Women in electronics

[trollphilosophy]

How many women are electronics engineers in your country compared to men ? Why the difference ?

[george.b]

"Trollphilosophy"
Hmm.

[Halcyon]

Perhaps you could give us your thoughts so that we can work out if you're a legitimate poster or not? I have my doubts.

[Ian.M]

From: https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/why-dont-more-girls-choose-stem-careers.htm

[Karel]

Ok then, I'll bite.

During whole my career, I only met two women engineers on the workfloor.
They didn't last long. Both changed jobs after a year or so because they discovered that, in the end,
they didn't like electronics very much or they weren't interested in it.

And no, it was not because we men behaved like monkies.
We have many women on the workfloor, but no female engineers.

[tszaboo]

From: https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/why-dont-more-girls-choose-stem-careers.htm

The more the merrier.
Thx for the info, topic can be (should be)closed.

[GlennSprigg]

I've always had the greatest respect for talented women in multiple fields. There is NO reason that they can not be,
and very often 'are' some of the top in the fields of medicine/genetics/astronomy/general science etc etc.
The same should apply in regards to elect/electronic fields, but there is still a lot of a 'Mans-World' attitude here.

It doesn't really relate, but years ago, I would make a phone call to some 'Tech' company, and even explain in a
simplistic explanation as to what I needed, or wanted to find out, to a girl/woman. She would say... "That's OK,
I can help you with that!".  So I would go through some tech spiel (Elect/Electronic), and 99% of the time there
was a pause, before saying... "Oh... I'll put you through to someone who can help you!".
I wish it wasn't that way!!

[magic]

 

From: https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/why-dont-more-girls-choose-stem-careers.htm

I wonder if we could use principles of PID control to servo the average 'strength' of the genders to be equal across all fields by adjusting hours of instruction in various subjects in lower schools. Sounds like a plan, any Control Theory aficionados willing to take a shot at Nobel Peace Prize 2030?
 

[BravoV]

Why the difference ?

Fact n fact only, men have penises and women have vaginas ... there you go, start from here.

[DTJ]

Why the difference ?

Fact n fact only, men have penises and women have vaginas ... there you go, start from here.

Not any more. Our local mayor copped a huge public backlash for saying exactly that. Squeaky wheels popped up from all sorts of places to join in the outrage.



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8909603/Perth-Mayor-Basil-Zempilas-undergo-transgender-awareness-training-controversial-comments.html



https://www.outinperth.com/lord-mayor-basil-zempilas-if-you-have-a-penis-youre-a-man/

[NiHaoMike]

I suspect a lot of girls think "tech stuff is for guys", although that's changing now that there are so many prominent women in tech out there. (A few examples: April Wilkerson, Jennelle Eliana, Naomi Wu, Simone Giertz)

[trollphilosophy]

I suspect a lot of girls think "tech stuff is for guys"

Yes. It's probably deprecated mentality about men and women jobs.

[coppice]

From: https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/why-dont-more-girls-choose-stem-careers.htm

The number of STEM graduates may have little to do with the number of people actually working in STEM jobs. With the huge numbers of people now getting degrees in western countries, only a modest percentage are getting jobs in the fields they studied. Also, many only work in the field they studied for a short period before moving on. The number of women studying for electronics degrees in most western countries isn't very high, but its a lot higher than the number you see working in fresh graduate electronics jobs. The number of women you see working in fresh graduate jobs is much higher than the number you see working as experienced engineers. You can go through a very large pile of CVs for a job requiring 10 years experience before you find the first woman candidate. You may find the complete opposite in some areas of life sciences.

[jmelson]

Well, I can't say anything about US-born engineers.  I work with a EE professor from a nearby (state) university.  He has mostly foreign-born engineers, and about half of them are women.  Some of them are VERY good.  They work on IC design (the prof's specialty) and we get the benefit of having some chips designed for us.  He has rather few US-born students, and they have been 100% male.  Those guys were REALLY top-notch, though.

Jon

[Bud]

How many women are electronics engineers in your country compared to men ? Why the difference ?

Get a wife or girlfriend and you will find out why pretty fast.

[amyk]

I suspect a lot of girls think "tech stuff is for guys", although that's changing now that there are so many prominent women in tech out there. (A few examples: April Wilkerson, Jennelle Eliana, Naomi Wu, Simone Giertz)

Most of the "prominent" ones are actually not that great... they are just prominent.

The truly competent ones you don't hear about, because they blend in with the men. We are in the minority, but I am fine with that.

China is conspicuously missing from the charts above.

[bob91343]

I have wondered the same thing.  It seems that there is some genetic difference that causes women to lack interest in electronics.  Of course electronics is a very big field but even so women engineers are seldom in evidence.

I don't think it's cultural, that men find ways to keep women out.  I think more that women don't want in.

