I always considered myself to be pretty gung-ho about being a girl. As a kid I did not shy away from competing with the guys. I regularly got into fights, I intentionally developed bad handwriting, I refused to accept obedience as a way of life that my all girls catholic high school elders attempted to impart on me, I am an engineer for crying out loud.

But as is the case with feminism, there is a crack in everything. My co-worker Julia was shocked at me when I said that I am waiting for Chris to fix the windowsill shelf for my potted plants. Julia is a handiwoman feminist. She owns power tools, she does all the handiwork around her house and she gets annoyed when male friends and neighbours offer to help.

It is not that I can’t do handy work, but I have no issues with letting other people do this. Last week when I was setting up my station I got technicians to forklift the heavy equipment, connect the power cables, even install smaller pieces of equipment. When I first started at my job I used to do all of this myself, I carried heavy equipment, I not only connected the power cables, but also built the power cables by stripping and crimping wire. While it was great that I did this, it took longer and it was not as efficient then letting people who can do it better than me to take care of it.

Does this make me a failed feminist? I don’t really think so. In my opinion feminism covers any theory on women’s status and work that is even mildly pro-women. I always get a good vibe whenever i see women doing things that in Victorian times would have been thought inappropriate. It is cool to see women being mechanics, glass blowers, hockey players etc… It is also cool to see women in politics, academia and medicine. For now I think I’ll stick to being and Engineering Princess and throw a hissy fit whenever I need something fork lifted. At least I have bad handwriting.

Earlier this week Michele from my work lunch group asked me whether troubleshooting (setting up equipment, fixing network connections, finding the right tools…) was part of my job. I grudgingly admitted that it was when Heather said that she rather likes it. This made me rethink al the tasks that are part of my job and decide how much I value each. It never occurred to me that someone else might enjoy a task that I dread. Conversely it must be true that the others avoid like the plaque the tasks that I absolutely love. This convinced me to draw up a list of tasks and order them according to how much I enjoy doing them.

Designing and implementing solutions
Verification
Infrastructure projects
Team activities that do not involve sports
Training technicians
Meetings about general topics (department meetings, updates from the high-ups)
Running production tests
Troubleshooting lab and production set-ups
Team activities that involve sports

Well, there you go. I would just like to point out that I like my job. I just like some facets of it more than others, that’s all.