Interaction Description
To really understand how female engineers interacted with each other, I conducted several different observation sessions. On November 8, 2015, I attended a holiday card making session for deprived children hosted by Women In Science and Engineering. Several days later, I attended a more serious event, an info session for returning engineering students. As I sat at each of these events and observed from afar, taking plenty of notes. It wasn’t until I looked over my notes that I found several patterns.
What stood out to me the most about this group of girls was their willingness to mingle. In each instance, the girls arrived in groups, but spread out through the area, mingling with different people and getting involved in the conversation. Not all of the girls
intermingled, however, and there were some sitting alone through the whole event.
At the holiday card event, I noticed the girls asking for each other’s opinions, giving suggestions, and trying to guess at what the kids would want on the cards. They seemed to value the input of their peers as well as want to meet the wishes of the card recipients. While they drew, they were intent on the task at hand, drawing slowly and holding the cards at a distance to check their work.
At the information session, behavior was slightly different since it was a more formal event. Once again, the girls intermingled groups before the event, but as soon as it started, they were all quiet and attentive. The speaker and the students were fairly good at making eye contact and showing what seemed to be mutual respect. The girls all sat properly with their backs straight and hands in their laps, save for a few who sat slouched in their chairs.
One prevalent characteristic of women in engineering is the support and encouragement they share with each other. This characteristic really became prominent when I began researching. After a few Google searches, I realized part of what I was looking for wasn’t in the contents of the result links, but in the result page itself. When googling “women in engineering”, the search results showed hundreds of pages about organizations exclusively for female engineers, how to succeed as a female in engineering, and how to encourage more women to join the field. Then when I Google “men in engineering” the result is still the same as before. The page names simply changed from “Where are the women in engineering” to “Why do men dominate engineering”. This is important because it shows how women are a hot topic in engineering.
From a young age, women are guided towards activities that fit social “norms”. Women are slowly influenced to join the humanities fields, so when a woman goes into engineering it is considered against the norm. Because of this, I’ve gathered that women in engineering are also unafraid to be different.
Female engineers are also more likely to enjoy, or be willing to be a part of group projects. According to Morgan Kelly (personal communication, November 8, 2015), a senior
nuclear engineering student at North Carolina State University, part of what drove her to pursue engineering was the opportunity to “work in a cooperative environment on projects”. This is common among female engineers because women prefer cooperative projects more then men because they have more faith in the ability of their teammates (Kuhn). This distinguishes them from male engineers because the males tend to have difficulty with collaboration because they tend to be overconfident (Goshen) (Kuhn).
In addition to this, female engineers are competitive and determined. Their competitiveness stems from a deeper desire and/or need to prove themselves. Being a minority in the field makes many of the women feel as though they need to prove themselves. Morgan Kelly (personal communication, November 8, 2015) claims to “strive for greatness so that [she] may prove not just men can excel at this field”. This characteristic is also partly responsible for the high success rates of female engineers.
As opposed to male engineers, it is quite common for female engineers to credit their decision to become an engineer with a desire to help/improve the world. What drives most male engineers, however, is simply a love of math and science.