Sorry, I'm going to be blunt here. Engineering ability or interest has no innate connection whatsoever with what anyone carries in their underwear or the part they play in the procreative process. At the same time it is phenomenally difficult (in the UK at least) to find good engineers to employ. So finding out why 50% of the population feel, that, for purely social reasons, they are not interested in joining the profession is hugely important. (And let's face it, we know why this is the case, which is why we're now trying to do something about it.) And, from another angle, great engineering does not come from deciding "I only want to work with people just like me."


Personally I am very suspicious of any claim of "men are better at this, women are better at that". As my psychology tutor very wisely put it, the variations within each sex are massively greater than the average difference between sexes - take out social conditioning (which is the whole point of this debate) and it becomes hard to determine any useful difference at all.


As a middle aged balding bearded white man I am heartily fed of going to IET meetings and being surrounded by people like myself. Now as it happens, most of the engineers I directly work with are female (in most cases, to be honest, because we've worked together for some time and actually all joined the same company so that we could keep working together). But that's not representative of our company as a whole or of any other engineering company I've come across - and that's sad and a huge waste of potential talent.


It's really interesting to read about what happened during and after World War 2 to get a perspective view of this attitude that "they're not doing it because they don't want to" - a large number of women who were very competently and enjoyably carrying out engineering roles found themselves sacked because "the men needed the jobs". Sorry, why did they need the jobs more? "Because they're men." Errr...that's a reason?  


That all said, I totally agree with Roy, it is important that all these opinions are out in the open. 


If you like I can start discussing the difference between sex and gender - that gets to be a hugely entertaining subject on this topic...deliberately ensuring that you have a mix of genders (irrespective of sex) on an engineering team can be really useful and I'd heartily recommend it! Provided, as ever, everyone respects each other. It is very common for people to conflate sex and gender, and to believe that people of the male sex are all (or should be) male gendered, and that people of the female sex are all (or should be) female gendered, and then to feel that only male gendered people are competent / interested in engineering (or finance, or law, or being a chef, or being a guitarist, or being a newsreader etc etc etc.) Not one but two errors in that lot.


They were pretty good at this stuff in the bronze age. I blame the ancient Greeks and the Romans!


Cheers,


Andy

Sorry, I'm going to be blunt here. Engineering ability or interest has no innate connection whatsoever with what anyone carries in their underwear or the part they play in the procreative process. At the same time it is phenomenally difficult (in the UK at least) to find good engineers to employ. So finding out why 50% of the population feel, that, for purely social reasons, they are not interested in joining the profession is hugely important. (And let's face it, we know why this is the case, which is why we're now trying to do something about it.) And, from another angle, great engineering does not come from deciding "I only want to work with people just like me."


Personally I am very suspicious of any claim of "men are better at this, women are better at that". As my psychology tutor very wisely put it, the variations within each sex are massively greater than the average difference between sexes - take out social conditioning (which is the whole point of this debate) and it becomes hard to determine any useful difference at all.


As a middle aged balding bearded white man I am heartily fed of going to IET meetings and being surrounded by people like myself. Now as it happens, most of the engineers I directly work with are female (in most cases, to be honest, because we've worked together for some time and actually all joined the same company so that we could keep working together). But that's not representative of our company as a whole or of any other engineering company I've come across - and that's sad and a huge waste of potential talent.


It's really interesting to read about what happened during and after World War 2 to get a perspective view of this attitude that "they're not doing it because they don't want to" - a large number of women who were very competently and enjoyably carrying out engineering roles found themselves sacked because "the men needed the jobs". Sorry, why did they need the jobs more? "Because they're men." Errr...that's a reason?  


That all said, I totally agree with Roy, it is important that all these opinions are out in the open. 


If you like I can start discussing the difference between sex and gender - that gets to be a hugely entertaining subject on this topic...deliberately ensuring that you have a mix of genders (irrespective of sex) on an engineering team can be really useful and I'd heartily recommend it! Provided, as ever, everyone respects each other. It is very common for people to conflate sex and gender, and to believe that people of the male sex are all (or should be) male gendered, and that people of the female sex are all (or should be) female gendered, and then to feel that only male gendered people are competent / interested in engineering (or finance, or law, or being a chef, or being a guitarist, or being a newsreader etc etc etc.) Not one but two errors in that lot.


They were pretty good at this stuff in the bronze age. I blame the ancient Greeks and the Romans!


Cheers,


Andy