Encouraging women to enroll in engineering 28

[cbiber]

Another spin-off from the "Boot camp" thread in this forum --

It's pretty clear that by and large, most engineering fields have a low percentage of females. In my experience, the percentage gets lower as the people get older. In fact, many of my female engineering school colleagues aren't engineers anymore.

Some specific topics to discuss:
-- why aren't girls interested in enrolling in engineering?
-- why do they drop out of engineering programs (do they do so at a disproportionate rate?)
-- how can girls be encouraged to pursue engineering?

In my area, there's a "Saturday Academy" with specific classes to address some of this; there's also an organization called AWSEM for middle school girls (I'll have to post the links later). Other ideas?

Cathy Biber

Biber Thermal Design

http://www.biberthermal.com

 

[QCE]

The number of women in the profession is on the rise. When the numbers increase above 50%. Will we have encouraging men to enroll in engineering?

 

[TheTick]

Actually, there are plenty of men that I would have liked to have discouraged from entering engineering. Maybe that would help the percentages.

To begin with, talking Barbie has to quit telling little girls that "math is hard".

I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.

 

[leanne]

Mattel pulled those dolls very quickly after women complained.

LeAnne
BSEE

 

[BobPE]

cbiber:

I have one idea, stop the tokenism of women in business. I can not even tell you the number of women engineers I hired over the years. Their skill sets are the same as men, but their level of effort, willingness to listen, learn, and apply is better. Their client disposition is better. They were just a valued part of my teams. But they all left for companies outside of engineering because their positive attributes made them a prime candidates for pharmacutical sales, Industry managment, state regulatory agencies...etc....all careers that involve NO engineering but DO have quotas for women or have alterior motives for having women employed. They are removing some of the best talent I have yet to come across from the engineering business.....

In the vacuum they leave behind, no women are there to talk up their careers as engineers....

just my thoughts....

BobPE

 

[leanne]

I have participated for a number of years in the February engineering week events by giving presentations at local schools. Even in 4th grade, kids (both genders) perceive engineering as a nerdy. They typically want to be firefighters, cops, actors/actresses, NASCAR drivers, and so on. I never had a kid respond (from 4th grade to 9th grade) that they wanted to be an engineer.

AWSEM? I've never heard of them. Take Our Daughters to Work day has deteriorated into Take Our Children to work day. I do not have a daughter (my only offspring is male), but I would have preferred to see the day remain daughter-focused. I stopped participating in presentations when the focus for Take Our Daughters to Work Day changed to children from daughters.

My 12 year old niece wants to be an astronaut, but she's interested in marine biology, not engineering. She's at NASA's space camp this week in Huntsville, Alabama. This is her second year.

 

[QCE]

Check out:

http://www.engr.usask.ca/~discover/

 

[TheTick]

When I was a kid in grade school, I wanted to be an inventor like my dad. My hero was the Professor on Gilligan's Island.

A boy like that usually doesn't have a lot in common with his peers. I imagine it would be harder still for a girl.

I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.

 

[cbiber]

Wow, what a response! Keep 'em coming!

Though, I must say, after I started this thread, I got to thinking about "why do we need gender equity?" In the end, I don't think it's about gender equity at all -- it's more about critical mass. Or maybe not even that -- maybe it's about some kind of comfort level. Nobody is going to pursue a career in which the work environment feels uncomfortable.

Women engineers out there, where are you on this comfort level in your workplace? What would lure you out of it?

I clearly don't have enough to do!!

 

[TheTick]

It's already hard enough to find quality minds out there without excluding half the population.

 

[Binary]

Cathy, I'm curious if you've heard why your female school colleagues are not engineers. Did they ever plan on being engineers and then choose careers like medicine or did they originally plan to be physicians all along.

Were these colleagues from your undergrad days or your doctoral studies? (yeah, I checked your website

Oh yeah, and where'd you get the cool light saber emoticon???

 

[brad]

leanne--
True, Mattel did pull those Barbies fast, but it was not the Barbie but rather the pervasive stereotype that she reflected.

Imagine a talking Little Bill (my apologies to non-two-year-old parents--he's a 4-year-old African-American cartoon character) stating "Math is hard". No toy executive would dream of such a thing. Yet somebody (a group actually) thought that appealing to little girls with "Math is hard" would be accepted.

