• Question: why is it prefered boys to be engineers than girls

    Asked by lizzyp to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 12 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Adam Scott

      Adam Scott answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      It isn’t ‘preferred’, it is unfortunately a result of sexism from the past, it’s a similar reason to why not many girls are car mechanics. Fortunately many companies are working to change this, and I have actually seen one company on their job ads that said higher priority would be given to girls than boys because girls are ‘under-represented in the industry’.

    • Photo: Aron Kisdi

      Aron Kisdi answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      The reason why there are more male engineers is purely historical, and cultural reasons. This is changing now and hopefully will change even more in the future.

      I have worked with some excellent female engineers in the past, there is no reason why there shouldn’t be higher percentage in engineering in the future.

    • Photo: Jessica Marshall

      Jessica Marshall answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I don’t think it is preferred. As a girl, I haven’t experienced any different treatment, and I think engineering is an excellent area to go into. This is because people value you for what you can do and how well you can do rather than anything else. The main reason that there are currently less women is because fewer women study physics and engineering and choose it as a career. I don’t fully understand why as I think it is fun and rewarding. However, I don’t want companies to give women preference as Adam suggested (I’d actually not heard of that happening in the UK so am surprised) as everyone should have an equal opportunity for a job.

    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I’m lucky to work with colleagues who are good engineers, it isn’t relevant if they are male or female. I’ve never seen a preference for boys or girls. Hopefully any bias is a left over from a different time and we are all working through it.

      I think the thing is to stick at what you enjoy doing and go for it.

    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      As all the other engineers said, there isn’t a preference for boys over girls in engineering (or any other field, for that matter!). I work with lots of women as well as men and they are equally good at their jobs, which is all that counts. It is great to hear that the number of girls studying science subjects is higher than ever, and eventually about half of all engineers will be women 🙂

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