General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"... you and I can't be equal." A letter from mech. eng. senior to female classmates.
http://easterneronline.com/36007/letters-to-the-editor/letter-to-the-editor-stem/
ohheckyeah
(9,314 posts)women's difficulties in achieving what some men take for granted.
Lindsay
(3,276 posts)from the title of the post.
Which is nice.
Thanks for posting!
I expected the usual "This is our field / Only here because of political correctness / They go easier on you / Not a real engineer" screed. I was pleasantly surprised!
Aristus
(66,274 posts)roguevalley
(40,656 posts)him
Elmer S. E. Dump
(5,751 posts)MoonchildCA
(1,301 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Pleasant surprise!
brush
(53,726 posts)ProfessorGAC
(64,814 posts)Obviously a young person too.
niyad
(113,012 posts)JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)The women engineers and other technical women in my department are promoted and given job assignments on par. Glad I work for a company that values people for their brains.
ProfessorGAC
(64,814 posts)Less so at the highest levels, but it's not non-existent. Since there are actually laws regarding this corporate behavior, i'm surprised we're surprised!
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)The chauvinist people have been minimized and are retiring over time. Basically they were bullies to everyone. So the net result is a less sexist and less racist work environment. Less BS, more productivity.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)fasttense
(17,301 posts)I have a beautiful 20 something daughter who would love to meet this guy.
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)in this context.
jalan48
(13,836 posts)For several years now the number of women accepted to our university law school has exceeded the number of men accepted.
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)nt
suffragette
(12,232 posts)niyad
(113,012 posts)KentuckyWoman
(6,679 posts)and dashed to the Google machine in an attempt to disprove it's authenticity.
That's a sad commentary on the quality of men I know.... and a credit to Jered Mauldin for being a young man of incredible insight.
Thanks for posting.
K & R
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)I started off as an engineering major back in the Dark Ages, and women in the field were more rare back then. I think my specific engineering major started off with around 85 men and 12 women in the group as first year students. The sophomore group that had been through a year had seen every woman but three drop out. I think they had started off with a similar number of women.
While it was a tough major that had attrition every year (like me after 1 year), it obviously wasn't a 75% rate for guys like it was for women. I'm sure some of the women left because they were made to feel unwelcome by a group of the guys and maybe some of the professors. (Note - most of the guys were probably thrilled they had women in their engineering and engineering related classes, but there was likely a group of men that turned them off to engineering, or at least that major)
It's definitely gotten better since the 1980s, but there is still a long ways to go in fields that have been traditionally male dominated.
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)He doesn't really mean any of it.
(Snark, as if it was necessary)
DinahMoeHum
(21,769 posts)". . .are not threatened by women seeking equality"
Jared Mauldin is a real man of quality.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)I always tell people that I'm thrilled my wife makes more money than me. I'd almost think it was crazy to be threatened by that. I have a pretty good job, and if she makes more than me, it means we're doing pretty well overall.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)I'll eat my hat.
d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)This was an excellent editorial! Kick and Rec!!!
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)Engineers are ethical.
d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)which is why we need more of them in Congress.
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)Even if they seem a little odd at times.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,283 posts)Disclaimer: until now, I had not been fully aware that there were two John Sununus. I did not know that the one who was in the Senate was the son of the one I was thinking of.
John H. Sununu
....
Early life
....
He earned a bachelor of science degree in 1961, a master of science degree in 1963, and a Ph.D. in 1966 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in mechanical engineering. Sununu scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs. He is a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.
Controversies
....
As White House Chief of Staff, Sununu reportedly took personal trips, for skiing and other purposes, and classified them as official, for purposes such as conservation or promoting the Thousand Points of Light. The Washington Post wrote that Sununu's jets "took him to fat-cat Republican fund-raisers, ski lodges, golf resorts and even his dentist in Boston." Sununu had paid the government only $892 for his more than $615,000 worth of military jet travel. Sununu said that his use of the jets was necessary because he had to be near a telephone at all times for reasons of national security. Sununu became the subject of much late-night television humor over the incident. Sununu worsened the situation shortly afterwards when, after leaking rumors of financial difficulties in his family, he traveled to a rare stamp auction at Christie's auction house in New York City from Washington in a government limousine, spending $5,000 on rare stamps. Sununu then sent the car and driver back to Washington unoccupied while he returned on a corporate jet. In the course of one week, 45 newspapers ran editorials on Sununu, nearly all of them critical of his actions. Sununu resigned his White House post on December 4, 1991.
