Hi !

I’m a grad student in an engineering only university and I’m getting tired of the “encouraging women in stem fields”. About the third of the scholarships given are women only (an other third for diverse minorities and the last is open to everyone and depends on your field of research/study), there are a lot of financing and sensibilisation campaign that is done to encourage women to pursue studies in engineering and help them, a couple of interesting conferences per trimester are giving only acces to females, more then 50% of prizes given by organisms and the school are only for women, about 65% of opportunities to shine for their accomplishments even if it’s just good for having good grades or starting a project are for women only, etc.

Yet the percentage of woman student in the university is about 25% (from their website), which i think gives way less chances to a male student to stand out.

I have what is considered an outstanding GPA, nobody told me I did or that I’m doing a good job and even got refused a huge scholarship at the beginning of my research, so I had to work my ass off in school and outside sinking slowly in a burn out that lasted a good two years, during which I practically couldn’t work on my thesis and sunk in huge debts.

I know that I’m not the only one that lived their studies feeling like a little pawn while other where praised for being born with a female reproductive organ.

Sorry for the long post, had to rant :)