“One is not born a woman, one becomes a woman,” said Simone de Beauvoir, the lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, in 1949.
Many years have passed since this statement was made, during which there has been a very marked emancipation of women in society. But the number of women in technical professions has still not risen significantly. Even if not every girl is interested in engineering, the route into engineering for women should not be made more difficult as a result of gender-specific role models. I grew up in a family where gender-specific education did not play a big part in my upbringing, and everyone was encouraged in those areas which interested him or her.
Accordingly, it was no great surprise in my family when I decided to study mechanical engineering, after having been inspired by a visit to the wind tunnel in the Vienna Arsenal.
Through an organisation encouraging and supporting non-traditional career choices by young women, I had the opportunity of weighing up the offers between university/Fachhochschule (university of applied sciences) and college against one another, and ultimately I opted to study at the Fachhochschule, specialising in production and automation engineering.
Not everyone in my new environment was neutral in their attitude to “women in engineering”, and therefore I quickly learned to live with my role as a “minority”, to exploit the advantages and to compensate for the disadvantages. Through the experience gained during my studies and in my professional life, I have grown into the environment to such an extent that nowadays I am no longer consciously aware of my “exotic” status as the sole woman in a team of men. However, my experience has convinced me that mixed-gender teams work more successfully, since the combination of a more “male” ‘straight-forward thinking’ and “female” networking thinking generally results in the optimal solution.”