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Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

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Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#61

Post by cushychicken »

MattGrommes wrote: post #12

I think using the word 'fun' in this title is demeaning and misleading. Women aren't looking for fun, they're looking for meaningful, interesting work and are being denied it. (Obviously not all women, etc. etc.) I know a very talented woman with more experience and talent than her teammates who constantly deals with the interesting work being given to men instead of her. In meetings men look to the other men for opi…

I agree that the use of "fun" here is a little demeaning.

I also think, however, that the overall point here was totally valid - you are your own best advocate, and you can't trust other people to hand you interesting work. Being handed menial, boring tasks is much more likely.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#63

Post by ColinDabritz »

I appreciate insights and research like this. It seems clear to me that these issues are complex, multi-faceted, and often subtle. If they were obvious single issues they would be much easier to address.

Figuring out hard to see sources of bias and discrimination make them easier to address. For my part, I'll try to consider fair distribution of both boring and fun tasks in groups when breaking down work.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#64

Post by jdp23 »

kogepathic wrote: post #32

My company has desperately tried to hire female candidates into our engineering team, which is currently all male. From the dozens of applications that we got for the position, only about 5% were female. After interviewing them, they either declined the position, or weren't able to complete our take home challenge (nothing against these women, we have lots of guys fail it too!) So, yeah, I'd love to have some females…

It certainly can be a challenge for all-male teams to find female candidates. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/HOWTO_recruit_and_retain_... has some excellent suggestions. How many of these best practices have you been employing?

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#65

Post by gravypod »

jdp23 wrote: post #18
eevilspock wrote: post #8

Wow, the comments so far are so disappointing. (When I wrote this they are all completely dismissive of this study.)

The comments on any HN thread about barriers to gender equity in software engineering illustrate the barriers to gender equity in software engineering.

Refute their claims, don't label them.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#66

Post by drabiega »

theseatoms wrote: post #31
MattGrommes wrote: post #12

I think using the word 'fun' in this title is demeaning and misleading. Women aren't looking for fun, they're looking for meaningful, interesting work and are being denied it. (Obviously not all women, etc. etc.) I know a very talented woman with more experience and talent than her teammates who constantly deals with the interesting work being given to men instead of her. In meetings men look to the other men for opi…

> Partly it's because corporate environments prefer bluster to quieter expertise but the answer shouldn't be to tell women to be bigger blowhards than the men in order to get to do interesting stuff. This often seems like a better dimension on which to analyze these "gender in the workplace" issues. That is, these issues arise more often due to the typical characteristics and behaviors that members of each gender dis…

Well part of the problem is that social norms are different for the genders. The kinds of behaviors that often allow men to dominate corporate environments are not effective/seen more negatively when adopted by women.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#67

Post by justaman »

eevilspock wrote: post #9
Redoubts wrote: post #5

> Twenty percent of engineering graduates are women—but only 13 percent of the engineering workforce is female. >It’s not a pipeline issue Aren't women half the population? That still sounds like a pipeline issue.

Not necessarily. It could be the experience of the 20% that leads to a whittling to 13% influences women to never enter the pipeline in the first place, which means the root problem isn't the pipeline but what lies at the end of it.

After half a decade in college you have women in their mid-twenties(optimum time for birth) finding themselves desiring children. Many individuals meet their S/O in college. It has been this way for many years. This many not account for the nearly 40% gap however it cannot be disregarded.

>There was this one case where, in our design class, two girls in a group had been working on the robot we were building in that class for hours, and the guys in their group came in and within minutes had sentenced them to doing menial tasks while the guys went and had all the fun in the machine shop.

This individual could have been more vocal about their disdain for the more "menial" tasks. Perhaps even taking a leadership role in the project. This requires an assertive attitude. Assertiveness generally is a masculine trait which can explain more than this article.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#68

Post by benbenolson »

socrates1998 wrote: post #47

I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…

Finally! Someone had to say it. These sorts of situations (low percentage of women engineers) are not issues; they're just facts, and most likely caused by, generally enough, the way that women and men think/act/desire. It's not a problem, it's just a fact of life that people, oddly enough, are having a hard time accepting.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#69

Post by moron4hire »

kogepathic wrote: post #32

My company has desperately tried to hire female candidates into our engineering team, which is currently all male. From the dozens of applications that we got for the position, only about 5% were female. After interviewing them, they either declined the position, or weren't able to complete our take home challenge (nothing against these women, we have lots of guys fail it too!) So, yeah, I'd love to have some females…

You can't expect people to just apply. It's not a very good way to do hiring, regardless of diversity issues. You have to go out and find people. Go out and participate in your community. Find the people who are doing good work. And then make them an offer. Just waiting for people to come take your test is going to get you what you've always gotten.

Re: Are women exiting engineering because men get the challenging assignments?

#70

Post by dang »

MattGrommes wrote: post #12

I think using the word 'fun' in this title is demeaning and misleading. Women aren't looking for fun, they're looking for meaningful, interesting work and are being denied it. (Obviously not all women, etc. etc.) I know a very talented woman with more experience and talent than her teammates who constantly deals with the interesting work being given to men instead of her. In meetings men look to the other men for opi…

Alright, we replaced "fun" (in the title above) with "challenging assignments", which is closer to the language of the article.
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