Men are clueless July 13, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineerblogs.org, engineering, societal commentary.Tags: communication, feminism, sexism, sexist comments
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I wrote up a post over at EngineerBlogs yesterday called Dating Advice for Women Engineers. (Yeah, I forgot to post a link here…) After I wrote it up and posted it, I reread it and realized that maybe a better title should’ve been something like “A Woman’s Guide to Dating Male Engineers”. And then I worried that I was going to get ragged on for making male engineers sound stupid or clueless. Fortunately, there have been no such responses, which is good because while some may assume that was the implication, that would be a false assumption.
Here’s the thing I’ve come to understand: many males, but particularly male engineers, aren’t clueless. I know that may come as a surprise to some. The reality is that I think engineers expect people to just be direct. And frankly, I really appreciate that. I like being able to just say what I think to my husband and not try to couch everything in terms that won’t injure his ego. And I know that if he says something critical, it’s not that he’s saying he doesn’t like me or anything, he just is making a point about something. It’s a lot easier for us to separate our personal feelings and feelings about outside issues. We can argue passionately about stuff we do at work, and it has nothing to do with whether or not I like him as a person.
I’ve never been good at the whole ‘dropping hints’ thing. That’s probably a good thing because I have also observed that a lot of guys think that when you say something doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. Being subtle and dropping hints have never been terribly effective means of communicating what you want, despite the fact I see people doing it all the time. When I do see someone trying it, I seem to pick it up sometimes, but I usually roll my eyes and think, “Just spit it out already!”
Anyway, the point of this was that I think people ought to just be more direct. Tactful is also appreciated and ought to be used liberally…but not to the point where it obfuscates your message. And if someone doesn’t get what you’re saying (especially if it’s a guy), it may be because he’s clueless, but it’s also worthwhile to see how clearly you’re communicating.
I might be *gasp* a role model March 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, feminism, gifted, math, societal commentary, younger son.Tags: feminism, girls, math, nerd girls, role models
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My younger son is in chess club, and one of the girls, whom I’ll call K, is in his class and also in the club. K is a pretty bright cookie as she has won things like spelling bee and chess tournaments. I was picking him up from the club on Tuesday when K said hi as she walked by. A couple seconds later, K came back to ask me if I would be coming to their class for our weekly math lesson this week. I said I would, and she cheerily went on her way.
I went in for our lesson earlier today, only to find that the teacher was sick. Rather than work with the smaller group of kids as planned, I offered to read the whole class a math story (which I’ve been doing every other week). So I read Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter. They were all very excited, and there was a lot of discussion about the story.
At the end of the session, one of the girls came up to me (whom I’ll call F). F isn’t in the group I work with regularly, so I don’t know much about her other than she’s not as advanced in math. (I assumed that meant she wasn’t all that interested in it.) She’d been in the restroom and had missed the first page of the story and wanted to see it. I said I could leave the book with her to read. She was very excited. Then K came up and gave me a hug, and after she was finished, F gave me a hug. I was rather shocked, though certainly not unhappy about it.
I’m trying to process it, though, and it seems interesting in light of a couple semi-related things. First, I came across an article about how reducing academic pressure helps kids succeed. Given the younger boy was having huge difficulties with perfectionism, my response to this was, I admit, nothing more than, “Duh!” We’re helping him to deal with this by using his math program. Some days he does very well, other days, he’ll get somewhere between 75% and 80% right. I try to tell him that I appreciate his hard work, and that if he doesn’t get it right, it only means he needs more practice. He’s also learning that he almost never gets 100%…and that is making him okay with doing things wrong. Yeah, he still gets frustrated, but he’s not so scared to try anymore.
However, I realized that I’m kind of doing this with the kids I’ve been working with at school. I’m doing stuff with them that I don’t completely expect them to get, but I also don’t get upset if they get it wrong. And there’s no grades. We’re doing it to have fun and to learn, and I think the kids really like doing something just for fun.
Another recent event was when a coworker started lamenting to me how his daughters, who are middle school aged, seem uninterested in math. Being an engineer, he’s very disappointed, especially because they seem to be quite good at it. I suggested he get the books written by Danica McKellar and give them to his daughters.
