
How Women Mentors Make a Difference in Engineering - jansho
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/women-mentors-engineering/527625/?single_page=true
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davidf18
Studies about education are famously not done well and are hard to replicate
(this is true of other fields as well). Instead of having a psychologist who
has never done engineering do the study, have actual engineers. Different
people respond differently. Engineering is one of those fields that if you
screw up, many, many people can die so it takes a certain kind of personality
and I believe it is someone who is very passionate about doing it.

The same is true with medicine.

~~~
ASpring
The claim that an engineer would run this study better is baseless. Most CS
faculty I know do not have the experience necessary to plan and run a well
thought out randomized controlled experiment with human subjects. There is
definitely some good work done by CS professors on CS education but in general
a Psych faculty member will be better equipped to run a study such as the one
cited.

~~~
davidf18
The article was not referring to CS but engineering. EE, ME, Civil, Chem,
Aero, Industrial,

[http://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/rankings.html](http://engineering.illinois.edu/academics/rankings.html)

My EE profs at Illinois were capable to run studies and they understand the
rigors of the domain which a psychologist would not understand.

The study is in a very emotional area and the findings get lots of publicity
advancing careers but making it more likely the results are biased.

I have also worked in CS and studied it so I can say it is not engineering.

~~~
ASpring
My mistake, CS is in the school of engineering at my institution. My point
stands. A social science researcher is better equipped to run this study than
an engineering researcher.

> My EE profs at Illinois were capable to run studies and they understand the
> rigors of the domain which a psychologist would not understand.

This is silly. Switch EE and Psychology and you can say the same thing. "EE
faculty on average don't understand the human elements and how to control for
them well enough to run the study."

> The study is in a very emotional area and the findings get lots of publicity
> advancing careers but making it more likely the results are biased.

All of academia.

Let's break out of the "STEM faculty can do everyone else's jobs better than
them" mentality. It is hurting our field.

------
yakult
“Often, science is messy and things don’t turn out neatly,” Dasgupta says. But
in this study, “it was very gratifying how clean the results were.”

This is an unfortunate choice of words in the age of p-hacking and publication
bias.

------
nowarninglabel
Part of the problem here, which the article doesn't quite reach, is that the
possible pool of mentors is growing but those women are themselves lacking in
the confidence they need to become mentors. Encourage your female engineering
senior managers and leaders to knowing that they are respected and capable of
being role models and mentors to others if they choose!

~~~
DamnYuppie
At my current company everyone at a manager or above level becomes a career
advisor for several younger resources. Every advisor has to go through HR
training to do this and they are expected to spend a not insignificant amount
of time each year helping each advisee. Also every non-manager has a career
advisor.

I believe that this system really helps push people to focus on helping others
in the organization and really making them focus on how others can be
successful even if their path wouldn't be the same as theirs. Another aspect
of the current system is the advisees can request to have different advisors
if they feel others are better suited to understanding their background and
goals.

I like to naively think that this system benefits both the advisor and advisee
and both can get a tremendous benefit from the relationship. Overall having a
mentor and mentoring others is a great tool for personal and professional
growth. On several occasions I have had to really think about how to discuss
options with my advisees who have different cultural backgrounds from myself.

------
tyingq
My female engineer friends tell me that female mentors work well for them, but
that female bosses often don't.

They all cite some sort of attitude where the boss had to gut it out in an
unfair sexist world, and don't have much sympathy.

Anecdotal of course, but if true to any significant measure, would make
mentors even more important.

~~~
winebot
You would think that people who experienced sexism would be more likely to be
inclined to help out...

~~~
mercer
My experience is that the opposite is often true: quite a number of those who
overcame <x> tend to have the least sympathy for people struggling with <x>.

I've met ex-poor people who attribute their success to simple 'trying harder'
than other poor people. I've met socially successful people who attribute it
to learning 'a few simple tricks' and 'getting out of the comfort zone'. I've
met ex-depressed people proclaim that if only others would meditate and/or
believe in themselves it would solve all their negative feelings. I've met
gays who argued that if only these sexually-confused individuals would let
themselves be themselves, and move somewhere more free if need be, their
struggle would be over. I've met Christians who attribute their new-found
wholesomeness to simple being more repentant than everyone else in church.

In each of these cases, the conclusion was that 'these people', whether poor,
socially anxious, depressed, gay or in existential crises, are just not trying
hard enough (lazy).

In fact, I'd go as far as claiming that, considering myself someone who has
had a decent breadth and depth of experience with these groups, easily more
than 50% of the ex-somethings I've met are more on the side of judging their
ex-peers instead of supporting them.

I'm sure there's fascinating research in this area. I catch myself doing
similar things and while I have some theories I can't fully explain why I do
it. Protecting/polishing my ego? Keeping some clean narrative and sense of
progression in my head?

------
partycoder
While I think more women, and underrepresented groups in general, is a good
idea. However I am against treating them any differently in a professional
setting, for better or worse.

This means, if you have a standard for defining someone is not compliant or
aligned with the company, it should be the same for everyone.

~~~
DamnYuppie
To me, your comment is very much in line with the core tenet of equality which
would be that we should strive to treat everyone the same regardless of gender
or race. As such I am not sure why you are being down voted without people
leaving comments.

~~~
dang
It's because such comments break the HN guidelines by treading into classic
flamewar territory with nothing genuinely new to say. This ruins threads and
degrades the site. A few people get all excited (perhaps 0.1% because they've
never seen this before and 99.9% who just love repeating it) while the rest of
us keel over from tedium. Since HN's mandate is to gratify intellectual
curiosity, that violates it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
exstudent2
Ah classic dang! Abusing your mod powers to punish and down talk anyone who
questions your narrative. The comment in question is absolutely on topic and
relevant. You just don't like it so claim it's against "site policy". It's
ridiculous that you don't allow debate on these topics.

And yes, I know I'm perma-banned for not being feminist enough for you. I just
wanted to point out your systematic pushing of a political agenda to those who
dare browse with show dead.

~~~
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004)

