I will be writing a letter to a CEO of a company/ board of directors or who may be concerned about the mechanical engineering field. I address them because the issues are taking place right under their noses, some oblivious to the issues. Just like an engineer has no room for error neither do the ones who hold their lives and careers do. They work and sacrifice enough for their professions going through the same amount of hardship or even more to get where they are now. Then to be welcomed by other hardships set by their fellow peers, just as they thought they were “home”. These findings are quite sad because you would think we’ve come a long way from NASA just at the height of segregation.
I would like to make light on a serious issue that the engineering field faces. The type of tissue that can be fixed overtime but surely can be fixed. A problem where the future faces of technology may be at risk. Those faces of different colors and genders may be disheartened by what is going on in the engineering world. There are disparities among the field and with those disparities it can be a dangerous outcome for the future of technology. Who is the poster face for those disparities? Women, more specifically black women. With the power imbalance and mis-distributed pay differences set by male colleagues to ultimately “trip-up” and make them feel inadequate. One may never know who will take us to a new height of enlightenment or advancement, it’s something unknown. This issue is something so arrogantly placed, it can be addressed swiftly by the help of those above i.e you; the men who uphold the power to do so to administer those changes. There is a general issue every mechanical engineer must face and its the earth’s most treacherous weather conditions. With every invention or development it must be tested and measured by the unpredictable weather. So to face those issues and for black women to take uon another is rather too much to bear. And with those up and coming to hear of the issues and nothing being done about them will discourage them from becoming mechanical engineers or engineers as a whole.
Tabitha, You have a clear audience and a clear overall problem. But your discussion get away from you. I think a bulleted point outline would help out. You have so many things to say that it gets hard to follow. Firstly, you need a clear description of the problem. Maybe a short story that shows the problem at work? Or some kind of clear laying out of the problem saying who it affects, where, and how. Then, can you make a list of all your points? In what order will you present them? Why? What examples will you give for each point? And importantly, why should the audience you are addressing care about the problem? Remember Wollstonecraft and Douglass and make it clear for your audience what is at stake for them? What do they gain by fixing this problem?