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Originally Posted by Zenith  I was searching for a thread dedicated to women in audio on this site, and I have yet to find one (even though there are plenty dedicated to engineers' bitching girlfriends/wives)...
Considering there is a nominal amount of anonymity on here, I am looking forward to some honest (and maybe painful) answers to this question:
Do you think women are as capable as men when it comes to engineering?
I am an instructor of audio engineering and music production at a fairly well known training facility. I love what I do and I am damn good at it - However, I have noticed that it takes me a little more time to earn the respect of my (mostly male) students as apposed to the other instructors. After they figure out that I am well versed in the art of recording, they sometimes hold me in higher esteem than my male coworkers. I've taught at least a thousand students and have witnessed this phenomenon over and over again... What gives fellas?
Keep Rocking,
- Zenith |
To answer the first question: yes. And to get philosophical on it, the categorization of women, implying rather than men, is essentially baiting a stereotype. Regardless of physiognomical ideology, anyone is basically capable of anything. Even in the extreme case of a midget playing basketball, you just simply never know cause one of them tiny ****ers might surprise you with some give and go: In other words, even if in the off chance women aren't as capable on the whole, within the individual sphere there is absolutely no distinction.
For your second question, all I can say is that if you are an attractive woman many male students are going to see that before they see anything else. I had a rhetoric teacher in highschool who was a major hotty, and I definitely lost focus in that class ALOT. I also did really well in that class - I think my little crush was excellent motivation. Now, this pertains to class performance, not so much respect, although the two can sometimes be mistaken for one another. In the direct line of respect, I know when I meet a woman who is successful in this field, I generally think - wow, she must be really good to make it in this field. Cause women generally have to do a better job to get equally as far. The American zeitgeist is currently trying to "tap dat."
Anyway, the cellist in my band is a woman named Monica MacIntyre. She plays a cello like nobody's business. I mean one bad mutha****a. She only works with female engineers and very few select male engineers because male engineers will tell her how to play. Or if she says the sound of her cello is incorrect, male engineers will tell her that her hearing is wrong. Which is crazy, cause she's basically untouchable, and decidedly knows the sound of her own instrument. Again, we're just feeling through the outskirts of an antiquated paradigm, and it sucks donkey balls.