I'm not making this up

"A woman engineer is like a pearl in the shell. Treat her carefully, and she will blossom." -- from a reader survey on "what would you tell employers about women engineers?" in a copy of _Woman Engineer_ magazine that was lying around the CS department (no, I'm not making up that magazine title, either).

I guess by the same token, a male engineer is like a quartz crystal, or possibly like a cactus plant?