[Loic]

I will write something most likely controversial for HN, but I think what you write is very North-America and computer related "centric".

As for the context, I am French, over 40, Master in France, PhD in Denmark and working in Germany. My work is chemical engineering at large, oil & gas, crop science, pharmaceutical but also food and flagrances. I am working with 50/50% men and women. My wife is working in oil & gas.

I haven't witnessed a single time abuse like there are in IT in the last 20 years. And I have been working, living and studying from California to Japan.

In fact I am still chocked to see all these codes of conduct to contribute to open source projects or attend conferences in computer related stuff.

How can it be that you need such things?

So yes, PhD is hard work. Yes you have moments where you lose faith. But life is like that too. Life is unfair and hard, but suffering abuse is something which never came back from all my friends doing PhDs in engineering in the EU. Both men and women.

To the point that I sometimes wonder if the word abuse has a different meaning for me as a non native speaker as for people from North America.

[thecleaner]

Side question - what's new in the world of chemical engineering ? Like what is the hot new thing in town ? Any forums to check the trends ?

[Kliment]

I think you've just been lucky to not encounter it. It doesn't happen to everyone. It's not necessarily even very frequent. But it's much much more frequent than it should be. So consider yourself lucky that you've not been on the receiving end of it (yet). I felt much the same until the first time I witnessed stuff like this happening, and it was eye-opening. Just because it didn't happen to you (yet) doesn't mean it's not a thing. And it's not specific to North America or to computing.

[anm89]

I will say at a minimum, this issue is also very prevalent in the social sciences and humanities in US programs.