Women belong in science and technology.

Ah yes! I am free to say it now - having been in the workforce for over a month now. :-D Although there were times this week when I questioned the above statement...

Now before the all the flamin' libbies and feminists come after me, let me explain that it was ME who made me doubt that sentence. (Psh! What do you libbies know about science anyway? Some of you tried to ban dihydrogen monoxide. Fine, maybe some conservatives tried to ban it too... I won't be exclusive.) I was making dry ice the other day, and the gal I work for had to go take of other tasks, so she left and had me finish up the process. "Finishing up" involved loosening the dry ice machine valve from the CO2 tank with a wrench and putting everything away. So after the blocks of dry ice were made, I turned everything off, picked up the wrench and attempted to loosen the valve.

Nothing budged.

So I tried again. And again. From the other side of the tank. Using my other hand. Turning the wrench the other way (which ended up tightening the nut). After chiding myself for not working out, I took a brief moment to think. Should I go back and try to find the gal I work for? Not unless I have to - the last thing I wanted to do was go back and whine that I was too weak to loosen a stinkin' valve nut. Should I go and bother one of the guys? No way, man - I was not giving in to some beer-guzzling macho dude who would open the valve with his pinky and then show me where the weight room was.

So I took the only way out I knew - I prayed. All I did was offer up a brief "Please, God, help me" and tried the wrench again. And it moved.

Let me tell you, brothahs and sistahs, I heard the Hallelujah Chorus right about then. As small as that task was, it was a miracle. I sent up a huge thank-you and after a sigh of relief, went on my merry way. But it got me thinking. Were women really in the right place, being in the lab? The manufacturing plant? Did we need some special assistance?

Shortly after, I received an e-mail forward from my mom about women in technology and business careers. Yeah, so it's nice to see that women are climbing up into higher positions, and that some women are even able to do with full family lives. Good for them. But do we have to make such a big deal about it? Why is it when women can climb up the ladder, people make such a big fuss? Why can't a CEO be looked upon as exactly that, rather than a female one or a male one?

What sent me over the top was another e-mail forward from Mom about encouraging girls to go into science and technology fields. The author quoted someone as saying that girls had been discouraged from computers and technology because it was considered "geeky." The article also quoted someone as saying that we needed to "help" girls into technology by making "special arrangements" to make science more attractive to them. What a load of crud. Science will always be the same for any gender. You wanna dress it up like Barbie or something? Dream on. Like my mother, a successful chemical engineer, said, "I wanted to be a 'geek' my whole life. And now you want to help me become a geek because of my gender?" And Mom is the one to say it. She unknowingly applied to an all-male engineering school for graduate school in the 1980s and after much debate, was accepted because of her high academic record. She never made a big deal out of it, kept the media out of it. And she graduated as the first female from that school. Her diploma still says "his" on it. Did being female stop her? Did she get extra help for being female? Nope. Never. And she didn't need to use gender as a stepping stone - she used hard work to achieve good results. Anybody can see good results. I am darn right proud of her.

You know that commercial, the one supporting girls sports that ends with, "because little girls have big dreams too." Indeed they do - and that's all fine and dandy that you want to help them. But don't little boys dream too? Can't we help ALL children achieve their dreams instead of channeling them down a gender road so early on?

Ok, enough jibbah jabbah - I funna look for the weight room now...