Half? How? I work at an aerospace electronics company and the male to female ratio is ridiculously high. I never understood why. It would be refreshing to work at a place with a more even ratio. The few women I work with are really smart and have moved up the management chain quickly.
Depending on the culture in your country bias can sit pretty deep. I live and work in a country that’s very egalitarian on the surface. But people here have a strong and sometimes subconscious belief that:
A women aren’t really intelligent but rather diligent and B women aren’t good in math/logic.
When you grow up with these biases as a girl you don’t have much interest in even trying to take up a hobby or even try to study something that is said to be only achievable by intelligent and highly logical people.
When you try it regardless people basically put you under a microscope and you have to proof constantly that you are somehow not what they believe is in your biology. It will surely show up someday when you make a mistake or don’t know about something.
The company I work at makes rocket engines (e.g., the ones on SLS/Artemis). When I go to university job fairs, the number of women who come to our booth is miniscule. The women interested in tech tend to be much more clustered around the very socially conscious companies, like for green energy. Sometimes there’s more interest couching it as supporting human space flight, but we do a lot of defense work, too.
I’m not in the tech field, but most of the people in my office are women and, as a man, it’s so refreshing not having to deal with other guys’ loud macho bullshit. I never liked it, it always made me feel uncomfortable.
I don’t get it either. I work with many, many really smart engineers. About half are women.
Half? How? I work at an aerospace electronics company and the male to female ratio is ridiculously high. I never understood why. It would be refreshing to work at a place with a more even ratio. The few women I work with are really smart and have moved up the management chain quickly.
I havent looked into it much but one reason seems to be stereotypes driving girls and women away from stem: Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests
A study on American kids but Im sure the same happens elsewhere. Its annotated and a great read just for the methods they used.
Since these stereotypes wont disappear soon we should let our kids know such ideas are made up and stuff so they wont buy them when exposed.
Depending on the culture in your country bias can sit pretty deep. I live and work in a country that’s very egalitarian on the surface. But people here have a strong and sometimes subconscious belief that: A women aren’t really intelligent but rather diligent and B women aren’t good in math/logic.
When you grow up with these biases as a girl you don’t have much interest in even trying to take up a hobby or even try to study something that is said to be only achievable by intelligent and highly logical people.
When you try it regardless people basically put you under a microscope and you have to proof constantly that you are somehow not what they believe is in your biology. It will surely show up someday when you make a mistake or don’t know about something.
The company I work at makes rocket engines (e.g., the ones on SLS/Artemis). When I go to university job fairs, the number of women who come to our booth is miniscule. The women interested in tech tend to be much more clustered around the very socially conscious companies, like for green energy. Sometimes there’s more interest couching it as supporting human space flight, but we do a lot of defense work, too.
I’m not in the tech field, but most of the people in my office are women and, as a man, it’s so refreshing not having to deal with other guys’ loud macho bullshit. I never liked it, it always made me feel uncomfortable.