Women in engineering

I'll try to make the argument here as short as possible because I need to go to bed, but the topic is sure worth a much longer post than this. Why are we not encouraging enough women to pursue engineering careers in Egypt?

The question is not, why is there not enough women in engineering? Or why is Egypt different? The first question is applicable everywhere, not just in Egypt, so Egypt is not that different. Yet ofcourse, like everything, Egypt is a little bit behind so the proportion of women versus men in engineering is much less here than in industrial countries, just like everything else.

But my question is, why are we not promoting and pushing for women in engineering here? Why are all those women rights groups not interested in that? focusing instead on much grander issues, as well as more relevant issues (have to give them that). That is a main difference betweeen us and the rest of the industrialized world. They found that they have an issue with lack of interest between most women in pursuing engineering careers, and they've found that the field would be served well by them, so they're encouraging them to get into engineering careers. Some schools even have quotas that must be filled by female students. They've realized the imbalance and are working hard, researching and thinking of ways to attract more women to the field, balancing the engineering discipline with more women in it.

We; we're debating if a woman can be a judge or not, can be a president or a grand ayatollah or not, and totally forgetting that the poor engineers don't have women partners at work. Alot of the women are not interested in engineering, many others are not interested in work in the first place, many others are forced to stay home, and then those who want to work want to rule or manage the rest of the working men. I'm fine with that actually, but why don't we have some balance and encourage more women to work in that great field of engineering. Its good to jump all those steps ahead, but we need to put equal efforts in those gaps where real productivity should be happening.

Not to mention that its annoying for someone who's looking for an average girl, ehem, who can't find except an airheaded one who has no career prospects, or an over aggressive one studying some political economics theories and thinks she'll change the world.

I don't blame women in Egypt for not wanting to be engineers ofcourse. Who wants to be in a field that is totally underestimated. Who are you next to a businessman whose importing whatever and making tons of money out of it, or next to a fahlawy who knows how to get rich quick and make money out of thin air. Even most male engineering graduates end up working in non-engineering jobs, so we can't blame women for not expecting much out of this field here.

What's even worse is that at some places here they don't hire women engineers. A place I know don't like hiring women because they feel more comfortable having an all-male R&D environment, and they don't want to introduce fitna to the place! Another place has a female engineering manager, who's a friend of mine. I was shocked once when she told me that she doesn't like hiring women because they'll soon get busy with marriage arrangements, then get pregnant, then make use of that 1-hour off policy by law for baby care, and they're all delicate and don't work hard enough. I told her I can't believe she's saying that. You, my aggressive progressive hard-working open-minded friend are saying that about your fellow women!

Yet with all this discouragement, women are getting into engineering in Egypt. It used to be that women in engineering here would look more like men, looks and atittude wise. I guess that was their way, as a minority, to fit in with all those guys surrounding them. But now, its apparently becoming differenet. Remember my anti-Warda, that was a good example of a smart feminine engineer. And these days I'm seeing quite a number of them reasonably feminine female engineers around. And they did it all on their own, no encouragement from anyone, no women advocacy groups helping them, no scholarships from the government, nothing. Well done gals, and keep it up.


Ok, no comments about how all this is to serve my interests please!