Society is telling girls that math is hard (for that matter, many Hispanics and African-Americans are given the same message). What more can we expect when such conditioning happens? Young women in general are not preparing themselves to be engineers.

It is sad, and a very difficult problem to fix...

Brad

 

[josephv]

-- Why aren't girls interested in enrolling in engineering?

Let's face it; our noble profession has a serious image problem. Seriously, how many people know what an engineer does? Come on, admit it, how many times have you hear this at a party, "And I thought engineers only built bridges!”

It is terrible that the vast majority of our population does not know or even have a clue as to what an engineer does, but what makes things worse is that the stereotypes are painful:

"Engineers can't write."

"They are all a bunch of nerds."

None of our heroes are engineers. When was the last time you saw a movie in which the main character was an engineer? There are movies and TV shows about lawyers and doctors, but ours truly is the forgotten profession.

Why is it that when NASA does something great, the press says that it was "science that triumphed", but when there is an accident it is "engineering that failed"? Our media is ignorant when it comes to engineering.

No wonder there are so few girls interested in engineering.

Our society and our profession is poorer because of this.


-- How can girls be encouraged to pursue engineering?

We must fix this image problem. Universities and Engineering Societies must do a better job of informing young high school students about our profession. Engineering can be a very interesting, challenging and rewarding career. People should be informed about this.

We need a TV show called "L.A. Engineering". No, I am not kidding.

-- Why do they drop out of engineering programs

because, like so many students they do not get to see the light at the end of the tunnel. If only our engineering programs had more "applied engineering" and "design engineering" courses that showed students that there is a reason for all the math and science, and that engineering can be fun.

An engineering program that has little emphasis on communication skills, (i.e. is designed for nerds) will only attract nerds to our profession.

 

[Binary]

I have a young daughter.

I'm curious - would you women out there recommend engineering as a career for a young woman?

It seems to me that ladies in engineering have one advantage (presuming they're good) - they automatically stand out from the crowd just because of the relative dearth of female engineers.

I believe that standing out from the crowd is very significant in advancing a career.

The flip side is that I've heard many stories about the "glass ceiling", "old boys networks", etc. I've not witnessed these but don't know that I'd recognize them even if I did (I'd like to think I would but when it's not your reality it can be tough to see the subtleties).

 

[EnglishMuffin]

I don't know how many of you have ever perused the "Foreign Ladies" type sites on the internet, (maybe I should get a life), but its amazing, when you look at the Russian ones, how many of them are engineers. And they're not "Ninotchka" or "Babushka" types either (unless the pictures are faked). So it's at least partially a cultural thing. I also have a sneaking suspicion that there is a greater percentage of women in government organisations like NASA. Why is this ? Politically correct hiring practices ?

 

[Haf]

I hope I don’t sound sexist, but here goes…at the risk of sounding stereotypical, isn't it possible that most women just simply aren't interested in engineering? Everyone knows there are natural differences between men and women, and I think these differences play a role in the careers that men and women tend to pursue.

I knew several female engineering students when I was in school in the early years (freshman and sophomore years). Most of them did fairly well, and many of the ones that transferred out did so because they hated it. I also knew a few who did very well, hated it, and stuck with it anyway. Those women took non-engineering jobs when they graduated.

Consider the nursing profession. There are few male nurses (think of the movie "Meet the Parents&quot. I think the main reason for this is that there are few men interested in nursing.

I guess I am stating that most women, by their very nature, don't gravitate towards engineering, just as most men, by their very nature, don't gravitate towards nursing. There are certainly many exceptions, and I am certainly not implying that women can't be good engineers or that men can't be good nurses.

Having said that, I also agree that there are several barriers that make entering the engineering profession difficult for women. Just the fact that the profession is dominated by males makes things difficult. But I don't think that is the primary reason there are so few women in the field. Likewise, I'm sure there are some men out there that would like to be nurses but don't because of the high percentage of women in the field. But I don't think that is the main reason there are so few men.

My school had aggressive recruiting programs for women. Women were telephoned by professors while they were still in high school and were encouraged to apply. There were lucrative scholarship and grant opportunities. These things had little affect. Would they induce you to pursue a profession that you weren't interested in?