Now, I have to say that I can’t imagine myself reading those books when I was that age (of course, I could very well be wrong – although I had some unusual role models). On the other hand, I figure that if there are bright girls out there who are eschewing math and these books get them interested, then I’m all for it. It turns out that my coworker did give them the books and, even better, they really seem to be enjoying them. Maybe they won’t turn into math majors, but he seems a lot happier, and they may be enjoying math more.
I’ve talked about efforts like Nerd Girls in the past, and I have to admit I felt it was stupid to try to ‘girlify’ engineering to attract women. On the other hand, I’m obviously the kind of woman who wasn’t very stuck on social messages about women in science or engineering. It’s not hard to imagine that there are a lot of young, intelligent girls out there who feel social pressure to avoid technical areas because they lack role models. Maybe some of those girls really need things like Nerd Girls and Danica’s books. I don’t have any daughters, so I can’t really say much based on experience. After my experience today, though, I’m wondering if female role models are far more important to some girls than I ever thought.
Scientist, with kids February 19, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, education, engineering, family, feminism, grad school, homeschooling, older son, personal, physics, research, science, societal commentary.Tags: feminism, gender equity, kids, parenting, role models, sexism
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FSP has a post asking about the Local Mom Effect. That is, she wonders if being in a department with more women professors who have kids affects the outlook of younger women in the field. I find this post interesting…but also, I hate to say it, irrelevant.
Let’s put it this way: what women?!
When I started school at Caltech, I knew of two women professors out of all of math, physics, and astronomy. I only ever met one of them, knew she had no kids. I knew nothing about the other professor. When I decided to go back to school a few years later, I ended up in a physics dept. where the professors were all men. Later, I ended up in an electrical engineering department where the professors were all men.
I guess that, in my mind, the notion of being one of the few women in the department was no different than being one of the few women with kids in the department. When I went back to school, I had a kid already, so it wasn’t like I really had a choice about whether or not to be a childless woman in physics or engineering.
I will say that when I originally got pregnant as an undergrad at Caltech, I was told by my advisor that women couldn’t do calculus while pregnant and that I should drop out. Of course, he was a guy, so I seriously doubted he understood how women’s brains work while pregnant. (And it turns out that I can do calculus great while pregnant…I just can’t speak a full sentence coherently.) However, I guess I never took it as a message that women with kids don’t belong in science…I inferred that he meant it more personally, and that I myself was not a good fit for science. (Fortunately, major hopping got boring after a while, I ended up back in physics.)
When I went back to school, however, I felt that being the only woman or one of a few was very advantageous for several reasons. First, if I was the only woman or one of a very small number, I was already an oddity. A woman with kids is probably not much more odd than a woman without, and there was really no one to compare myself to (or say that I was doing it wrong). Second, I went back to school in North Dakota, and it really seems like people here more or less expect you to have kids no matter what you’re doing. I know that grates on some people, but for me, it was a blessing: having kids is just another part of life, and most people here learn to do their jobs while having them. (Also, I can’t recall anyone having a fit if I said I couldn’t make it to something because of kid-related issues.) Third, I was older than the average undergraduate or even grad student, so I think people assumed that it was pretty normal for someone my age to have kids. The fact that the younger students didn’t have kids was simply a function of age and never made me feel self-conscious that I did have kids. Finally, when I started my MS, my advisor was fine with the fact that I was homeschooling the older boy and would only be doing my degree part-time. He said this was really no different than other students in the department who were working full-time and pursing their degree part-time, as well.
I have been told, especially when doing my PhD classes, that it was “really cool to see a woman in science with kids”, especially by some fellow grad students. Until I started my PhD, I really hadn’t expected it to be a big deal. It had never occurred to me that I might be a “role model”…but I keep hearing it more than I ever expected to. I also suspect it’s because I often had kids with me or family issues that were more apparent to fellow grad students. Many professors try to maintain a more professional relationship with their students, and it doesn’t surprise me that many grad students don’t see how having kids affects the lives of the professors or that they don’t realize some professors have kids at all.
Realistically, I only got here because I didn’t really know that what I was doing was unusual in any way. If I had been surrounded by women who had kids but never let it on or didn’t have kids, I might have felt self-conscious about being a mom already. With no one to compare to, however, I just assumed that it wasn’t any more abnormal than a woman without kids.
