KBR Named "Top Employer" for Women

Mother Jones:

Jaw, meet floor.

According to a company press release, war megacontractor KBR was voted one of the 50 top companies for women by readers of Woman Engineer magazine, one of several diversity-recruitment mags published by Long Island, New York-based Equal Opportunity Publications. "The readers of Woman Engineer magazine selected the top companies in the country for which they would most prefer to work or believe are progressive in hiring woman engineers," KBR said in its statement. The company came in at No. 46.

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[Linda from Deerfield]

08:54 AM on 04/11/2011

One female engineer I heard of left the company that owned the Bhopal disaster to work for KBR. This should be a non-story, except that I found it quite telling when a (non-engineer) colleague of hers blew up in indignation upon my innocently mentioning the Bhopal tragedy. Only after later research did I learn that they worked for that company, a refiner and builder of refineries of all types, now sold and renamed and resold and renamed.

As I continued to unknowingly put my foot in my mouth, I told of the inanity of KBR in making employees sign away their rights so that a woman who was assaulted by colleagues was denied recourse -- the response was more indignation and denial that the story could be true.

By this time I decided that no comment was the best policy when told that this refiner division was hiring every single qualified chemical engineering graduate in India and having a great challenge training them -- these are the people who will be called upon to avert tomorrow's disasters. It was not framed as a complaint. Even when on unpaid furlough, my contact blithely admires the CEO's $multi-million raise.

If my contact is any indication, then we may have stumbled into a sub-culture involved in a mutually exploitative arrangement with employers that crosses the bounds of the normal relationship. One suspects that far right politics is a pre-requisite to progress in these companies.

[Paluxy Moon]

06:06 PM on 04/11/2011

It is amazing, isn't it, how long people will buy into and serve a system that doesn't serve them.

[JustBen]

04:02 AM on 04/11/2011

Have you ever seen any female engineers? The chance that they would be sexual assaulted are pretty low.

[Paluxy Moon]

05:38 AM on 04/11/2011

That's a tired old stereotype you're perpetuating. Actually, there are all kinds of women in the engineering field now. Take a walk around an engineering college campus and you'll see what I mean. Then again, maybe you'd better just stay home.

[Anthony Garnett]

08:53 AM on 04/11/2011

I seen plenty of female engineers where have you been

[JustBen]

10:34 AM on 04/11/2011

I admit that I've been out of college for about 10 years but in nearly every engineering class I'v ever taken the male to female ration is about 20:1 and I can only recall a singe attractive woman. That was my experience perhaps things have drastically changed in the past 10 years but I highly doubt it.

[Linda from Deerfield]

08:56 AM on 04/11/2011

I assume that you are completely incompetent in math and physics?

[JustBen]

10:29 AM on 04/11/2011

What about exactly led you to believe that I'm a woman?

[shadowgov]

02:56 AM on 04/11/2011

i thought real men aren't suppose to pay women...wait

[douglasFirCountry]

02:26 AM on 04/11/2011

Women in STEM fields face more of a stone wall than a glass ceiling, and I wouldn;t be surprised if the vast majority of successful women in some areas of engineering are working for defense projects.

[douglasFirCountry]

02:21 AM on 04/11/2011

If you are a woman engineer, your choice may be working for a defense contractor on a secret or top secret project or living as a jbless person in poverty. Personally I am in the latter category and that is the price I have paid for not wanting to work in the defense industry, as other applicants in engineering are extremely difficult for a woman to get responsibility in. Maybe at an entry level women have a chance, but after the first five years women are like the bowling ball that goes off the side and never rolls down the lane to hit the pins.

[douglasFirCountry]

02:19 AM on 04/11/2011

I am a female in a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) field. It is true that in terms of hiring, equal pay and promotions the defense industry is the best in terms of hiring women. The reason is the historical necessity of having women on the staff if a company wants to obtain large defense contracts. My experience is that the music industry is the worst most male chauvinistic field in terms of hiring of women. I would also like to make an observation about a biomedical field, neuroscience. Women are getting ahead in that field, but usually the women who advance in neuroscience work on problems like child learning or infant eye tracking while the men work on problems like eceonomic decision making, vision, hearing or linguistics. The women are ghettoized to scneitific problems involved with children.

[jayes]

11:37 PM on 04/10/2011

Well, the first question would be if potential female candidates at KBR are allowed to have an opinion. The next would be if gender really matters when you're doing something bad.

[libtardian]

08:38 PM on 04/10/2011

Once again Huffpost, when will you learn? This information needs to be scrubbed from your pages and, preferably, from the public record. All these tidbits betray our narrative, no one should know or give thought to this bunk. Like the dirty truths that it was republicans who passed the civil rights act, that Bushes led the way with the most significant Black appointments of all time (Rice, Powell, Thomas etc), that the most reported on female political stories of our time are Republican Women or that the most popular tea party members are Black. All this kind of stuff MUST be concealed for us to maintain our key line of defense that Republicans are Racist Bigots Sexists. Remember, its not the truth the matters, its the end game. We must reach our utopia!

[Tkevan]

11:23 PM on 04/10/2011

ROFLMAO, great post.

[katylab]

07:53 PM on 04/10/2011

Great company! When their employees aren't raping their co-workers, they are electrocuting soldiers in the showers.

[frameofmind]

09:13 PM on 04/10/2011

Co-sign!!

KBR rapes it's women employee's

[Tkevan]

11:22 PM on 04/10/2011

Actually, the showers were done by a subcontractor, not KBR.

[frameofmind]

11:49 PM on 04/10/2011

KBR are responsible for the contract, if they are the ones that took it, and the responsibilities that go along with the contract.

[TexasPatriot1776]

07:41 PM on 04/10/2011

The horror.....the horror.

[Big0725]

06:29 PM on 04/10/2011

Just goes to show that women are just as corruptible as men.

[fpt313]

06:14 PM on 04/10/2011

Oh, that was Jamie leigh Jones. Never mind Mother Jones, I'm sure your nice too.

[fpt313]

06:11 PM on 04/10/2011

KBR,WoW Mother Jones is "Hot".

[rosal]

05:58 PM on 04/10/2011

Who conducted the survey? That should be the question.

[laaambchop]

05:13 PM on 04/10/2011

I never believe those lists.