Engineering Student Writes Letter to Female Classmates About Why They're Not Equal to Men

Excellent, must-read piece for women, as well as female and male students of color in STEM fields and careers. 

-Angela

Engineering Student Writes Letter to Female Classmates About Why They're Not Equal to Men: No, it's not the mansplaining you might be expecting.

by PRACHI GUPTA

 OCT 9, 2015

A letter written by a male college student explaining why he believes women are unequal to men in engineering has gone viral — but not for the reasons you'd think.

Mechanical engineering student Jared Mauldin, a senior at Eastern Washington University, recently wrote a letter in the school newspaper theEastern addressed to his female colleagues. "While it is my intention in every other interaction to treat you as my peer, let me deviate from that to say that you and I are in fact unequal," the letter began.

Mauldin goes on to describe the many ways that women have to work harder than their male peers just to be taken seriously:

He wrote the letter based on his own observations, according to Today.com, after noticing how male peers treated female classmate Holly Jeanneret, who performed well on exams in their calculus class:

Mauldin felt awed by Jeanneret's math skills, but he noticed that the other guys in the class seemed less impressed. Some refused to partner with her. Some interrupted Jeanneret and talked over her. Still, others talked only to Mauldin as if Jeanneret did not exist.

As he continued as a student in the mechanical engineering program at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Maudlin often observed men slighting women. He realized that the females in the program worked harder than many of the men, simply to be accepted.

Mauldin also teaches a technology class to children and found that the bias started at a young age. Female siblings of students who showed interested in the class seemed discouraged from enrolling, and parents "confided to Maudlin that their daughters feared being in a class with all boys."

His observations are in line with a global observation that women are underrepresented in STEM fields due to several barriers, including societal and cultural stereotypes taught at a young age, and gender bias and discrimination within the field.

"Nothing I said was new, it has all been said a thousand times before. The difference is that I am a man," Mauldin told The Huffington Post. "Maybe by standing up and breaking the silence from the male side, I can help some more men begin to see the issues, and begin to listen to the women who have been speaking about this all along."