To think that hard hats do put off girls from pursuing engineering?

[LivingDeadGirlUK]

Having a discussion on facebook about this article.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50315019

I think the association of engineering with hard hats and dirty work is a big issue in attracting both men and women to the industry however another poster took exception to the stereotype of 'heels and dresses' being used to combat the stereotype of 'hard hats'. Person in question did not believe that women are put off of engineering because of the protective gear. However I disagree and think that it is a factor (alongside many others) as young women can be very sensitive to their image and 'fitting in' during that secondary school age range when we think about our careers and uni choices.

AIBU to say that for quite a proportion of teenage girls the thought of wearing a hard hat and boots and being outside/in a dirty environment all day would make them dismiss a career in engineering, given the association?

(think this is my first AIBU so please be gentle :) )

Cross Post Tanith

It's not the bloody hats & ppe it's the culture
Encouraging girls and boys equally is needed, the notion from a young age that there are boys jobs and girls jobs, the lack of role models - these permeate our culture and going into schools it's sad how many times 'boys' jobs aren't even considered by girls - parents are just as much to blame as our schools.
I think encouragement at secondary age is getting better especially in middle class schools but I think that's too late as kids are impressionable from a young age and also not across the board.
I've been in schools to talk to kids aged 8-11 this year and none of the girls thought they could do Architecture, engineering or anything in construction, I hope when I left they started to think otherwise.
If you do manage to encourage girls into the subjects then they need to have a thick skin, to get through training and then into the industry - we need strong mentoring programmes to keep women in.
A friends daughter has just started her civil engineering degree she is the only girl on the course and that's hard in itself - it marks you out. The culture is often harder on women too you are expected to not be as good (wtf) or junior or just not as capable - it's not across the board but enough to make it a harder environment.
I'm an architect not an engineer but still very male orientated working environment - there are more women in my profession but daily the other construction professionals are pretty much all men, in fact on all my projects at the moment the only women I interact with are clients and planners.

I don't agree it's because of hard hats etc. If that was the case women wouldn't join uniformed services, military etc. Which all dictate what you can/can't wear including hair and make up. I didn't know a thing about engineering at school, I studied at an all girls high school which had GCSE child care!

I think if I knew more about engineering growing up I would like to think I would have pursued a career in that direction being more mathematical minded. Instead I joined the uniformed services which was a bit more my style - I was never the hair dresser/child care pretty type.

What total nonsense.

Tanith I was literally about to make that point! The equine sector is (in this country) very much a female-dominated area in most of its aspects (not so many female farriers, interestingly), and it involves plenty of PPE, appalling hat hair, muck, mud, physical graft, danger, and being out in all weathers. So whatever is putting girls off engineering, I don’t think it’s a silly hat.

Many women are elbow deep in bins, nappies (child and adult) and cleaning toilets for a living. The very idea that women don't get their hands dirty routinely is preposterous.

Ridiculous, it is nothing to do with hard hats or PPE for that matter

Engineering is still seen as an old boys club

^^ this.

It is incredibly patronising to suggest that the only reason girls don't go into engineering is because they are silly, vain precious little things who don't want a hard hat to mess up their hair or spoil their look.

I think the problem is more that ‘engineer’ in this country is not a protected term. It’s used for jobs such as car mechanics, washing machine repair people, and my personal favourite, a fabric engineer (carpet fitter..). Absolutely nothing wrong with these jobs, but they are not professional engineers.
It conjures up the image of an engineer being someone who fixes things, hands dirty, bag of tools etc.
I’m a chartered engineer, as are a lot of my friends. I can’t recall the last time I wore a hard hat. I work in an office, use specialised IT, work alongside commercial, legal, technical colleagues on multi million, sometimes billion pound projects.

What absolute rot! My DSis is an Engineer, my DH works with many female engineers, and none of them think twice about protective clothing. It's no more off putting than any other protective clothing ie catering, nursing, etc.

Both my DDs would be attracted to a job where they got to wear a hart hat, steel toed boots and kicked around dirt. They also both love to mess around with makeup and nice clothes. They are put off being engineers because of the schooling. My older DD went to uni and had a number of engineering students in her residence. She was quite put off by their schedules, basically spent all day either in classes or studying, so no to engineering. I think it’s a huge generalisation to say girls don’t want to be engineers because of their appearance.

Women often have to wear hats (hair covers etc) as part of their work. See also ski helmets, riding helmets, motorbike helmets, bicycle helmets, winter hats and baseball caps.

Women aren't engineers because of hats and dirt. What a ridiculous notion.

AIBU to say that for quite a proportion of teenage girls the thought of wearing a hard hat and boots and being outside/in a dirty environment all day

These things do not seem to put off many teenage girls from horse-related activities.

I would think it's more to do with the good old boys club culture which still persists. I noticed it when I was an architect. White men got paid more for a lesser job and were promoted over women and minorities due to who their Daddy was/ knew. When the recession hit the construction industry women and ethnic minority were the first to be made redundant.
Also as a PP noted, the utterly dire careers advice in school. I proposed I wanted to be an architect or similar, I would be offered interior design or fashion type options instead.

