not a new subject - women in electronics and computing?

I think you'll find that's back to front.

The right side of the brain deal with things like spatial awareness, which men are pretty much universally accepted as being better at than women, whilst the left side of the brain deals with language - a bit of an over simplification of course, but that's the gist of it.

The really reliable run is the F line, which runs 80-year old antique electric streetcars. The modern streetcars have flakey, very noisy chopper drives.

BART had a famous wreck. They had (back then) state-of-the art TTL-based digital train controls, with all sorts of safety loops to make the system driver-proof. And the whole thing was clocked by a single quartz crystal oscillator on each train. As a train was approaching a station, at which another train was stopped, the oscillator quit.

John

Hello Terry,

True. Now imagine this thread making the rounds. Then when John walks into the Embedsyscon the next time the din suddenly eases, it becomes eerily quiet, everybody turns around and someone shouts "Dudes, that's him!".

John is right, we do compute a lot of quantitative data. But let's face it, 90% plus of the time it's more like "I know this part has plenty of margin so let's use it".

Thank you all for your very interesting replies. I will reply to some points:

re "If they ask you outright, like, "What do you do for a living?" do you lie to them? "

I say "Computer Researcher" as it is my job title.

Re sales, well I had my own business for a number of years so I certainly had to do the "sales" bit with promoting myself and engineering skills. The business only ended when I was made an offer by my current employer.

Re Madame Curie, I think you have hit the nail on the head - "tenacity" is certainly required for some inventions and discoveries. When I first designed sound samplers (1984) I was asked "what use is just recording 2 seconds of sound into a pc?"

I am wondering is there is a female mentor for engineering to inspire women into electronics, this might help.

Still not had any postings from women on this thread (My apologies if I have missed you)...

Keep the comments coming in, they are really interesting!

Lyn

Genome wrote:

I hear about such programs from time to time, though who knows how successful they are.

And a decade ago, there seemed to be a higher level of "mentoring" when it came to computers. Things like "Webgirls" and other groups that were intended to be about women helping women. There's still a local group from back then that aims to help women with computers, though they seem to be more about "women, computers and the arts" than about helping women start out with computers as was the case a decade ago.

But that reflects anything that's new. The early days are when applications are being figured out, and the "early adaptors" often have a much more raw role in it all. But by the time something becomes an appliance, it goes away.

One thing that might be of interest is for you to visit your local science fairs. They seem to have faded since when I was a kid, it seems like the local regional fair gets press after the fact (which doesn't help to get the public to the event). I remember going a few years back, and it seemed to be much as I remember them from my childhood. The very slick presentations that seemed to reflect people who were quite good in school, and the projects that reflected someone's own interest, and they decided to make a project out of it. So there'd be projects about the what's in makeup (which I'd classify as a project in itself, though maybe it was trying to figure a project that the public could relate to). And then someone would have a display about rocket packs (I think that was it, it's been a while). Both were done by young women. The latter seemed to me to indicate more of an interest in science than the former, because it showed not process but a curiosity. But the young men's projects followed the same mix (though maybe the latter type projects were a higher percentage).

Michael

As an electronics engineer, I'm a great believer in only using electronics where it is needed. The chopper system has no advantage that I can ascertain over a well-designed cam controller with resistors.

The overall efficiency in practice is virtually the same and the actual and environmental costs taken over an operating lifetime are proabably in favour of the simpler system.

Sales is one of the toughest jobs there is. It is not about persuading people to part with their money. It is persuading people that YOU are the best person to deal with, and that as a result your firm is the best.

Read "How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling" by Frank Bettger if you want a real understanding of salesmanship. You will find as clear an explanation of the art or creativity involved in sales there.

Anecdote: Two guys are sitting in a bar when a third one walks in. One says to the other, "That guy is the world's greatest insurance salesman". The second replies, "He doesn't look like much. I'll go and chat with him". After 10 minutes the second guy comes back and sits down. He comments to the first, "I don't see what makes that guy so great". Guy one asks, "Did you buy any insurance from him?" Guy two replies, "Yes, but I needed it".

Just a footnote:

Many women have work or a hobby which, to my mind, qualifies them as engineers - dressmaking.

Some of them just follow a published pattern, but I have met so many others who really know their subject and would be regarded as competent design engineers in any other discipline. They don't they don't call themselves engineers, they don't think of themselves as engineers; but they think like engineers, they are as skilled as engineers and it is a great pity they aren't recognised as engineers.