Sununu repaid over $47,000 to the government for the flights on the orders of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, with the help of the Republican Party. However, the reimbursements were at commercial rates, which are about one-tenth the cost of the actual flights; one ski trip to Vail, Colorado alone had cost taxpayers $86,330.
LiberalArkie
(15,703 posts)Gothmog
(144,876 posts)Thanks for posting
City Lights
(25,171 posts)Not at all what I expected. Thanks so much for posting this, kpete!
Out of the park...
SunSeeker
(51,502 posts)MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)Faith in humanity, restored!
kath
(10,565 posts)Perseus
(4,341 posts)What else can I say...
s-cubed
(1,385 posts)I really appreciate this letter.
lostnfound
(16,161 posts)By the time I started in 1980, a third of our entering class were women, and by the time I graduated the freshmen were 50/50.
dae
(3,396 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)i salute these talented, brave, exceptional women.
Bravo!
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)Equality for all, now please.
raven mad
(4,940 posts)My daughter already learned this!
Thank you.
NCjack
(10,279 posts)going to have this letter hung around his neck for the rest of his life. Then, at the end, he flips the perception of his letter. And, I thought "oh yes", this smart guy is going to have this letter hung around his neck for the rest of his life.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)...pricks that get in the news.
Lunabell
(6,044 posts)I just love it when people get it!
U4ikLefty
(4,012 posts)I'm a civil engineer and one of my favorite PMs is woman. Plus she's real cool. She just came back from climbing Mt Kilimanjaro.
The structural engineer to teach me all about retaining walls (one of my specialties) was a woman.
A female engineer also broke my heart.
Two out of three ain't bad.
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)The old boys network of professional administrators (non-engineers) got a hurting put on their fun and games miss-management style. Karma and justice in one feisty package. Things that were common sense obvious for years became reality.
Matariki
(18,775 posts)not so much because it's rare for a man to understand the onslaught of subtle slights that women endure, but in the
ways I've failed to understand the effect of them on myself as a woman. This letter, and even more so his response to the letter being praised really hit some unconscious sore spots.
Jared tells the Ms. Blog:
(My friend Holly Jeanneret motivated me to write the letter). When Holly and I started Calculus 1 I quickly realized that while I was pretty good at math, she was better; a lot better. Holly consistently outscored me on exams and homework assignments, she understood the concepts on a level I couldnt match. However, I often saw other men walk right past her and wander around the class looking for another partner. If they did partner with her, they were hyper-critical, they talked over her, they talked directly to me and barely acknowledged she was there. If Holly disagreed on an answer, instead of looking at both answers to find out who had done something wrong, as was common when I worked with other men, I saw them jump to the conclusion that she was must be wrong. It wasnt just Holly. Since then I have seen the same behavior from men in nearly every class.
What happens when we start pushing some of these thinkers to the side? When they opt for other paths not because this isnt a calling, but because they see the challenges as outweighing the rewards? I want companies to have access the best thinkers and the best ideas available and if we push certain people out of this field for reasons that have nothing to do with ability, we cant have that result.
We [men] cant know what it feels like to grow up in a society where these subtle slights are the norm; a society where women have become so accustomed to them that they can only recall the major ones. We cannot empathize, and our experiences are not the same, but we can listen and try to understand. From there, we can act.
I work in computer sciences. This resonated more than I wish it did.
LittleGirl
(8,277 posts)I really enjoyed this response from Jared. His wife is a lucky woman. I grew up with some extremely smart and talented women in grade and high school, which means that my class scores were always lower than theirs so always felt inferior. I'm so happy that this guy 'gets it'.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)Stainless
(718 posts)As a retired Mechanical Designer with more than forty years of experience, I have seen how poorly female engineers are treated. Women always had to do more to prove that they were capable and many of the male engineers were terrified that a woman might succeed and be promoted to a senior position.
Misogyny was a fact of life in all the companies I worked for. There were unwritten policies that no female engineers were allowed. The excuse was that women would create sexual tension and disrupt the work place. Some of the larger companies had female engineers but they were few and far between.
Some women (Carly Fiorina comes to mind) are really hurtful for the advancement of females in any technical business after she ran HP into the ground.