Where Are the Women Engineers?

I cannot stress how unrelated this picture is.

The inspiration for this blog comes from this video, which set the cogs a-turnin' (excuse my homespun turn-of-phrase; we're gearin' up for Stampede Week 'round here!): Raising Up Female Engineers

I think that, honestly, I'd always assumed that women shied away from fields such an engineering and computer science because they are worse at math and science. Which, I now realize, is a debilitating way of thinking, and probably completely untrue. In fact, my brother and I are somewhat of a real life example. He excels in English--he is a voracious reader and always received high marks, including on the SAT where his verbal score dominated his math score. And yet, he majored in computer science. As for myself, my verbal and math scores on the SATs were identical, despite constant affirmation from myself and others that English was my gift and that I struggled with math. And I majored in English lit. I find myself wondering more and more what would have happened if I didn't have that pervasive societal belief planted in my head that girls are bad at math. Because I wasn't. But I think that my own preconceptions may have gotten in the way of my excelling at it.

Something the woman in the video said really got my attention. We give girls dolls and dress up clothes to play with, and we give boys Kinnex, Lincoln logs, and Legos. (Though, as my mom said, I had access to all of those toys due to having an older brother and still wanted the dolls and dress up clothes.) It made me wonder whether women in male-dominated fields were more likely to have grown up with brothers than women in the general population. They would have, in all probability, had more access to toys that encourage building and problem-solving, rather than nurturing and beauty (but don't get me wrong, nurturing and beauty are wonderful things--I just think girls should just be exposed to more possibilities).

I do believe that there are inherent differences between the genders (besides anatomical, obviously), but I think it's really hard to tease them apart and that I may have overestimated them. On the flip-side, I wonder if men have been conditioned to believe they aren't nurturing. Why is caregiving a female-dominated field?

I'm not sure whether my little gestures will make any difference in the long run, but yesterday I gave Q a toy train (well, her grandma did actually!). She will also get dolls and pretty things, but I hope to mix things up and give her some Legos, toy cars, and things colored blue or green. There is a disturbing trend of walking into a toy store and finding the girls' section a sea of pink and the boys' section inundated with play weapons. And hey, maybe these toys reflect each gender's innate desires, but I'd rather let Q decide for herself that she doesn't want to be an engineer than for me to decide for her.