Where I come from, the engineering fields are dominated by men but medical fields have a female majority. I wonder what’s the difference with medicine
Comment on Women STEM students up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As a woman engineer, yeah we’re probably disproportionately responsible. I’m sure science and math have more sexism than say art, but biology has to treat women better than engineering I assume.
silverhand@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Urist@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
Medicine is more aligned with the cultural idea of “what a woman should be/do”. Taking care of others, showing compassion and so on is regarded as more “feminine qualities” than masculine. Note this is not something I agree with, but I think it probably is part of the picture.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 11 months ago
I’d recommend Acollierastro’s YouTube video about the rampant sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault in physics and astronomy. While engineering is certainly a big part of the equation, every hard science except biology is dominated by men and that definitely feeds all of these issues
scrimbingus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Anecdotally, the biological engineering department at my university has a much higher fraction of women than the rest of the college of engineering, while mechanical/aerospace has the lowest, so it varies even within engineering.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I’m a guy so I realize I don’t see or understand everything from women’s perspective, but I’m genuinely surprised by this. I’ve worked for decades at companies with mostly engineers and mostly men, and my experience is that people have on average much more progressive views than, say, my neighbors. My current company recently switched from a male to a female CEO I haven’t even heard anyone mention her gender, much less express any negative views in connection to her gender. My previous employer also had a female CEO and it just wasn’t a thing on people’s mind.
I’ve heard sexist remarks twice in 20 years, and both times I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t know what to do or say before the conversation had already moved on. So if I’m bad at speaking up when it happens, it’s only because I didn’t get enough practice.