When MIT senior Emma Nelson was teaching engineering classes
in China in 2013, a male student remarked of her as an instructor, “I thought
we were supposed to meet engineers, not women.” As she stared out at the 100
college students before her, Nelson noticed there was just one female face
looking back at her.
Nelson, who was there as a mechanical engineering major
participating in MIT’s China Educational Technology Initiative (CETI), was face
to face with the sobering reality of what her life might have been like: She
lived in an orphanage in her native China until age 6, when a family from
Chicago adopted her, opening up a path where being female wasn’t considered an
impediment to pursuing a successful career as a scientist or engineer.
Nelson believes that in a country where families are
permitted only one child, she was given up for adoption simply because of her
gender. But in her new home, in a multicultural suburb of Chicago, she came to
feel included and supported by her family and peers, and is now full steam
ahead as a mechanical engineer focused on stymieing environmental
degradation.
Website: http://www.arjonline.org/journals
No comments:
Post a Comment