Female Supremacy Articles - Page 22

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At the main entrance of Sloan Hall “the engineering building” a glass display case holds a T-shirt like the ones being sold by the WSU chapter of the American Society Of Mechanical Engineers. The T-shirt specifies the Ten reasons to date an engineer with No. 1 being “We will make lots of money” and No. 9 being “We know it’s not the length of the vector that counts but how you apply the force” These reasons, funny as they may be, sum up the male dominance of the engineering field. WSU used to have a club for the wives of mechanical engineers.

Diana Washington, a research assistant in civil engineering, attributed the gender gap to environmental and social influences.

“There is a shortcoming on the part of education promoting the recruitment and retention of women in engineering and sciences”, she said. “You’re a long way still from having 20-percent women in engineering classes.”

The National Academy of Sciences report debunked other outrageous stereotypes that say women are not in these fields because they are less competitive and productive, but because of the outmoded institutional structures and because anyone’s lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a wife is at a serious disadvantage. How interesting that women have upper-echelon academic difficulties because they don’t have wives, not because they might be wives.