To despair at my poor old Dad!

[facepalming]

My Dad has been an engineer all his working life - 40+ years so when my friends teenage daughter said she was interested in design engineering I thought who better to ask than my Dad?!

He gave me a few people she could write to in order to request work experience before adding..

'just make sure it's really engineering she is interested in not designing dresses or something'

Smh

To be fair, while he was undoubtedly being rather sexist with the "dresses" reference, it's likely that it's your terminology that's got him concerned about whether she's really talking about engineering as he understands the term.

I'm a female engineer (degree is in electrical and electronic engineering) and if someone just said they were interested in "design engineering" I'd be none the wiser about what they actually wanted to do for their degree or career. I'm more familiar with hearing of a "whatever dicipline" design engineer (e.g. software design engineer, hardware design engineer, mechanical, civil, etc.)

When I hear engineer on here often people are talking about what I would consider to be a trades person. Not so where I am from. So I would wonder what someone wanting to be an engineer meant too. There is a big difference between the engineering disciplines. Designing dresses would not remotely have occurred to me though.