A recent study in MIT,USA discussed why women continue to drop out of the engineering field and it showed that about 20 percent of the world’s engineering graduates are women but only 13 percent of the employed engineers are women. This indicates that any female engineer is not on par with her male counterpart due to gender issues.
Easily, engineering is the most opted course in our country but we hardly find any female engineer in the actual field work. It was found that women felt ‘not-included’ in many curricular activities.
During panel discussions and decision making, hardly one or two women participate. Our beliefs and customs prevent us from sending our daughters to internships and implant training away from home. There is no consideration for her talent at all. Even though she is the best candidate, we don’t send her for summer internships because she is a girl and her safety matters.
We automatically assume that women are prone to do ‘easy jobs’ and can’t even dare to attempt the tough ones. Women are universally assumed to hide inside the cocoon when the going gets tough. Say in a product building team, she is asked to manage meager routine tasks like fetching the components while the men carry out the complex jobs of building. It doesn’t matter if you have stood first in mechanical design. You are still a woman.Tthere is also the social pressure and expectation for a woman to manage a family at the right age, no matter whether you have achieved what you intended to do. Its always the get set-ready-settle down mantra.
These incidents deter a woman’s confidence and make her doubt her ability and her choice of field. So there is no other way than to step aside. It is high time we realize that skill alone matters, not the person who owns it. Give the chance to the ideal talent. A person can fail while attempting but can’t be denied without giving an opportunity. After all, wise men only appreciate the treasure, irrespective of the coffin’s nature.