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Women in Engineering - Navigating the Terrains of a Male Dominated Profession
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a happy family. The father built buildings and bridges and the mother kept the house nice and clean. Then one fine day, the mother decided to let go off her corset and wear some pants. She made her way to the father’s firm and all hell broke loose! Fascination with “technology”, curiosity about machines, and the urge to tinker are things that have always been associated with men. But where does this leave the fairer sex? Traditionally, engineering was a man’s field with bulky, testosterone-charged individuals being the poster boys of the profession. And then women decided to enter the profession. With a technically sound, keen mind and rapt attention, women bring much more than glamour to the field. Agreed, this new found glamour has many takers but women in engineering are much more than that. With an exponential increase in the women entering this field, institutions and workplaces have been thrown in a frenzy of “changes”. Accommodations have been suddenly found to be not quite sufficient as large number of women spilled into the campuses, long forgotten rules are applied again, curfew for women is implemented, barricading college grounds against the outside world, making the campus more women friendly( read restrooms that work) and then that sudden awareness that there is a woman in their midst. Being an engineer teaches women a lot. Chivalry, takes a sudden summersault out of their lives as women become just another competitor in the big bad world. Suddenly, they are the recipients of pushes and jostles and are outrun to the equipments in the laboratories or popped out of the male huddle. She finds herself in a class of thirty odd boys vying for the best seats in the front and it does not help that she is pushed to the back and that the “boys” are all six feet frame of sheer bulk. Nor does it help that many professors are so not used to girls that they ignore them to avoid any awkwardness and that the genius pool of knowledge and extra information is limited to late night tutorial sessions in the boy’s hostels.”Male ego” becomes a despised term and “technical” is forced into the battle of the sexes. In the engineering workplace, women are treated as second class citizens, segregated into the lower echelons of the hierarchy. She might be the top of her class on paper, but the resilient male ego and sheer sexism forces its way into her career. And when a woman finds that foothold in the industry, society claws its way to darken her career with the much dreaded choice between family and work. Those, brave ones who do choose their careers are deemed cold-hearted” and are universally shunned. Subjected to eternal scrutiny, skepticism and sexism, a woman in engineering is a token, often stumbling and falling and yet regaining enough to be considered a powerhouse. What makes engineering an ideal career choice for women is its power of giving a career opportunity to college educated women which, as a result helps in upholding their social status. The career girl is now giving a constant completion to the male ego. Machines might be bulky and gruesome looking but then again, brain is a machine and physiology has not much say in this matter. Today the world wakes up every day to greet new frontiers in engineering, the tallest tower, the fastest rocket, the smallest microchip and at the heart of it all, in the team of engineers are women, albeit in small numbers, but still present. The society has emerged from its “Victorian-era” outlook of women and it needs to upgrade further. A career woman is being generally accepted into a typical middle class household but it will take time for the preachers and the hypocrites of the world to accept these women into their houses. And it will take time, but surely a girl, who likes to open up the T.V remote to find out why the red light blinks instead of combing her doll’s hair or a teenage girl who would rather spend the day under the car instead of getting a tan under the sun or a woman who would program the line following robot rather than sew in the house would not be looked upon with astonishment and surprise. The image of a mothering, homely woman changed to that of a college lecturer, nurse and a doctor and soon she will emerge as the designer of your new high definition LCD TV or a manufacturer of Artificial Intelligence Robots. Because engineering, is not about whether you have the X chromosome or the Y chromosome. It is about innovation, creativity and that urge you get to “tinker” with things. Engineering is to build. And who says women can’t build?
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