Wimpy Woman

For some reason or the other, I never included pull-ups in my exercise routine until my early forties.  With a modest degree of effort, I was soon able to complete three sequential pull ups. Although I was rather proud of myself, my offspring remained peculiarly unimpressed by my stupendous achievement.

Now ten years later, and despite exceedingly diligent efforts, I can’t even complete one pull-up.

What has this to do with my career in engineering?

As a newly fledged mechanical engineer, some three decades ago, I often heard that women shouldn’t be in engineering.  The loudest argument was that women weren’t physically strong enough to be in the profession.   (The silent argument was that women weren’t welcome.)

This commentary was questionable for many reasons, but particularly because it was delivered by perennially red-faced, rotund men of a certain age who appeared to be on the cusp of a heart attack.  I would have pit my pathetic strength against theirs any day.

Now, I’m not suggesting my lack of strength never limited me.  It limited me as much as a lack of physical  robustness affected my crimson-faced colleagues.  There were times I used a pipe to leverage the handle of a tool, and my ability to hold a pitot tube in high flow discharges waned a decade too early.

Nonetheless, I’m now a fifty-something woman and wimpier than I’ve ever been, but my value as an engineer is at a peak.

So much for the relationship between our physical and our professional strengths.  If only I could tell my long-retired colleagues that I survived long enough in the profession to be as decrepit as them.