Her ex-father-in-law said only 'men should be engineers'. She became one and testified against him in court

We often hear about women being told they don’t belong in male-dominated fields. Sexist mindsets still linger in various fields where women are often underestimated. But one woman, once shamed into considering nursing instead of engineering, not only proved her doubters wrong, but she ended up testifying in court as an engineering expert against the very man who told her she couldn’t do it. Her story was shared on Reddit by her current husband, u/PeaceLoveSmithWesson, who detailed how his wife was discouraged from pursuing engineering by her former father-in-law.

He began, "I met my wife in high school. This was in the late 1980s; I graduated college in 1992. Although we never really hit it off at that time... we were in the same groups." After high school, her parents pressured her to marry her boyfriend at the time and move out of the house. At that time, she was working as a nurse’s assistant while her husband was attending engineering school. She wanted to go to school too but wasn’t sure what to study. She was considering law school until a family dinner changed everything. Her then-father-in-law, a professional engineer, started talking about how tough engineering school was and how law school might be just as difficult. That’s when he decided to give her some advice.

"He insisted that she look into going to nursing school since 'you already work like a nurse,'" her current husband noted. Her then-husband agreed and told her that nursing would be easier for her. "She took that as a challenge and immediately enrolled in the Chemical Engineering department, the only female among 120 students in the program," her current husband said. It was brutal. She was "harassed and had to always take the higher ground in defending her work." But she didn’t back down. Four years later, she graduated with honors and a Chemical Engineering degree.

Meanwhile, her husband took time off from school, and things got worse. The man wrote, "Her husband got caught up in an affair, and she dumped his sorry a**." He further explained, "Many years later, she went to court as an SME (Subject Matter Expert) for a landfill management company, testifying against her former father-in-law, who was an SME as the landfill designer/PE stamp that designed the landfill. She testified in court against her former father-in-law's designs, and they spoke afterward." Her ex-father-in-law was grateful she didn’t attack him personally in her testimony, but she stood by her critique of his design flaws, and he acknowledged them. Then, the conversation turned to her ex-husband.

The man wrote, "He had dropped out of engineering school, married the girl from the affair… and was working as a nurse in an old folks home." The irony wasn’t lost on anyone. Her former father-in-law still couldn’t understand how a woman managed to beat out 120 men to make the Dean’s List in engineering school. The man ended the post with, "She is my hero."

The comments section did not disappoint. u/Impossible_Disk_43 said, "I see why you fell in love with your wife. She’s badass and must be insanely smart." u/poopbutt42069yeehaw commented, "He can’t understand how a woman could beat out 120 men? By being better and working harder, that’s how, what a stupid sexist." u/Square-Minimum-6042 added, "Yes, it brightens my day! I can imagine how it brightened hers." u/Piddy3825 wrote, "Petty revenge is best served by succeeding brilliantly while the detractors fail marvelously."