I suspect a lot depends upon the environment/community you grow up in. If your parents/parents friends are involved in engineering, then I suspect you are far more likely to be supported if you choose engineering career yourself. If your local community is heavily engineering based then you are also likely to get drawn in just by growing up in that area.
Things change with time and it is difficult to know how schooling has changed since we were all there, but looking back to my school days, engineering was not supported in general across the board. I think women actually had the advantage here as they were doing more 'engineering' in cookery class when baking and assembling fancy cakes than the men (who at that time were excluded from such activities).
I recall I had to sit through ten years of school before being able to pick an engineering class as an elective (against everyone else's wishes) and even then it was only something like 45-90mins a week, and almost all of it self-study. There were only three other men taking that elective that year. I know that the year above had a woman taking it as I bought her engineering study books. However even though I had shown a strong interest in engineering subjects at least five years prior to that, I still never got that oscilloscope for Xmas... My parents weren't engineers though. None of the careers guidance suggested a career in engineering either. I had to walk that path alone.
So, from that perspective, I don't think anyone was particularly supported to pursue a career in engineering.
There are a couple of interesting links about Eva Håkansson 's engineering career path here which may be of interest:
I suspect a lot depends upon the environment/community you grow up in. If your parents/parents friends are involved in engineering, then I suspect you are far more likely to be supported if you choose engineering career yourself. If your local community is heavily engineering based then you are also likely to get drawn in just by growing up in that area.
Things change with time and it is difficult to know how schooling has changed since we were all there, but looking back to my school days, engineering was not supported in general across the board. I think women actually had the advantage here as they were doing more 'engineering' in cookery class when baking and assembling fancy cakes than the men (who at that time were excluded from such activities).
I recall I had to sit through ten years of school before being able to pick an engineering class as an elective (against everyone else's wishes) and even then it was only something like 45-90mins a week, and almost all of it self-study. There were only three other men taking that elective that year. I know that the year above had a woman taking it as I bought her engineering study books. However even though I had shown a strong interest in engineering subjects at least five years prior to that, I still never got that oscilloscope for Xmas... My parents weren't engineers though. None of the careers guidance suggested a career in engineering either. I had to walk that path alone.
So, from that perspective, I don't think anyone was particularly supported to pursue a career in engineering.
There are a couple of interesting links about Eva Håkansson 's engineering career path here which may be of interest:
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