Please understand that I do enjoy working with men. I have been happily married for almost thirty years and I have three sons, so I like the male gender. The saying goes, "Men of Quality are not threatened by Women of Equality." Unfortunately, men still need to learn how to treat women equally in the work place.

From Eric Quinn -
Hi Elise, I really appreciated your article on women in technical professions and the inane conjectures guys dishing it out make.
I'm a guy but the competitive old-boy wheeling and dealing shenanigans are just not professional. Your honesty about the office is a breath of fresh air.
I feel lucky to have found an office where that's a minor part of the day. We do have several women engineers who mentor the new guys and swill beer after hours (they bring their husbands). For a while we had a woman chief engineer, assistant chief and team leads. The office morale, innovation and productivity was really high. "Iron fist" and office was patronage was non-existent. I think that was an effective way to motivate an intelligent work force.
Keep talking Elise. Maybe someday reality will drown out the desktop philosophers.

From Blogger Melanie Stone-
Oh, AMEN girl... I agree with you on all of your observations. Especially the boys club thing. They go golf or out for a few drinks and make decisions that affect you. mmm. mmm. mmm.
I definitely don't think that it's a math issue. I love math, and so do the millions of women who work as accountants and teachers. The same with science. Although, I do feel that perhaps we're more drawn toward other areas like biology, etc, as they're growing things, but, that's just a personal theory. (I wanted to be a marine biologist as an adolescent)
BUT! the question here is can *we* do anything about their behaviours? oor... ;) do we just lobby au and other similar conferences to have classes on basic manners for men?
oor... just hit them upside the head with a 2x4, my personally preferred method.

From Tom Irvin-
Ms. Moss: No consolation but it would NOT have been any better if you had chosen architecture instead of engineering ... just in case you were wondering.

From Heather Shrieves-
Thank you so, so much for the Women in Tech article. As a woman in the male-dominated engineering/design field for 7 years, I absolutely relate. On a professional level, I know what it’s like to be the invisible woman in meetings and having ideas brushed casually aside. And on a personal level, it hurts to be left out of the “guy trip” they take a few times a year, the drinks after work at places they know I won’t go (think dancing women), and the like.
Most of the guys I work with are great, but I have to admit that it doesn’t take much show of ambition from me to make them act threatened quickly. And being a bit naïve about the way some men think, I was shocked, after a supervisor left and it was rumored he would be replaced by a certain highly- qualified female engineer, to overhear some of the senior male engineers in the group saying they would not work for a “skirt”. The casualness of the statement made me feel the most powerless I’ve felt in my career.
The most affecting part of the article for me was the secretarial tasks, literally bringing tears to my eyes. How many times have I heard the sheepish, “but you type so much faster” while being handed someone else’s work in which I had never been involved. What hurts the most is that when I was new and green, I actually thought it to be a compliment.
But, I’m strong as I know we all are – if we weren’t, most of us wouldn’t still be in this field. I know I’ve been preaching to the choir but thanks for listening – it’s nice to know that there are more women like me out there. Women like us are changing the field (and the world) every day. Thanks again for the encouragement and for all the articles in the newsletter each week!

I appreciate Melanie's suggestion that men may need to be bonked in the head once in a while to get their attention, but I hope the article served as a wake-up call to some of my male readers so they could re- evaluate how they treat the women in their office. Nobody should ever feel devalued and the reason more women are not in the tech fields is because when women start entering the industry, they are made to feel that way. It takes a woman with a strong sense of self-worth to survive in a "male" industry. Women who don't have that usually end up leaving engineering and architecture and switching to a career where they receive better treatment. So, Ladies, give yourselves a pat on the back for getting this far....and Hang in there!

Highlight the desired component in the browser. Press Ctl+C to copy. Then press Ctl+V as many times as needed...You will see the component and instance number listed in the browser. The components will appear overlaid on top of each other, so you will have to move them to see all the instances.

Normally, in order to get a month named for a campaign you need a declaration from Congress, but apparently Autodesk doesn't feel the need for that pesky detail...hey, they have decided that June is License Compliance Month and therefore...it is!

AutoCAD Resources from CadDigest

Download Free Service Pack 1 for AutoCAD 2007