah,
like there was some percentage I can't remember, But our
g d P is actually suffering because of the fact
that we don't have the brightest minds in these fields,
(26:52):
in the stem fields and engineering in particular. And I'm
not that's not to say that the people in engineering
aren't right, but when you are only taking from one
cool of people, from one pipeline to bring that metaphor back, um,
that means that you're taking, yeah, the best, but then
you're also having to go down to fill the rest
of your spots too, maybe the middle of the pack.
(27:12):
But why don't you go over to the other pool
and take the top of their candidates also, because that
is the way that you get more innovation, right, And
even speaking more specifically to two women's involvement, there's even
some feminist theory of gender and engineering talking about how
the two really are interwoven because a lot of times
(27:34):
we're talking about all of these systems that are human centered,
and we're they're they're making things they're making those roads
and bridges and biomedical devices and clean water sheds, all
of those things for not just male consumers obviously, but
also for female consumers and for kids. And as Don Bonfield,
(27:56):
who's the VP of the Women's Engineering Society said, women
bring diversity that a non mixed team doesn't have. And
the skills that they bring include a desire to produce
an excellent product that delights to customer and solves a problem. Right,
I mean, just think about the items, to use a
general word, that we are not getting because some of
(28:17):
those great minds did not end up in engineering or
left engineering because it was unwelcoming. And I mean another
problem that you run into, like you said, I mean
you you you lose that innovation when you don't have
women's minds on the team as well. But you also
create problems. You're not just avoiding good solutions, you're creating
problems because we have the issue of air bags. What
(28:40):
about airbags? You say, well, because it was a male
team that created these safety devices, they were created from
male bodies, and so women and children in vehicles, Actually,
we're getting injured by the very safety devices that we're
supposed to save their lives. Yeah, and there have also
been issues of voice recognition software that only recognized male
(29:02):
voices because it was an all male team building them. Now,
clearly you could swing the other way and say that
you'd have similar problems crop up if you had all
female teams working on things. That's why the name of
the game is about diversity and bringing multiple minds to
the table to foster innovation. Because I think Dr Mary Gilly,
(29:26):
who works with e A Technology, said it best. She said,
we have more chances of better serving the needs of
society as a whole if those working in engineering reflect
across section of society. Yeah. And I mean Margaret Bailey,
who's a professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute
of Technology in New York, summed it up by saying, hey, look,
(29:47):
you're just going to see entirely different outcomes in general.
I mean you're going to see better products. I mean,
happier consumers, but also happier engineers. I mean, I think,
I think if there's a shift in this field, you know,
hopefully we can get more women involved and more of
(30:07):
the old guard more accepting and welcoming as well. Yeah,
and it's exciting to know that there are those Lilyan
Gilbreath's out there, those trailblazers who have done incredible things,
and that there are women working right now who are
doing incredible things, but we need more of them, which
is why I'm quitting the podcast to become an engineer.
(30:29):
No please, I'll tell you what it excited me. Honestly,
just learning about engineering. It honestly made me feel like
a senior in high school looking through the college pamphlets
thinking about, Oh, all these incredible things people are doing. Um,
but I do really want to hear from engineers out there, male, female, whomever,
(30:51):
because I would I would love to get an inside
view of what it is really like because there are
those vastly different workplace survey results saying oh, everything's great, No,
everything's terrible, huh. So let us know what it's like.
And also if there any notable women engineers that we
should promote, let us know all of your engineering thoughts.
(31:13):
Mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters. You can also tweet us at Mom's
Stuff podcast or send us a message on Facebook. And
now back to our letters. So I've got a letter
here from MG who is a Mexican physicist, and she
(31:33):
had some thoughts on our women in Science episode, and
she said, while growing up, I didn't experience such a
strong gender bias in science education. I've always been good
in math, and I've always felt proud about it. But
once I was in the last year of high school,
the picture change. In Mexico, one has to choose a
major when applying to a university, and once in university,
(31:55):
one takes the corresponding courses. I e's not possible to
decide a major actor and old. I was very interested
in both math and physics, and before deciding which major
I would study, I went to the university to talk
with several researchers to make up my mind, and although
the information they gave me was useful, I was very
disappointed by the lack of women researchers. The ratio of
men to women researchers in physics and math, at least
(32:17):
in the university I attended, is around one and ten.
This uninspiring scenario prevailed during my undergraduate studies and my
master's studies, which I just finished Congratulations. Despite that, I'm
extremely motivated to pursue a life career in physics. And
from time to time not having female role models that
I can relate to is demotivating. I have many anecdotes
(32:39):
that I could share, but to be brief, my viewpoint
is that one of the main reasons there are a
few women in science is because of our culture. I
even dared a fingerpoint that the pervasive idea that the
ultimate some may say only purpose of women on earth
is to procreate has a bad impact on women's self
image since it tends to diminish any other achievement a
woman can have in her life. So thanks MG, and
(33:00):
congratulations on that. Physics masters. Well, I have a letter
here from Elizabeth. She is a postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics
currently working at the Max Plank Institute for Astronomy. So
we I mean essentially have like a science celebrity writing
us right now, But she had some things to say.
She says this is purely anecdotal, but growing up in
(33:22):
a small town in Portugal, I was always very fascinated
by science, especially astronomy, and I did well in math
and physics at school. I have a twin brother who
himself has always been more inclined to the humanities. People
like friends teachers and family found it very puzzling and
kept commenting on how we could quote unquote reversed the
gender roles when we chose what to pursue in high
(33:43):
school and college. It seemed natural for some people that
I should have been the humanities inclined twin and my
brother should have been the science incline one. We weren't
raised in the most gender blind way. For example, I
played with a lot of pink stuff and ponies and barbies,
and my brother had the more masculine toys like robots
and legos, and overall I was very much encouraged to
pursue feminine activities like learning to cook and such. But
(34:05):
the fascination with nature, physics, and the beauty of the
night sky one over all of that. But I would
say I had to be quite strong willed to pursue
that interest against all stereotypes. Not to mention, after physicist
is not really a common career path in Portugal, let
alone in my small town. I am sure that girls
and women could be as good as boys and men,
and math and science, and any differences we see in
(34:26):
the student or scientist population results from ingrained sexist biases
in our culture, and these biases can be damaging at
any level. I have seen it through my school years
but also now my academic path. I am very lucky
to work in a research institute where a large fraction
of researchers or female not quite fifty though, and the
work environment is one of the most female friendly ones
(34:47):
I know. However, you can see how lifelong prejudices and
biases can affect specifically women. Typically, women are less vocal
and less dominant in discussions than men, even when they
have comparable scientific ex rotise. Women in academia definitely tend
to suffer from imposter syndrome more than men, as you
discussed in the line in episode, which I think is
(35:08):
a center of the field still being very male dominated.
Hopefully things are improving for the better as more and
more women get PhDs in science fields and more women's
scientists with visibility outside of academia equals more role models
for young girls, which is really good news. Good news indeed, Elizabeth,
thank you so much for writing and telling your story,
(35:29):
and thanks to all of the scientists that we've been
hearing from lately. We want to hear from everybody. Mom
Stuff Discovery dot Com is where you can send your letters.
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
send us a message on Facebook like a stair while
you're at it. And for some more fun stuff, we're
on Instagram at stuff mom Never Told You and on
(35:50):
Tumbler as well. It's stuff I've Never Told You dot
tumbler dot com. And for your viewing pleasure, we have
a YouTube channel that you should definitely go check out.
It's YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You,
and don't forget to subscribe for more on this and
thousands of other topics, Does it How stuff works dot
(36:11):
com
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