Female Engineer : “My Brain And My Shoes Are Not Connected.”

With fuchsia nail lacquer and impeccably glossed lips, Mukaddes Darwish is a vision of femininity. Her office is filled with pictures of family and student groups, with an Ulta Beauty shopping bag on her desk. The ladylike office sticks out on the second floor of the mechanical engineering building.

Mukaddes Darwish, Ph.D., in her office.

Darwish, Ph.D., is the only female instructor in the construction engineering department at Texas Tech. Having been in the engineering field for more than 30 years, Darwish has experienced discrimination due to her gender.

Originally from Izmir, Turkey, Darwish said she did not know she wanted to be an engineer, but knew she wanted to do something involving mathematics. After finishing a five-year degree plan in only four years at Ataturk University, Darwish began working for the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development in a small town in Turkey.

“When I started, nobody told me I was a woman engineer,” Darwish said. “Or I shouldn’t do field work. I worked as a field engineer. And, the second day they gave me the job descriptions. We will provide you cheap hotel and driver, and you will travel. Maybe, you know, your work is field, so sometimes you will be like until 3 a.m., outside. Nobody asked me if I can make it or not. And I said, ‘Oh yeah, yay! I like that! I don’t like the office!'”

While in Turkey, Darwish said she never felt discriminated against. She said male superiors always treated her with respect, and never forced her to stay behind an office desk.

Next, Darwish moved to Italy, where she continued her education and received another graduate degree, thanks to a scholarship offered by the Italian government. She was one of only three Turks chosen to study abroad. She said her engineering experience in Italy was also positive.

“In Turkey and Italy, if you are a strong woman, they say you have leadership skills. In the United States, including here, if you are a strong woman, they seriously look at you like a ‘b word,'” Darwish said, saying she does not like to use the real word.

In her mid-20s, Darwish moved to Egypt with her then husband. She said it was a culture shock. Having lived in countries where she was never discriminated against, and then move to a country where she was referred to by her husband’s name and not her own, Darwish did not enjoy her time there. They soon moved to the United States in 1983.

As a single mother raising two sons, Darwish completed another masters degree at Texas Tech in one year, with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. She then pursued a doctoral degree at Tech, while teaching engineering classes.

Most male professors would not have stuffed “Dilbert” characters in their office.

Darwish said although she has an interdisciplinary engineering degree, meaning she has experience in many facets of the field, she chose construction engineering to help future females in the program.

“As a woman, there are not many women in construction, one thing is I wanted to be a role model,” Darwish said. “I wanted to bring more female students to the area.”

Able to count the number of female students on one hand, Darwish said she was fortunate to have as many as she does this semester. She said there have been some semesters where she has no female students in her classes.

Joni Hutson, a civil engineering graduate of Tech who now works for the Texas Department of Transportation, said her classes in the early 2000s were predominantly male.

“There wasn’t any kind of discrimination, everyone was treated pretty equal. I would say, if I had to guess, it was probably 35 to 65,” Hutson said in reference to the female to male ratio.

Darwish said her gender affects her teaching style. She told a story about a female student she had last semester. The student had a daughter who needed surgery, which caused the student to put school at the bottom of her priority list. Darwish said she knew the girl was smart, and had potential. So, Darwish offered the girl to take a week off from her class, and she would tutor her to catch her up and improve her grades. She said the girl came back to school, and finished the semester strong.

TxDOT’s Stacey Young at a career fair, encouraging student’s to pursue engineering. Photo courtesy of @TxDOTLubbock on Twitter.

Stacey Young, the Lubbock district pavement engineer at TxDOT, has been an engineer for more than 30 years. The 2009 recipient of the Engineer of the Year award from the Society of Professional Engineers, Young actively promotes engineering fields to grade school students. She said encouraging students to pursue what they love is crucial to a lifetime of happiness.

When she first began her teaching position at Tech, Darwish could have used the support she gives to her students. Instead, one particular staff member, who has since left Tech, was particularly discriminatory toward Darwish.

“He asked me, ‘How did they hire you?’ I am blonde, with green eyes, and I’m 5’4. And he looked at me, and I said, ‘What kind of question is this?’,” Darwish recalled. “‘They interviewed me, and they looked at my qualifications. I speak five languages, I have three different masters or graduate diplomas, I have a Ph.D., and I am very qualified. And that’s why they hired me.'”

Darwish went on to tell a story about the same former colleague. She said he made a comment one day about how nice it was to have women’s perfume fill the office. Darwish said she went to Wal-Mart, and bought the worst smelling perfume she could. At the next faculty meeting, she brought the bottle, broke it, and left it in a trashcan in the conference room. She came into the meeting, and commented on the awful perfume smell. The man’s face turned red with embarrassment.

Darwish also said she has been judged by other women. She said there is a stereotype that female engineers must not dress girly, and should wear minimal make up.

“I have been told, ‘Oh, when you wear dangling earrings, and make up, no man will take you seriously. If you want to be successful, you are in the man shoes.’ And I say no, I am in my high heels,” Darwish said. “I don’t wear man shoes. My brain and my shoes are not connected.”

Darwish adds numerous girly touches to her office, including flowers and artwork.

Young said while working for Texas Instruments in 1986, she was put in charge of a group of maintenance men. Manly men, they did not like engineers ordering them around, especially a female engineer. Young said she simply listened to the men, and treated them with respect. The response was better than expected.

“I ran into one of them in the grocery store, and he told me, ‘You know what, Stacey? There was never a week that went by that we didn’t wish you were back out there being our supervisor.’ And to me, that was the best compliment I could ever be paid,” Young said.

Having been in the industry for seven years, Hutson said she has not felt discriminated against or out of place in her engineering jobs. She said she thinks some women are naturally inclined to be leaders, and the engineering field is starting to show it. Hutson said times are changing in the engineering field.

“I am very appreciative of the women who have come before me,” Hutson said. “I know they have been treated very nastily and ugly in the past, and I am grateful that they hung in there, because I think they were the first ones to really break down those walls.”