It’s not related to Women’s day, it’s more like a personal identification and a real situation I am living myself.
As a child, I was lucky to have some really cool parents that at Christmas equally bought me pink dolls and blue parking lot games. I was a restless girl who liked more a football than a Barbie, and my dad enjoyed teaching me how to assemble the Excalectric. That was awesome.
However, when it was my time to choose my degree, I was encouraged to study so many things… but not engineering. I found so many «Ewwww, why?» reactions. Most people told me I would better be a doctor, biologist, lawyer or something like that. But I persisted and enrolled for an Engineer School. About the girls-boys ratio I found something funny. Although in general more boys apply for engineering schools, girls usually have better entry-marks, so if the School has a high entry-mark the ratio is quite good, around 60-40. That was quite nice, but I sadly saw after the first couple of years it goes down to 70-30 (more girls give up after the first failures).
I try not to overthink it, but during my whole career, since I first chose the technical subjects at high school, I have had the feeling that I am entering a men’s world. I like it, so I simply try to do my best and ignore the fact that I belong to that minority: I don’t like the victim role. But despite my efforts, sometimes reality it’s not nice. I have gone through situations where I am insinuated that I can’t achieve something because of being a female. I have applied for positions where the interview discarded me just after reading the name on the CV. I have been judged harsher on my performance than males are. This puts more pressure on female engineers while working. This discourages little girls to take this path. But hopefully, this is getting better, specially thanks to women that tear apart stereotypes and barriers with their courage, ambition and resilience.
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