I found these interesting articles:-

https://www.engineeringclicks.com/women-in-robotics-2/
https://www.engineeringclicks.com/women-in-iss-women-in-space/
https://www.engineeringclicks.com/female-mechanical-engineers/

Its seemes there is a shortage of woman in many areas of engineering. Does the industry do enough to help or does the historic culture of the sector mean it remains one of the last bastions of male dominance?

That last comment was tongue in cheek

 

Yes engineering industry do attract female talent. There are many companies who have hired women as top executive. Its now their talent has been taken in consideration.

 

Is there a case for adding quotas for men and woman to certain industries such as engineering? Or does this deflect from the individuals skills?

 

I think there are no such quotas anywhere, since this can be regarded as gender-based discrimination. However, I would very much like to have more women in my work, as this will make my day better, and also bring a little chaos into the debugged mechanism of the engineer’s work)

 

While I've had the pleasure of working with some very good female engineers, I think it will always be a male dominated profession. It's not politically correct to point it out these days, men and women are different (which I am very grateful for!). These differences are not only in the way they look, but also to they way men and women think and act. Not better, not worse, just different. Because of the way they think, men will always be more drawn to engineering than women.

 

Me and my girlfriend graduated from the same university at the same time last year. Even though, I had comparably better CGPA and more software skills. She was the one who landed a job in a government defense company. The company trusted her to be loyal to the company and found me to be ‘not a valuable investment’ because to them, my future plans were not in the interest of the company.

To companies hiring, it does not matter what gender you are. Your skills, commitment to working hard for them and your profile is more important.

This is not the case always, I know, I once met mechanical engineer who told be mechanical engineering was not a girl’s job. Because, there is so much painstaking labor work that an engineer would have to do. But then again, there are all kind of people in the world.

 

Agree with you, Dana. Men and women natuarally have different aptitudes and inherent inclinations to each other, and they should be complimentary to each other. This is biological. Some women are presumably great at engineering (sorry not ever met any), but I think that women are in the minority in this field because their natural interests and inclinations take them to diffeernt fields. I just don't honestly think that 99.99999% of women are actually interested in engineering. Look at any "womens" engineering online groups and all they talk about is "there's not enough women in engineering" blah blah "role models" blah "wage gap" blah and a;ll that rubbish. Why not just actually talk about engineering instead if it's so great FFS.

 

lol - anyy truth in this?

 

This is a tricky one! Some people say that men have more of a natural aptitude for engineering based jobs... but how much of this is down to what society teaches kids?

When I was a kid boys played with Lego and toy guns, and girls played with dolls and My Little Pony (my little sister had some amazing Sylvanian Families that I was never allowed to play with ).

Maybe this means that naturally less girls will be attracted to engineering-type jobs... especially if there are no strong female role-models for them to look up to?

It's all very chicken-and-egg!

 

I agree with John12 on this, the upbringing is very important in a child’s future choice of career. Also there are research that shows direct correlation of field of work of the father with the child’s. So whatever a child sees growing up, he is more likely to be that.

Girls usually are more relativistic and this is a very important skill in research sometimes. I would value a researcher who has an approach to a problem that does not demean other existing problem. Men usually are not so careful towards their surroundings while working.

This is not about if women can work better or men can work better. This should be more about who has enough skills to perform the job. And I guess if given the chance women would prove themselves quiet worthy of it.