Why are the women so good? January 21, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, feminism, teaching.Tags: feminism, sexism, sexist comments, students, teaching, women in engineering
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I’d been thinking about writing this post last semester. However, it slipped my mind until some trollish comments showed up on EngineerBlogs today. I think that Chris, Gears and Katie gave the troll a good smackdown, but one comment bothers me:
few women are capable of handling these kind of demanding environment.
I’ve heard this before (pretty much since I started as an undergrad). However, after teaching my class last semester, I have to wonder what the hell these people are talking about.
I had 90 students last semester, 5 of whom were women. All five of those women were easily in the top 25% of the class and were more likely in the top 10% of the class. They were the students who repeatedly handed in assignments on time and seldom (if ever) had to redo any of them. I will say that none of them chose to do the programming – but that is likely because they had turned in all the optional assignments required for an A before the matlab assignments were given.
If anything, what I saw was puzzling to me. The women seemed the most prepared to meet the demands of a college class, were able to communicate well both in written and verbal form (and one of them was a non-native English speaker), and contributed well and frequently to the class. It was almost strange how they were on top of things when the majority of their male classmates were struggling.
I’ve heard it argued that the women most likely to be in engineering are generally those who are in the top of their classes. Women who may be good at math but not outright brilliant will be swayed to go into other careers. From what I could see, this was true.
If you listen to trolls on the internet, you get the impression that women are incompetent engineers, however. The women in my class were some of the most competent and motivated students, but I admit that they were more passive than the male students, which I still think leads the male students (and probably later on, male professors) to believe that the female students don’t know anything. But it’s interesting to hear this comments after witnessing the exact opposite of what everybody “knows to be true”. I can only think that people who make these comments are really overestimating their own abilities or wrongly judging what it takes to be a good engineer. Maybe both.
Familiar faces and the network analyzer August 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, feminism, teaching.Tags: education, feminism
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I was in a different part of town than normal at lunch time, so I decided to go to my favorite Greek restaurant. As I was standing in line, waiting to order my gyro, I noticed someone further back in the line. I recognized the face, but all I could remember at the moment was that I knew this person because he had sneered at me.
After I left, I realized how I knew this person, and why the only thing that came back to me was his sneer. I still have never been able to understand this particular behavior, but perhaps someone else has an idea. I found a locked entry in my LJ from about four years ago which recounted the event. (And those of you who are engineering students – take notice. It’s rude, don’t do it. Sadly, I’ve also gotten this attitude from a number of students, as well.)
My classmate/officemate/fellow grad student asked me for help on something in the lab he was TAing. We needed a part (a female to female BNC connector) to calibrate the network analyzer.
We had no such connector, even though it was there a day or two ago. At that point, it could be anywhere in the building. I quickly constructed another part that would serve the same purpose. (For those who are interested, I connected a female BNC to N connector to an N barrel to another N to BNC female.) I handed it to the guys (or maybe I should say Guys with a capital G…they’re power engineers, and think dealing with anything less than 20kV is wussy) and said, “Use this.”
Guy #1: “So do you always just put stuff together until it fits?”
Me: “Do you want to do your calibration?”
Guy #1: “Yeah, but isn’t adding more parts going to throw it off?”
My response: “Perhaps, but the network analyzer is looking for a through connection to perform the calibration. This should work just fine since its not going to increase your resistance by that much. Your main concern could be that because it’s longer than the other barrel, you could have some sort of phase shift…but it should only be a little bit.” (I don’t know about you guys, but in re-reading this, it doesn’t sound all that complicated to me.)
Guy #1 stares at me for a moment but says nothing.
I say: “Or I could just be blowing smoke. That sometimes happens, too.”
My officemate sort of smirked and said, “Thanks, Cherish.”
As I was walking out the door, though, I heard Guy #1 say, “That was a long answer to a simple question.”
I told Mike about it. He said that Guy #1’s initial comment was meant to imply that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I responded in a completely appropriate manner (i.e. explaining my reasoning). However, he wasn’t expecting that, so he made the last comment to “save face” in front of his buddies. I guess the conversation didn’t bug me so much (it’s a good idea to ask about someone’s methodology) until I heard the comment on my way out. Mike’s comment was that he couldn’t say it in front of me because then I might have had a chance to respond…but he probably meant it as a dig, which is why he said it as loud as he did.