Haf

P.S. I agree that we as engineers should strive to educate the public about what engineers do and how they do it, but I don't think that has anything to do with the low number of women entering the field (lack of public knowledge should affect men and women equally).

 

[leanne]

josephv wrote: If only our engineering programs had more "applied engineering" and "design engineering" courses that showed students that there is a reason for all the math and science, and that engineering can be fun.

Our engineering programs? I think it needs to begin MUCH earlier - like in primary school. Kids, in general, do not seem interested in math or science - why? They don't learn application for it as they are learning the math or science in class.

 

[leanne]

haf wrote: I guess I am stating that most women, by their very nature, don't gravitate towards engineering, just as most men, by their very nature, don't gravitate towards nursing. There are certainly many exceptions, and I am certainly not implying that women can't be good engineers or that men can't be good nurses.

Girls play with dolls. Boys play with action figures. Be honest. How many of you with boys disallowed your boy to play with dolls? But allowed action figures?

I don't think it is nature related. I think it is based on many moons of stereotypes...Historically, women who expressed interest in math & science were directed toward teaching. Up until WWII when women replaced men in the workforce, a very small percentage of married women worked outside the home. After the war ended, women were expected to leave the workforce opening jobs back up for soldiers returning from the frontlines to take care of home & hearth, raising a family, being Mrs. Cleaver.

Women who wanted to work post-WWII were like electricity for the most part - they took the path of least resistance. They became teachers, nurses, secretaries, assembly line workers,...Here & there, women bucked "the system" and went into engineering, became doctors, opted to work in construction, paving the way for later generations who wanted those careers.

Cultural change does not happen without growing pains and lots of fighting the changes along the way. While there is still room for growth, the work culture has changed dramatically over the past 5-6 decades. And, just consider technology advances we've seen in that same period.

We cannot expect the glass ceiling or gender career stereotypes to go away overnight.

Considering very few of the "Math is tough" Barbies made into the hands of kids, I do not think Mattel's snafu made any impact on the rate of females entering engineering programs. Besides, didn't you hear? Barbie dumped Ken for GI Joe - she liked his Jeep & there's just something about a man in uniform.

 

[FrenchCAD]

I wish there would more girls in the field of engineering, especially Mech Eng.

Remembering my last 6 years of school, there was so far :

1996/1997 : 22 students, all males
1997/1999 : 85 students, 3 girls
1999/2000 : 80 students, 3 girls
2000/2001 : 25 students, 1 girl
2001/2002 : 80 students, 2 girls
2002/2003 : 14 students, all males

How can we sayt their number is increasing? Maybe it is so in other fields of engineering, like electronics or computers, but it sure isn't in mechanical.

However, the few girls who were in my classes were on the top 10. They may be few of them, but they rule, they're hard workers and passionate. That's why I'd like to see more of them. Engineering has a strong image of a men work, I think it's time for a change. Women proved their excellence in many fields and there is no more need to show they equal men (or even go further) in all kind of jobs.

Maybe we just smeel of cheese

Cyril Guichard
Mechanical Engineer

 

[havesealwilltravel]

I think the reason that there are few women in engineering is partly cultural but mostly due to the engineering environment.

Medicine, law, business, etc. don't have the same problem attracting qualified women that engineering does. And women can be excellent engineers.

Partly, this is cultural. Typically, women didn't become engineers. At the time when women were breaking from traditional (and usually lower paid) roles, the other professions were paying better and offered better career paths than engineering. Capable, ambitious women, not lead by stereotypes, picked what they thought was the best choice of profession. Engineering’s problems with pay, job stability and social recognition are getting worse, not better. The alternate career paths are becoming even more attractive. Until our profession improves its financial and social status, we cannot expect to attract the best and brightest men or women.

Another factor that either keeps women out of engineering or causes them to drop out is the nature of many engineering jobs. Women are and have always been the "anchor" of the family. Unanticipated travel, unexpected overtime, layoffs, job searches and out-of-town jobs are more disruptive to the family if they happen to the mother. Other careers are either more stable or provide a sufficient income stream to provide quality care for the children.

I'm sorry if anyone finds what I've said offensive. It is my honest opinion