Look I teach EE at college level, I've been doing it for quite some time, its not a matter of intellectual ability, many times my female students are consistently better than men, the very few of them, not all, but many are great students, last semester the top student of my class was a woman, there were around 4 women in a group of 60 students, so that tells you something. But the fact is that the proportion of male to female engineers ratio is staggering. Even when I was an engineering student, the amount of females was extremely low, and I had many of them as friends so I asked them about what they felt about being surrounded by men, all of them told me that they liked it, that over time it helped them understand better how men think and act, they told me they liked the simplicity of menand that they do had to get used to dealing with more men but that once they saw how men are they just accepted it, they never felt oppressed or harrased by men, one of them actually said that she felt "protected", many in fact expressed that they had an advantage over men, they believed that professors (which are mostly men) actually favoured their grades just because they were women, their words, not mine. In fact, long ago I read a study that somehow confirms this, that women over their academic careers in STEM fields, and even in science subjects in high school, were benefited just because they were women, and that they were not subject to the amount of frustration that their men counterparts had to withstand, and that this wasn't good for women because that gave them less "tools" to confront difficult situations, is this real or not? I don't know.
I will tell you this, over my entire career, both as student and teacher all the engineer women I've known are not your typical woman, and I am not talking about intellectual skills, I am talking about their whole attitude and mentality, don't want to sound bad but these women are great buddies, and my conclusion is that it is simply because they are more like men, I'm not saying that they are not femenine, some are extremely femenine and beautiful, I am talking about that they are more in tune with men in the way they think and act, they share a lot of common interests that we do. I don't need a damn academic study to tell me about what I see every day.
All I am saying is that it takes a specific type of women to study engineering or science, again, I am not talking about intellectual ability, I am talking about a way of thinking, its just a fact of life that men like, in general, different things that women do, and to make people believe that women are not going into the STEM fields is because they feel intimidated, not motivated or not encouraged enough is a lame excuse, the fact is that most women simply do not like STEM, and thats it, and I don't think that the solution is to try and equalize that by force. They always say "We desperately need more women into the STEM fields" and my question is always "Why?", it can arguably be said that a female point of view can contribute something different, but calling society "desperate" for women to go into the STEM fields just doesn't make sense to me, like saying "science is doomed because we dont have more women doing it" sounds ridiculous, my main suspicion is that people in STEM fields just feel guilty that they are mostly men, it is society the ones that are judging the value of a woman on what she decides to study, STEM=good, humanities=bad. Why no one ever said "We desperately need more women construction workers?", or "We desperately need more women welders", you see, because those last statements or careers are considered unworthy or beneath most people, which I completely disagree. How about "We desperately need more male nurses?" or "We desperately need more men in the humanities" they could also contribute something from a different point of view, why is no campaign to equalize that?
Jakob said it perfectly, this forum is called GroupDIY and I don't seem many women, In fact I've already asked, has anyone seen a member here that its a woman? a truly active member? if you are one of those woman members please make a statement, because during 13 years of membership in this forum I haven't seen one. Do you think they are not here because they feel intimidated, unmotivated or threatened by us? I don't think so, the easiest explanation is that most do not give a f**k about what we do.