I don’t get it…I thought they WANTED my help.
Linkety Link July 31, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, links, math, science.Tags: feminism, links, math, science, women in science
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I came across this fascinating article on the history of research in global climate change. I am greatly amused by the fact that methods used for oil and gas exploration were later utilized to validate theories on climate change. Irony.
Anyway, it’s a fascinating read: The Discovery of Global Warming
I’ve also been remiss in not posting a link to this sooner. (As you can tell, blogging hasn’t been at the forefront of my brain.) GEARS wrote two great posts on diversification in STEM fields: Diversification In Stem Fields and On Diversification: with Dr. Anna Garry and Professor Ursula Keller.
Of course, there’s a lot going on at EngineerBlogs. I wrote a post recently titled Died-in-the-wool Engineer.
For fun, you should think about whether math should be taught in schools. (And yes, the video is a spoof.)
A rose by any other name… December 7, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism.Tags: feminism, hyphenated names, rant
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This is the 21st century. I shouldn’t be writing this post at this point in a society that has had three waves of feminism, but I am.
Apparently there are people who still don’t understand the concept of a hyphenated last name.
One of my first experiences with this problem was fairly mild. When I was an undergrad, I got a divorce and changed my married name back to my maiden name. I got remarried the summer between finishing my bachelor’s degree and starting my master’s program. When I remarried, I chose to hyphenate my last name: maiden name-husband’s last name.
The first class I took during my master’s was from a professor who had instructed classes while I had both previous names. This professor had a curious habit of referring to people as “Mrs. Last Name” or “Ms. Last Name”. I thought it was peculiar, but I appreciated it because it created a more professional atmosphere in the classroom. However, the first day of class, as the professor was going through the roster, he looked at me and said, “What the heck should I call you now?” While I admit the name is a bit of a mouthful (and is best spoken with a German accent), it bothered me a bit that he didn’t want to call me by my married name when he would brave the ten-syllable name that the Indian grad student in the next row was sporting.
At University of Minnesota, the nice people in admin decided to put all of my files under my maiden name, despite the fact that I’d been married for several years before starting there and that my application materials were made in my married name. When I inquired about having it changed, they said I had to provide a copy of my marriage certificate. (I’m almost surprised they didn’t want the paperwork from my previous marriage, as well!)
Since then, the most frequent problem I’ve had is when I have to give my ID to a person who is trying to look me up in some sort of database. I don’t know why, but they look at the last name on my ID and ignore everything that comes before the hyphen. I can almost count out the timing as to when they’ll say, “But you don’t show up in our records!” That because you’re using the wrong last name, doofus!
And now I’ve just been exposed to another example: apparently one of my colleagues, who has left our organization, had been listing me in professional documents (such as design drawings) with my husband’s last name. In such documents, they usually list a first initial and the last name. This means that if anyone who comes in later or outside our group has a question about the design related to my work on it, they will probably call my husband and assume the first initial is a typo. Unless, of course, they also don’t get the concept of a hyphenated name.
My advice to women who plan to get married: don’t change your name. It really isn’t worth it.
Nerd Girls redux August 25, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, feminism, science, societal commentary.Tags: Amp Hour, feminism, nerd girls, sexism, shopping
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I promise not to turn this into a weekly installment of “reactions to what Chris and Dave said”…unless, of course, they keep saying things I feel require a response.
In the fifth Amp Hour, they discussed the Nerd Girls upcoming reality show. I’ve discussed them a couple times before, and at best, my feelings are ambivalent. Rather than responding to the concept of Nerd Girls, I think it’s better to respond to the things the Chris and Dave said because there were some items that stuck out as misconceptions.
First, I agree entirely that the best way to encourage young women to get into engineering is by introducing them to engineering as a fun activity. (I became interested in programming when I was 9 and have felt that was what piqued my interest in science and engineering. Funny how I ended up doing simulation work.) On the other hand, that’s only half the problem. There really is a strong social disapproval of women who want to go into engineering. I think, for example, of my niece. Her aunt and and uncle are both engineers. She did very well in calculus. When she said she hadn’t determined a major when she entered college, I suggested engineering. The look I got from everyone in her family was pretty much, “Are you crazy?!”