(I am surprised at the number of male electronics engineers, besides myself, who enjoy dressmaking or other forms of sewing as a hobby)

You follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion and you would end calling just about any occupation engineering

Don't you think the tittle 'Engineer' has already been diluted/corupted enough in the UK as it is?

I'm sure female mentoring would help immensely.

There have been a number of female engineers here over the years, some of them were pro-actively promoted to redress the male female imbalance in more senior positions, and so finished up as managers. One left to start a family, a couple more to move to more lucrative positions in the banking and financial sector.

All but one of the other female engineers do firmware/software (I'm not sure about the other divisions on this site, I know there are some female R&D Project and Section managers).

The one female hardware engineer I know closely follows the template you laid out. She was very good at math and physics at 14-15, poor at languages, and had a father who did electronics and tutored her. I asked her, and she said that without that she would have finished up in some technical role, but probably not electronics. She did a 70GHz PA design for her MSc equivalent degree.

She is French, and gorgeous, so please ignore that stupid Pamela Anderson comment a few posts back.

Regards Ian

"Lyn"

Antithetic peer and family expectations are others.

Shame you are so clueless about the vast distinction.

Pueeeuuukee .........

Heaps of " engineurs " are seriously weird.

Are there killer, babe engineers lurking in the armed forces ??

Only in James Bond movies, methinks.

........ Phil

I did that too. I used to make all my wife's party dresses... saves a bundle of money.

Also made myself several sport coats.

...Jim Thompson

Certainly not. A huge majority of the workforce just do what they are told to do and take no responsibility for original thought except at the most basic level. There are dressmakers who do that too.

I was thinking more of people like the dressmaker who explained to me how the stresses are distributed over the stitches in a run & fell seam. She specialised in wedding dresses and her customers would have run a mile if they thought she had anything to do with engineering - but when she advised me on how to make the strongest seam on a tent flysheet, it was obvious that she was thinking like an engineer.

Yes, but that's no reason to exclude people who really are engineers, but working in materials we don't often consider to be 'engineering' materials.

It is a good reason why we might want to consider excluding people who have passed exams by memorising books of rules and can still only follow books of rules with no independent thought processes. There are plenty of people calling themselves engineers who fit that category.

Lyn, you should ignore Phil. He thinks of toaster repair is engineering. He has no freinds other than his cats, and I think that you can see why. :(

I've always been in awe of the abiliity to cut and stich flat fabric to elegantly wrap a human body. I've also worked around sailmakers and the guys who flame-cut shapes from steel plate and weld them into ship's hulls, all equally impressive ways to make effective curves out of sheet stock.

A good seamstress will often assemble a dress inside out, and invert it last thing. The ship-hull guys can't do that!

John

Yep, making a fitted lining for the sport coats was the hardest part ;-)

...Jim Thompson

My point is that the criterion for calling someone an engineer is not their ability to be independantly creative, otherwise you will end up including footballers, chefs, chess players, racing drivers, fighter pilots, carp anglers . . . and so on ad nausium. Engineering is about making things work, which in turn means understanding and being able to be creative within a complex system of rules and strictures. Whilst the dressmaker's art may well embody some aspects of mechanical engineering, it does not come close to embracing the complex diversity of this discipline.

There is a difference between craft and engineering, although elements of each are frequently found in good examples of the other.

There will always be folk that are bad at their job in any walk of life - I do not see that as a reason to remove the job tittle.

The fact is, for all society's dependence on technology today, the average person in the UK *still* associates the title 'engineer' with an oily rag.

She wants to tell them things that they can think about as they consider a career. It's sort of ironic: the classic "male" attributes are visual/spatial skills, math/mechanical ability, a when-in-doubt-apply-force attitude, win or kill. The "female" attributes include consideration of others' ideas, holistic consideration of problems, verbal/social skills, nurture but don't break things, negotiate. And a good engineer needs all of those attitudes. So neither hyper-macho males nor hyper-frilly females are likely to be good engineers. Engineering is an androgenous occupation.

Some people have to work at it, and it comes naturally to others.

I've met a couple, and suspected it instantly. Later confirmed.

What in particular intimidates you here? Just the six or eight major fears to start, maybe.

John

Giver how few female engineers there are, female mentors will be rare. So if a woman wants to really learn engineering in the trenches, she had better be willing to learn it from a male mentor. As far as teaching the technology side of engineering per se, the sex of the mentor is a minor consideration. The political side is of course another problem.

See? There's not enough critical mass of women in this occupation to make the female-mentor-bootstrap thing work very well. Tell the girls to seek out old farts who have daughters, like me.

Yeah. I hadn't really thought about the androgyne thing before.

John