It's extremely frustrating, but it seems like the cycle is being set up to repeat itself:
I have a beautiful young lady on my team at work. She would be about 22 yrs old, earns about $40K/year...
Her master plan is to find a high earning young man to look after her. It makes me sad. She is bright and could easily be a self sufficient young woman.
I feel like that many times leads to what was mentioned earlier in this thread:
...The coworker had just divorced her husband who, as a head of a hospital wing, was bringing in over half a million dollars a year... So they divorced, the judge didn't award alimony, and she had to go back to work after many years of staying at home. She landed in my group, earning less than one tenth of what her ex used to bring home.
...boy, dealing with a fallen socialite is something I will not miss.
Hopefully you can influence her onto the path of self sufficiency! FWIW, I'm a male engineer and some of the brightest people I know are independent female engineers that work at my company.
I feel like female engineers have much more drive than their male counterparts in most cases. They are out to prove they can hack it in what is traditionally male dominated. My wife is one and she has issues with RE b/c of the drive to prove she can do it all ... many others i run into are quite similar. - more so in the millenial generation than previous generations as well. maybe its not true everywhere but alot of the older been around the block female engineers i run into are space taker uppers b/c they know they are satisfying a diversification spot just being there.
Interesting.
As a Gen-X female engineer, I have to say that my experience with female engineers is that yes, on average, we have more drive. Part of that is that we've had to have more drive.
In high school, we were outnumbered.
In college, we were really outnumbered.
You had to really WANT it to be an engineer.
It's kind of like how some people like to compare Indian and Chinese engineers with Americans, and talk about how much BETTER the Asian engineers are. When really: for the most part, we only get the cream of the crop here. It's *very hard* (or used to be) to get to the US from Asia to go to college or grad school. So it's not a fair comparison.
My experience with female engineers ranges from boomers (aged >60) down to millenials. I'd have to say that all of them have been pretty driven.
However, your comment about "older around the block engineers" was interesting. I've found, as I get "older" (I'm almost 47), that - it kind of sucks. There are literally no other women in my building. Most of the senior female engineers here have quit in frustration or been laid off (we had a large layoff and shut down an entire division). The glass ceiling in my industry is pretty damned thick, and it can be wearing. I've had my own series of ups and downs, and I tell you - the downs were pretty bad. It only takes a single bad, sexist boss to really derail you for several years. Luckily, that guy got laid off in the same large division layoff.
If other senior women have similar experiences, I can imagine that the glass ceiling, getting talked over in meetings, being ignored, being asked to take notes, getting passed over for promotion - well, it's pretty wearing. At some point I had to really come to terms with it and make a decision - fighting it was really not good for my health. So, I took a deep breath, got a new boss, decided to make the best of the job that I have. For now. Learn new things and try to enjoy each day and each project.