Engineering Your Future: What traits make a great engineer?
September 5, 2009
by Optixmom
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
As a female engineer, I have always been interested in what makes things function. Things could be categorized as machines or tools, things that are stereotypically masculine; but they could also be things that are stereotypically feminine as something to do with cosmetics, textiles, cooking, or child rearing. When I meet other female engineers I tend to want to know what makes them tick as well so I can find some commonality between us that directed us toward a career in engineering. What I have discovered in the 20+ years that I have been in my career is that the sampling I have collected (maybe 50 or so women) has shown that many stereotypically feminine activities that we engaged in as children showed that we had a propensity to be excellent engineers.
The most interesting finding in my small sampling was that the women I talked to were engaged in some form of activity that I would term a 3-dimensional (3-D) activity. Those who studying traits of children for a living tend to focus on whether the child plays with Lego or building blocks; but I have found that many of the women that I have surveyed found 3-D activities that don’t tend to be recognized as signs of a future engineer. Some of these activities fell into categories such as knitting/crocheting, weaving, or sewing primarily. My mother was an avid knitter and not only does it require patients, it also requires manual dexterity and manipulation in 3 dimensions. Each stitch or purl has to be toleranced so that each row will equal the previous in length and width, and each knitted area has to be equally toleranced so that separate sections can be connected to form a functional garment or craft. I was a seamstress in high school and college and learned how to sew elaborate gowns for weddings and formals, where I had to make bodice prototypes in muslin first in order to create a garment that would be toleranced to fit the body perfectly.
The biggest area that I found young women destined for engineering was weaving. This discipline is not limited to combining individual threads to create a large sheet of material; it mostly had to do with braiding. Braiding should be recognized as a significant engineering trait, whether it is performed on hair or with threads. Friendship bracelets, boondoggle (gimp) key chains, macramé, as well as hair braids require a manual dexterity as well as precise 3-D planning to accomplish a finished product. I have witnessed individuals who have created their own braiding patterns so that the end result was a significant work of art. I believe that mastery of this skill by young women highlights that they would be equally skilled in the area of engineering if given the opportunity (or at the very least the suggestion.) If you know of a child or young adult who excels in this area let them know that they show the signs of becoming a world class engineer, it may have never occurred to them and you may have just planted a seed for their successful future.
I completey agree. I used to braid hair but have now passed the torch down to my oldest daughter. I just never thought of braiding hair as engineering. That is a good way to introduce science and perhaps an interest in engineering to girls.
Great piece. Reminds me of the “systematizing/empathizing” dichotomy pushed by that sexist Simon Baron-Cohen. Categorizing objects makes one a male “systematizer,” and somehow the examples of what to categorize are always things like trains and cars and sports statistics.
Also, some people aren’t great at visualizing things in 3D at all and still become engineers and scientists; I was told by a professor once, “You must be one of the 30 percent of mathematicians who are purely symbolic.” (Although I’ve tried to become better at visualizing things.)
I used to be an engineer, but now I design online curriculum and teaching materials for science and engineering. There are two groups of engineers- those who take things we already have na dmake them better and those who design things yet to be imagined. We need both and the thinking styles and skill sets are very different. We all can imagine the child who likes to take things apart and put them back to together as a child who might make a good engineer. We need also to look at the budding artist who has a distinctly practical side. Artists and engineers are two sides of the same coin. Artists are form first and function second. Design engineers are function first and form second. A well-engineered car is a thing of beauty, is it not?
I grew up sewing my own clothes – and loved it. After being accepted to engineering undergrad I told my mom that I was afraid that I didn’t have any background in engineering and that I might not make a good one. She replied to me, “you make your own clothes – cutting out the fabric into pieces and sewing it together into something different and wearable *is* engineering!” After that I felt much better!
Incidentally, while I was studying engineering, one of my professors (a very old school professor, who retired soon after I graduated in the mid-90′s) had a favorite phrase to describe how complex engineering was…he used to say “come on, this is not like underwater basket weaving!” Somehow he was implying that basket weaving was very easy to do, unlike engineering.
It wasn’t until years later, when I learned a bit about basket weaving and some Native American techniques – that it is very difficult (ever made a basket that was water proof?) and that it is truly engineering at it’s core! But it was/is a woman’s domain, so was disregarded by “official” engineers.
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