Look at music.  While there are many woman musicians playing every instrument, there is definitely skew.  Way out of proportion more women are singers rather than instrumentalists.  Very few play the typical male instruments like saxophone and trumpet and, somewhat, double bass and trombone.  They more often play violin or flute or harp or piano.  I don't know why this is, but it seems to be so.

Engineering is complex and even teaching it is complex.  I never met a female engineering teacher.  I met one female engineer who said that engineering was the last frontier for women in industry.

[thinkfat]

From: https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/why-dont-more-girls-choose-stem-careers.htm

R² = 0.28 is pretty low. Doesn't make sense to actually draw that line.

[coppice]

I have wondered the same thing.  It seems that there is some genetic difference that causes women to lack interest in electronics.  Of course electronics is a very big field but even so women engineers are seldom in evidence.

I find a significant (not huge, but significant) number of women show real interest in electronics as a subject to study, but most rapidly lose interest in it when they need to spend day after day at a bench or desk, head down, working through piles of fine details. They quickly want to move on. Systems design is an area where you do find more women sticking around in significant numbers. This also involves lots of head down work on the fine minutiae of the system models, so its not obvious why this maintains the interest of more women.

[MK14]

Jeri Ellsworth.  (They even use to be an active member here on this forum).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth

Amazing, genuine interest in Electronics, even including vintage stuff!

Hence, series like these:









Amazing Live Volcano video they made, well worth watching, if you haven't seen it yet:

[NiHaoMike]

Most of the "prominent" ones are actually not that great... they are just prominent.

The truly competent ones you don't hear about, because they blend in with the men. We are in the minority, but I am fine with that.

More like content about engineering in detail is just not that popular among the general public. Guys making that sort of content face the exact same problem.

Of which, some notable examples (in the maker community) of women in engineering who have way above average skills are Fran Blanche, Jeri Ellsworth, Kitty Yeung, Micah Elizabeth Scott, Quinn Dunki, Sarah Petkus, and Xyla Foxlin. None of them are popular compared to the more "mainstream" women in engineering I listed earlier, blame (most of) the general public not being smart enough or interested enough to go that far into the technical topics.

Look at music.  While there are many woman musicians playing every instrument, there is definitely skew.  Way out of proportion more women are singers rather than instrumentalists.

Probably has something to do with how the female voice is "more pleasant".

[mc172]

Jog on with this women in engineering bollocks. Most of the time it's just a ploy to get desperate men aroused and therefore spend money by showing some mundane bullshit whilst wearing next to nothing like that Naomi whatever she's called.

[coppice]

Look at music.  While there are many woman musicians playing every instrument, there is definitely skew.  Way out of proportion more women are singers rather than instrumentalists.  Very few play the typical male instruments like saxophone and trumpet and, somewhat, double bass and trombone.  They more often play violin or flute or harp or piano.  I don't know why this is, but it seems to be so.

It might be that women don't like the life of a touring band. Some of the most famous pop recordings from the 1950s until today have female session musicians playing things like bass and saxophone on them, but unless they do something more prominent, like producing teaching materials, you seldom hear their names.

Try looking at rock bands in Japan today. A lot are half female or all female, and many avoid the trap of feeling the need to look tough and masculine to be accepted playing hard rock. That might suggest that culture is a big factor.

[coppice]

I suspect a lot of girls think "tech stuff is for guys", although that's changing now that there are so many prominent women in tech out there. (A few examples: April Wilkerson, Jennelle Eliana, Naomi Wu, Simone Giertz)

Most of the "prominent" ones are actually not that great... they are just prominent.

The truly competent ones you don't hear about, because they blend in with the men. We are in the minority, but I am fine with that.

Going deep doesn't pay. If you look at some prominent channels on YouTube, like EEVBlog and The Signal Path, they have a mix of lightweight and heavyweight videos. Some really quite heavy in the case of The Signal Path. They all note a direct relationship between the depth of their videos and the income they generate. Going deep doesn't pay. Of course many presenters aren't really capable of going deep, but keeping the videos accessible tells you nothing about the presenter's capabilities.

[NiHaoMike]

Jog on with this women in engineering bollocks. Most of the time it's just a ploy to get desperate men aroused and therefore spend money by showing some mundane bullshit whilst wearing next to nothing like that Naomi whatever she's called.

Hardly "most of the time". The only other women in the maker community (that I'm aware of) who "show off" their appearance to an "excessive" degree are Sarah Petkus and Xyla Foxlin, and neither do it anywhere as often as Naomi Wu does. All the rest are pretty modest.

Keep in mind the prominent mainstream makers do something very important to the maker community - "pull in" new members. For example, I don't think the Ender 3 would be anywhere as popular as it is now if it weren't for Naomi working in marketing for Creality. Now she's testing and developing a printer optimized for automated production of items with minimal manual intervention - she has some real engineering skills once you get past the "stripper" appearance.