I never thought I would be a blogger. The idea of putting personal information out on the internet doesn’t sit well with me. After my master’s degree, I worked in the defense field designing fixtures in vehicles for equipment for information systems. I learned enough about the information security to know, well…. things aren’t so secure!
So, why the blogs then? Well. A few of my friends and I came across a pretty cool thing. We have established a support group for Engineering Working Moms. We frequently get feedback from our members that the collaborative and often tacit information shared in our group on how to manage both roles (parenting and engineering) has helped them enough to remain committed to their careers. If you’ve been living in solitude without internet, (first of all, good for you!), but perhaps you are not not aware of the attrition of women engineers, specifically around mid-career. Research suggested it was due to the imbalance between work and family. Current research strongly suggests the lack of relatedness, mentoring, and sense of belonging are contributing factors to the attrition. This makes sense why our group is “working” for so many engineering moms. Through our conversations we provide a sense of relatedness, mentoring, and sense of belonging to one another from our interactions.
My goal and vision for putting my voice out in the world is in the hopes to reach a bigger audience of parents that may be struggling with the same issues our grass-roots of engineering working moms group has. These struggles almost pushed me out of the engineering workforce after the birth of my second kid. With the support, advice, and information from this awesome group of moms, I found a dream job in R&D in aerospace, and started a PhD program in Performance Psychology with the hopes of exploring the psychological reasons women engineers leave the industry (further hopes is to help stop the attrition, which I feel like I group has already contributed to)!
With that, I look forward to this new journey with three fellow engineers I highly respect!
Sincerely,
Felicia Green