Dave mentioned that the point of the show was that “you can be a traditionally girly-type girl and still be an engineer” but then wondered if that was really needed.
My answer is: definitely. Physics could use it, too. Shows like this are probably not going to appeal to men, and I suspect some of that is a rejection of wanting to deal with the things that strike them as too feminine. Both Chris and Dave said that those types of things shouldn’t be important or at least not as prominent to girls in engineering…but they can be, and I don’t think a lot of men can deal with that. And for younger girls, they have few role models of women who are able to accomplish a healthy balance.
“Fitting in” as a woman in engineering can be harder than you imagine: it really does require taking on a very masculine persona. For a lot of women who go into engineering (and stay), I suspect that some of that isn’t a huge issue. On the other hand, I have noticed that there are marked differences in personality and work between myself and my male coworkers (i.e. everyone else in my group). It is easy to stick out. If you happen to be a woman who likes to dress up daily and wear high heels, you can imagine that the responses of the people around you in that environment will be either derision or the assumption that this means you’re looking for a husband. Chris said, “I don’t want to see them go shopping,” but some women might. In particular, I’m curious how these women can manage being “feminine” engineers without the backlash that such behavior usually brings.
My ambivalence about the whole thing is exactly what Dave said, “And you know they’re going to choose the hot-looking ones.” Indeed, they’re looking for very young women, which would preclude a lot of quite accomplished and talented engineers. Although it’s meant to dispel the myth that “women engineers are ugly,” there’s the counter to that where many men think women are only kept around because they’re eye-candy and not because they’re good engineers.
Ideally, no one should give a damn how a woman looks: they’ll pay more attention to their accomplishments. I think most people strive for this ideal. There are a lot who don’t, however. Fluxor has a great example on his blog, but then Dave even made the comment along the same vein that Kari from Mythbusters was “a bit better to look at” than the other Mythbusters cast. I know it seems like an innocent comment, but it’s the type of thing that makes me cringe all the time. It’s very hard to get away from that, and I don’t think this program is going to do much to help it, at least from the male perspective.
My way to approach this is simply to assume that there is an audience of young women for whom this video will be somewhat inspirational. There are girls who are going to want to see how these women spend their personal time as much as their professional time. I’m just going to hold my breath and hope that they focus more on their intellect than their looks, as unlikely as it seems. I hope the guys will withhold judgement because the intended audience may find the “girly” aspect of the show just as compelling as the engineering side.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
Telling women to smile on the internet October 7, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, societal commentary.Tags: facebook, feminism, sexism
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There’s an interesting phenomenon that many women have experienced: a random stranger off the street will suddenly come up to you and tell you to smile. If you’ve never heard of it before, just google “men telling women to smile” and you can read more about it than I have room to give you here. The general consensus is that it’s a control issue. Men can demand things from women (or feel entitled to) because of their privileged position.
The funny thing is that you can get this on the internet, too. Only there, I’ve run into it several times in the form of “you shouldn’t post that on your facebook page”. It’s happened several times to me:
Interestingly, that last comment came immediately after I’d posted something about how the president of our university mentioned my research in his state of the university speech. This same person never bothered to comment on that point.
And this leads me to believe that this is exactly the same phenomenon, as it always seems to be men who say these things to me. They somehow feel that they can exert control over what I choose to post and they feel I am not sufficiently entertaining.
I wonder how they would feel if someone said to them, in a conversation, “I don’t want to talk about what you’re interested in. Let’s talk about what I want to discuss.” Most of us think people like that are assholes.
After telling my husband about this latest comment, he responded incredulously, “It’s your Facebook page. You can post whatever you want!” And a few hours later, another friend posted exactly that on the conversation on Facebook. I was more polite than that in my response, but given this has happened multiple times, I think I’m going to use this as my response from now on: “Don’t like it? Don’t read it. I’m not here for your entertainment. Also, learn to use the ‘hide’ or ‘unfriend’ options.”
Of course, that would be rude. And women can’t be rude.