The Other Woman

A few minutes after publishing my first post a few weeks ago, I immediately Googled “Femgineer” expecting to see my blog at the top of the list. Shock, horror! There was already someone out there calling herself Femgineer. Someone by the name of “Poornima Vijayashanker”, a software engineer in the States. So sadly, I can’t claim to be the first to use this word, even though I naively thought I was. And I discovered last week, on another Google-spree that there are a few other blogs out there dedicated to femgineering.

With my bubble nearly burst, I tried one last-ditch attempt to affirm my originality and typed in Femgineer Fatale. This site came up at the top! At least I’m the first to use this title…

Oh, so you like… work in a lab?

I am not a chemist. I do not work in a laboratory. In fact, I hate lab work. I have a scar on the palm of my right hand from a first-year varsity pipette-related incident - that led to stitches - serving as a constant reminder of how much I hate lab work. The last time I worked in a lab was in second year during Chemistry practicals and I detested every second. And yet, when I tell people that I am a chemical engineer, the first question is most often: “Oh, so you like… work in a lab?” Um, no. But thanks for playing.

It struck me when talking to fellow blogger and friend, Dr S (Dr as in Dr, not Dr as in PhD), that many bright, otherwise socially-acceptable people out there have no idea what engineers actually do. Since none of you reading this are probably bright-eyed, eager-beaver high-school students wondering what soul-destroying career to dedicate your life to, I will keep it simple. In the purest form of all disciplines, engineers design. Mechanical engineers design mechanical systems, engines, gears. Electrical engineers design electrical systems, efficient electrical distribution, power plants. Civil engineers design roads, bridges, towns. Industrial engineers design work environments. Chemical engineers design chemical processes, select the suitable type of tanks, mixers, heat exchangers, pipes, pumps involved in the process and specify the right sizes. We are also held responsible for not damaging the environment or killing any staff in the process (explosions, electrocutions, etc) and not spending a cent more than required. And almost always a fellow engineer manages the labour who builds or runs the operations we design, or manages the maintenance team maintaining the technology. I heard a quote on a National Geographic or Discovery Channel documentary that explained engineering aptly. It went something like: “People think engineers are there to build things as big, thick and strong as possible when actually their role is to keep trying to do more with less and strip excesses away until just shy of the breaking point.”

That is what we are meant to do, anyway. In practice we end up in banking.

“But that’s men’s work, my girl!”

Ten years ago, as a short, skinny 16 year-old grade 12 student I threw on my jeans and sneakers, plaited my long, brown, shiny schoolgirl hair in an attempt to look neat, and hopped into my mom’s car to be driven off to my first job- shadowing assignment. My uncle, a floor supervisor at a textiles factory, had organised for me to trail a mechanical engineer in the maintenance department for the day. This man, an elderly Scotsman - who in hindsight was rather sexist and persistently called me “my dear” in a condescending tone - showed me around the plant. He took me on a tiring steam line tracing expedition through a maze of pipe lines, gave me a tour of the maintenance workshop, showed me some dusty, rusty vessel which he was scheduled to climb into and inspect the next day and led me climbing up every dizzyingly steep cat-ladder to reach every nauseatingly high platform we came across. I think his objective was to put me – aka “my dear” - off a career in engineering, but I had my brave face on. I wanted to prove that I could handle it, and I’d be damned if I’d show him how much he’d freaked me out. That was my first less-than-subtle taste of the frat party I was about to gatecrash. The invite read “BYOB”: bring your own balls, and I was precisely two short! Perhaps it was partly the brush with this mechanical engineer which steered me towards the more girl-friendly world of chemical engineering.



In my experience there is always a hint of gender rivalry between male and female engineers. Well sometimes more than just a hint. It starts at varsity. There’s an awareness of how many male students there are versus female students in each discipline (chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil and industrial) and how each group fares academically versus the other. In my case, the ChemEng (chemical engineering) class intake was split almost 50/50 for my year. There was subtle competition around which sex was doing better at grasping the concepts, scoring well at tests, asking intelligent questions in lectures... (Now would be a good time to mention that there was always a girl at the top of my class at year end. No, unfortunately that girl wasn’t me!) And this rivalry continues in the working world. I was fortunate enough to work as an engineer in a company where gender diversity was valued! Well officially it was valued. In practice this policy got lost in translation here and there. Here and there being my particular department. In my first role as an engineer, I worked for an extremely old-fashioned, middle-aged man who clearly didn’t think engineering was a suitable field for a woman. As a result, my male counterpart got assigned to every significant, exciting project requiring design work and detailed engineering calculations while I got assigned to mundane quality control problem solving and organising our office. I’m sure he would have had me make him tea and shine his shoes if he could have. How fun for me… There seems to be an implicit trust placed in male engineers by other male engineers without a requirement for evidence to support their confidence. Femgineers on the other hand, are viewed with a degree of scepticism and have to work much harder to gain the same credibility, particularly from older engineers. Luckily for me I eventually got some decent work passed my way, and at last even got a “Well done” out of the same boss for some of the projects I had done.



For the last leg of my job-shadowing day Mr McSexist took me to the welding workshop. I spent about an hour with a guy who passionately articulated his opinions on how the world would fall apart without the art of welding. Literally. He actually let me weld something, which I thought was very exciting! There was no condescension, no arrogance or negativity. This gentleman made me feel welcome in his world. By the end of the day, despite the damper the Scotsman had tried to place on me, I was excited to have seen this new territory where no day was ever the same. I felt inspired by the possible thrills and challenges it could present. I thought I could conquer it! Screw the Scotsman and all others like him! I had the brains to tackle engineering and I wanted in! My mom picked me up, little welded-plate-souvenir in hand, jeans filthy and long plait beginning to unravel. Back home I related the adventures of the day to her and my grandmother. Upon hearing this, my gran cocked her head to one side, gave me a puzzled look and said, “Is that really what you want to do, my child?” To which I replied, “Yes, I think so, Granny!”. And my gran said, as she shook her head in disbelief, “But that’s men’s work, my girl!”.