Considering Asian women comprise the majority of students studying engineering at the moment I disagree. The problems re: female take up of STEM subjects is a western problem because too much emphasis is put on gender stereotyping in schools and not enough on education (and enabling students to actually study the subjects they’re good at).

Its a bit of nonsense really however i do agree to a certain extent. Have to wear PPE sometimes for my job, i have had to sometimes go out and buy stuf myself some gear, as it always miles toO bIG. i nearly hurt myself one day as the hi vis i was wearing, which was a men's XL, mile too big for me, got caught in the handrail and i fell down a few steps, luckily not badly hurt. We come in all shapes and sizes so manufuacturers and companies, if its part of your job its imperative that the PPE fits, that alos includes hard hats, its hard to walk around sites looking at stuff when the hat is falling off you

I'm female. Jobs I've done include nightclub "bouncer", police officer, construction health and safety.

All confrontational, all requiring specialist skills (mostly in talking!), and all requiring specific clothing or PPE.

I was one of five women in the city who worked in the doors in 2003-2006, but there were countless men.

Police was closer to 25% female.

My job now - our team is all female, but that is unusual. Nationally it's approx 50/50.

I see very few women on site. Occasionally I meet young apprentices doing painting. Most senior electricians or electrical specialists on solar farms are, interestingly, German women. Many with PhDs.

I get really pissed off with PPE. Yes, it exists in a female variety, but it's poorly sized, almost always has a pink accent on it if it isn't all pink, and misses POCKETS which are so needed by anyone wearing PPE. Steel toe high heels anyone?

Also most graduate engineers don’t wear hard hats.

I don’t think the kind of females who would excel in an engineering career are the kind of females who would be put off by something as superficial as hard hats and unflattering clothing.

This. True of men also.

I studied engineering at university. What put me off taking it further was being ground down by the misogynistic attitudes from lecturers and other students. My nickname was Tits. A lecturer singled me out for grilling every lecture I had from him (to the point that a some male students complained on my behalf, I didn't because I didn't want him to win). When looking for jobs in final year I was offered places without looking at my academic work just for being female. I trained as a teacher instead.

When the BBC supports the idea that a career choice for women is between hard hats or high heels, we know we haven't made any progress on equality for women and girls at all.
I feel like I've gone back to the 1980's.

The thing that put me off engineering (and I have double maths, physics and chemistry at A level so was pretty well suited) is that there is no opportunity to actually properly try engineering. I knew I loved maths. I knew I liked physics. So I probably would have enjoyed engineering. But why give up the opportunity to study something I loved (maths) to study something I would probably enjoy?

And I have a dad who is/was a chartered engineer!

@Evilmorty

How dedicated and clever do you think you need to be? I'm asking because I think that a lot of average boys are happily putting engineering down as a career option while girls are thinking that they have to be really good at STEM subjects to consider it.

@CuriousaboutSamphire agree its not the best article! I don't think we will ever solve this issue until proper careers advice explaining the many different fields of engineering is given. But I do think that given the current association of hard hats its putting off girls.

@BareKneesDeCourcy actually mine is white which I think really shows off my tan :) On a previous project the client joked about having a pink hard hat to match her bag and the contractor obliged :D

@HirplesWithHaggis I see where you are coming from but Engineering isn't anywhere near a cool as motorbiking, you see all these lovely posts from people building prestigious things like HS2 or the shard but most of us are refurbishing tower blocks or building another supermarket (I'm using construction as an example because thats my field). It's a rewarding career but its still just a job and there is such a shortage of engineers the industry really needs uptake of both sexes.

@toomuchtooold think this can be the case, I'm in construction though and its very much 9-5 5 days a week.

@mbosnz sounds a bit like me when I was a teenager :D but it really doesn't matter!

Ah, but it's so much easier to blame it on the individual, rather than the system, isn't it! Women don't want to be engineers, because of the nasty, grubby hats.Nothing to do with the lack of promotion of subjects, such as maths, physics or engineering to females. Nothing to do with the increased difficulties of advancing in those fields, if you are female. Nothing to do with the assumptions that "girls won't be able to" or "girls won't want to" do technical subjects.

It's obviously the hats.

I know a fair amount of engineers, about a 50:50 split between male and female, and most of them NEVER have to wear hard hats.

I think you are labouring under some very old ideas of how the profession is represented OP, as well as what is important to kids who might become engineers.

I think it's a lack of understanding rather than an image problem. As a girl at school I was encouraged to participate more in English, textiles, food tech and languages than I was encouraged to participate in maths, science, design and technology etc.

My dad was an engineering pattern maker, which was a very skilled profession but was definitely a dirty one. However, he taught me not all engineering careers are like that. I didn't end up in the engineering line of work but it would have definitely been more suited to me than the alternatives that were offered to girls at my school. As it happens I left school not knowing what path to follow at all!

I ended up doing a science degree and now have a career in finance in a typically male dominated field.

I think more options given to girls and boys about different types of roles that fall under a particular umbrella term such as engineering or healthcare for example would be more beneficial than focusing on a particular image presented by the terms. For the record, showing a girl like me a picture of someone doing something in heels would have had the opposite effect as I definitely am not that type of girl!