There are people who see their achievements as so core to their own personality, that they have to gatekeep them. For example, the ex-highschool football star, or someone who graduated with honors three decades ago. It’s not to say that these things aren’t important, but thinking that your daughter-in-law can’t handle, say, engineering, just because you, a man, could, is ridiculous.
A netizen shared their rather inspiring story of how their wife decided to get a full chemical engineering degree just to prove her FIL wrong. We reached out to the person who made the post via private message and will update the article when they get back to us.
Telling someone they “don’t have what it takes” to get a certain degree is pretty nasty
Image credits: Yunus Tuğ / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Which is why one woman decided to get an engineering degree just to get back at her FIL
Image credits: MedicAlert UK / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Albert Vincent Wu / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image credits: PeaceLoveSmithWesson
Some men truly believe that only they can do whatever hobby or job they’ve chosen
There’s an unspoken rule in the world of professional men: whatever they do is the hardest, most intellectually demanding, and most important job in existence. Whether they’re in finance, engineering, or some obscure field like “logistics optimization,” they will absolutely let you know why their work is the backbone of civilization. Not only that, it’s basically impossible for any “normal” person to even understand what they are doing.
But when it comes to nursing, one of the most critical, grueling, and skill-intensive professions, some of these same guys suddenly act like it’s just advanced babysitting. Unfortunately, many men are raised to believe that their value is tied to technical or financial prowess. Engineering makes things. Finance moves money. Programming creates software. These are “big, important” contributions to society, so surely, a job that involves helping people rather than building things must be easier, right? (Spoiler: No.)
Nursing demands critical thinking, multitasking, medical knowledge, and a pretty decent amount of emotional intelligence. But because it involves caregiving, it gets lumped into the “soft skills” category, something that, in certain male-dominated industries, is code for “not real work.” It is also still quite technical, and involves dealing with bodily fluids, blood and, at times, people who don’t make it.
Stereotypes about jobs and gender still persist
Historically, nursing has been female-dominated, and unfortunately, some people still equate “feminine” jobs with being less prestigious or difficult. Never mind that nurses literally keep people alive on a daily basis, the stereotype persists. Setting that aside, it’s just as important to mention that not only did this man decide that nursing was, on the whole, “easier” than engineering, he also seemed to believe that there was no way a woman could do it.
This is probably one of the most classic examples of gender bias, which in this day and age should have long been disproven. Yes, there are fields where the vast majority of workers and graduates are men, but that is not to say that there is some inherent “feminine” quality that prevents women from excelling in them.
After all, this woman graduated with honors, which seemed to break this man’s brain. This is a bit concerning, given the fact that as an engineer, he might be responsible for things that keep people alive. The fact that he can even entertain such baseless concepts suggests that perhaps it’s not all calculus and rational thoughts up there.
The person who posted the story also chatted in the comments
Readers thought the FIL was ridiculous
The post Irony Makes Woman Meet Her Ex-FIL In Court To Make Him See What A Professional Expert She Became first appeared on Bored Panda.