Sara KeranakisUWRT 1102Cassandra BlanfordJanuary 26, 2015

Inquiry Project ProposalFor centuries women have been fighting for equal rights among men. Still to this day there are feminist who do not believe that this has been achieved. Being a female pursing a predominantly male career has given me first hand experience in fair and unfair treatment due to my gender. I am a female Civil Engineering student here at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In all of my classes I am included in the 5% of female students in the College of Engineering. Being in this minority is not always simple and can become challenging at times. I have witnessed both sides of the way people view women in a so called mans world. All of these encounters lead me to my inquiry question that I wish to investigate. My question for this class is; do women of today still feel the job sexism of yesterday? Needless to say women in the pass were not equals to men. Women, along with a few men, fought for the rights of women in America. Women received the rights to vote in 1920s over a century after white men in America held their first election. Women have been working in the same fields as men since the 1870s. Workingwomen in this time were unequally paid compared to men and to this day women are still not receiving equal pay. Studies show that women in 2013 make 77 for every $1 a man makes. In this inquiry I am not looking for a yes or no answer but yet examples of this topic to help myself come to a more basic understanding of how far women have come and if there is still room to improve. I am planning to investigate the different types of careers that people perceive to have single sex dominance over the other. I wish to investigate the wage gap between the sexes and ask questions to further my knowledge of why this gap occurs. There are both sides to this story and I also want to look into the advantages one sex can have over the other when entering into the other genders dominant career. Most of my data for this assignment will be taken from studies done comparing the genders in the workplace. In an effort to unscramble this question, I desire to get interviews from both professional men and women on their view of this topic. I choose this topic because I am very passionate about this subject. This question affects my life in a very strong way. I will have to deal with this issue throughout my entire career as a female engineer. Finding answers to some of the many questions I have will help me have an improved understanding of both sides. Optimistically I hope this investigation will assist me to tolerate the inequality I may encounter. Women of the workplace today are treated better than history has shown, but is there still room for improvement?