Office Lady Is More Charming

If I ask you how a female engineer would look like, what would you said to me? Some people would give me the classic stereotype of the female engineer or scientific, like that girl with glasses, with no sense of fashion, socially inept, that prefer to play video games rather than go out for dinner or coffee with some friends. Unfortunately that is the perpetuated stereotype not only about female engineers but also about everybody that works on a scientific or technical field. The media have generalized the stereotyped of the female geek that is ugly, that don’t use make up, her fashion sense is stuck in the 1980′s. But in reality things are not like that.

When I first meet people, males or females, many times things goes in this way:

myself: Hi I am Laura, nice to meet you.

other person: Hi my name is X, nice to meet you too. So what do you do for living?

myself: Well I am electrical engineer.

other person: really? you don’t look like an engineer.

myself: why do you say that? how does the engineers should look like?

So I guess most of the time people don’t believe that if a girl looks a little bit put together and have some social skills they may be engineer, because they have the stereotype of the hideous nerd that can’t put two sentence together. I am not gorgeous by any means, but I do like to dress up and I think I have some sense of style, and I try to look my best most of the time, however there is a difference between that and being obsessed with how do we look all the time. We should try to look our best, but inside of normal parameters, without risking our health and our economical stability.

Female engineers are normal women, they can be pretty or ugly, they can also be feminine and stylish. They, like many other women are interested also in beauty. I remember when I was in college one of my best friends, whom I am not going to say her name, was honor student during all the bachelor, she was studding electrical engineer, and she was also a runway model, she was beautiful and very stylish without being airhead, being also one of the best students in the faculty, now she works for Boeing.

Having these types of stereotypes in mind may not hurt us right now, but it may hurt our children in the future, because parents think that if the girl decide to go for a scientific or engineering degree she won’t be feminine. Perpetuating these stereotype, we discourage young girls to pursue this fields, that in my opinion are really nice professions. I keep facing those stereotypes every day of my life, but I enjoy my profession and work with joy all the time.

Our society is so fixated with beauty and image that if on top of that we keep perpetuating the “ugly nerd” and  not-feminine image of female engineers, young girls wouldn’t even think about pursing these careers, and we may loose incredibly talented individuals that could make a different in history of science and engineering. But I have to say that in the last couple of years some activist have been making a difference encouraging young girls to go for engineering and science degree, for example this year Mattel, decided that this year Barbie was going to be a Computer Engineer, which is extremely positive because Barbie have been an icon of beauty between young girls, this will send a message to young girls that you can be pretty, stylish and been also an engineer.