JoB
hopey…
you are right.. academia is a whole other track… and i think the last bastion of unacknowledged sexism.. at least in certain male dominated fields… and perhaps in all… as the system is tied to the competitive narrow focus mind set.
I am frankly quite puzzled as to why she went back. it won’t further her engineering career much… tho the research will take it in new directions.. and i think she is ill suited to academia… but who knows? She has the family mentoring gene… hard to wipe out:)
And she may have just found a university that is actually recruiting top quality females into their geotech department.. and a male mentor there who poses what she sees as intriguing questions… and who apparently finds her intriguing as well. she was amazed to find that he not only remembered her name but knew a great deal about her at the last conf they both attended…
we will see. that girl has been a constant surprise to me. Who expected such a girlie girl to end up in a hard hat and steel toe boots buried to her waist in what can only be called mud.. and as concerned with the texture of that mud as she still is with the texture of her pumpkin soup:)
My daughter spent time in the “real” world before going back to school… and the sexism there was both to her advantage (she got opportunities which she used effectively) because she was a good looking female.. and to her disadvantage … the company narrowly averted a sexual discrimination lawsuit because of the same attributes (which she chose not to use as an opportunity … they are still trying to hire her back).
That said.. she never would have prospered had she not been exceptional at what she does… it was just a steel toed boot (in her case) into doors that might not have opened as quickly.