Battle of the Sexes

Today at work I attended an ASCE luncheon at the94^th Aero Squadron in Miami International Airport for a presentation honoring the Project of the Year Winner: NW 25^th Street Viaduct Project. Despite being surrounded by countless years of experience and expertise in the field of engineering, the one thing that kept me in awe was that the field of engineering is a male dominated career.

By no means am I here to promote any gender group into any profession, but quite frankly, I would like to see more female engineers. Despite the back and forth argument between which gender is better, it’s clear that men and women are both capable of succeeding in engineering, according to a study by the American Sociological Association.

"Women engineering students go to the same classes, take the same tests, and get the same GPAs as men, sometimes even higher"

What intrigues me about the article is that the study shows that female engineering students lack “professional role confidence”. It also goes on to talk about women’s faith in their ability to become professionals and their beliefs that engineering might not suit their interests and/or values, which the author considers as “expertise confidence” and “career-fit confidence”, respectively. Very little can be said about this because confidence is not a measure on your skills or self-interests, but rather by a state of being in which the action you’ve taken is most effective. I strongly believe that a goal oriented and driven female engineering student can achieve the professional level and beyond. Furthermore, I also rest assured that the engineering career is bias, almost as if it is only suitable for men. Surprisingly enough it seems like the male ego and his masculinity demoralizes women’s to become engineers. Subconsciously in today’s society when we think about engineers we draw the impression that it’s a male engineer.

Posted by: Bayardo Navarro