Monday, April 03, 2023

Book review - Sex, Gender, and Engineering: Harassment at Work and in School

 Amazon Review: Thorough coverage and filled with first-hand accounts - 

This tremendous and comprehensive text breaks down the language and impacts of sexual harassment in a meaningful and digestible fashion. Van Antwerp and Wilson delve into what's known about sexual and gender harassment from the literature and point out where work has yet to be done. The book is widely researched including both academic and workplace data and makes helpful distinctions between the two. For those of us who have not studied this area closely, they describe and modify several classic models including learning transfer, stress, and sexual harassment as it pertains to job satisfaction & its antecedents and impacts. This book is invaluable to me as an at-times college instructor and full-time manager of engineers - the differing landscapes are well characterized.

Finally this work attends to solutions and the future in very practical ways. The authors dig into effective learning transfer strategies, different training methodologies and approaches, and expound on the nature and value of bystander training and activism within the specific context of heavily systemized engineering spaces.

I have come away with discussions and ideas to implement with my team, concepts and training improvements to discuss with site leadership, and a better understanding of the importance of cultivating a culture that engenders solidarity with all workers - even a better understanding of my workplace.