Now that the things have calmed down a little on this topic, I thought I would use the residual increased awareness of the subject for good and ask a few questions that percolated in my mind while I watched the #ILookLikeAnEngineer posts stream by on Twitter.

My daughter turns 1 today, and as parents she has: a Systems Engineer (me) and a Software Engineer (my wife). We have no preconceptions about what our daughter will end up doing in terms of a career or hobby, but if she does show an inclination towards engineering I would love to be able to encourage and guide that inclination in a positive and constructive way.

Therefore, I have a few questions I would like to ask — a form of #lazyweb parenting, if you will. I have no doubt, given the current state of the gender gap in tech, that there are plenty of negative stories out there and we can certainly learn from them what not to do.

In this case I will try to focus on the positive, mainly because I find it easier to apply such things and keep them in the back of my mind long term. I also find it easier to extrapolate my own future behavior from examples of good behavior.

Essentially, I would like to know what good looks like in terms of growing up for a future (potential) female engineer. Specifically I would like to use positive experiences from current female engineers to inform my future behavior.

With that in mind, on to…..

The Questions

What have male or female role models (parents, mentors, public figures etc.) done that encouraged you to pursue engineering?

Who were these role models, are they reference-able in any way?

What do you wish your parents had done to encourage you to become an engineer?

I will obviously be paying close attention to the positive actions the men in the stories above have taken. I also realize that a lot of this is not actually gender specific and will easily apply to sons as well as daughters, but for now at least I don’t have to worry about that angle.

If @IsisAnchalee or others involved with the new www.ilooklikeanengineer.com website find and read this post, I would very much like to advocate for a portion of that site to be dedicated to this kind of discussion and exploration. If you think I can help out, by all means get in touch and let me know.

Maybe with a decade of such effort my daughter will grow into a teenager in a world where this discussion seems wonderfully anachronistic and irrelevant because the problem has been solved and tech gender gap is nothing more than a historical footnote.

Now that’s what good would look like :)