The Patriarchy

A small part of a paper by Larissa Remennick of Bar-Ilan University about Russian engineers in Israel:

Besides the general problems of language command and skill incompatibility common for all immigrant engineers, women faced an additional disadvantage due to the local definition of engineering as a male occupation. Many participants related that they were screened out at the stage of sending a resume´ and never arrived at job interviews, although potential employers never openly mentioned their gender as a reason. Several women who had job interviews along with male candidates they knew (both immigrant and local-trained) pointed out that employers eventually hired men whose prior work experience was poorer than theirs, invariably preferring a male and (if available) local candidate to a female and immigrant one. ‘Israelis don’t believe that women can be ambitious and competent engineers’, was a recurrent statement during group discussions. One woman, who was hired and soon fired when a male candidate applied for her job, tried to sue the firm for gender discrimination. Her Israeli friends dissuaded her from doing that, saying she would deprive herself of any further chance of a decent job. ‘It’s a small market-place, and a woman can’t afford to have the reputation of a troublemaker’, the advice went.

The article's about Israel, but the North American readers of this silly website have likely seen similar things in their localities. A lot of countries produce - or have in the past produced - female graduates in science and technology on a level unheard of in my environs. I wonder how Russia is doing now in this area.