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

 

[josephv]

EnglishMuffin "...its amazing, when you look at the Russian ones, how many of them are engineers..."

Good point, there are more female engineers (percentage wise) in Eastern Europe. I can only conclude that we have a serious problem in North America.


leanne "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."

Good point, an Australian friend once told me that they had engineering design classes in high school! But, I do agree with you, we must do something about primary school math and science education. Perhaps add some more "applied" science, and take in to account that children have different learning styles.

cbiber "In fact, many of my female engineering school colleagues aren't engineers anymore."

Same here, but most of my female colleagues have all moved on to bigger and better things (management, biomedical, entrepreneurial etc.). In fact I would say that many of the smartest people in my class are no longer engineers. Once again, our profession has a serious problem... why can't we keep the smartest people?

 

[rbcoulter]

I agree with dannym. The sad fact is that the engineering profession is not in good shape at the moment. The women that choose not to go into engineering, at this time, are probably doing the right thing.

 

[TheTick]

We had a good percentage of women in our school, possibly as high as 25%. Broken down by type, there were hardly any female ME's. Most went into civil or biomed.

I'm curious about the percentage of women engineers with advanced degrees. The percentage of women in MS programs seemed even higher.

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

 

[josephv]

Hello all,

You may already know this, but just in case there are a couple of organizations that encourage young women to choose engineering as a career.


In the United States

http://www.societyofwomenengineers.org/

In Canada

http://www.cemf.ca/

Cheers,

Joseph

 

[RDK]

Part of increasing the number of women in engineering is the implied idea that by increasing the numbers of women in traditionally male dominated job classifications is essential to having gender equality in our society.

I do not believe that we will ever have gender equality in our society and workplaces until males can join traditionally female dominated job classifications without fear of any discrimination or repercussions. It is socially acceptable for females to be doctors, not males to be nurses; it is acceptable for females to be lawyers not males to be clerical.

My wife is a nurse and her work partner is a dietitian, a graduate of a Home Economics program. A few years ago her partner was away on a maternity leave and the replacement was a newly graduated male dietitian. He was continually subjected to gender based discrimination throughout his university and work career. Both males and females often called his sexuality into question. He had a lot of trouble getting a job, in spite of slightly above average marks and an easy going personality, he was one of the last hired out of his class and for only a term position.

While the university had some good programs to encourage women to join traditionally male dominated facilities, he received some of this discrimination from the hands of female facility.

My point is that the gender equality has to go both ways for it to be anything other than a sham.

He did get the last laugh. He was a 6’3” athlete type who ended up as the team dietitian for a pro sports team.

I have no problem with women engineers; the last technician I hired was a female. I just have a problem with the lack of support for males who want to enter traditionally female dominated jobs.

And now for the obligatory joke, I heard this as a true story. (It was told at a retirement event so take it with a grain of salt, but it does make a good story.)

At a construction start-up meeting there were several representatives from the owner, the consultant and the contractor. Most of the participants knew each other from past projects. One of the new participants was a young woman who did not participate in the meeting, just sat at the back and took a lot of notes.

At the conclusion of the meeting the contractor went up to the head of the consultant delegation and said “Good idea, Joe, to bring a secretary to take notes and get the minutes out faster”

To which Joe responded: “I’m sorry Sam, I’d like you to meet Sally, She is our newest engineer and will be looking after this project for us.




Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[leanne]

Rick,

I have no doubt that the story is true having been in similar situations. I've also been asked to make coffee for "the guys". They only ask once. I don't drink coffee you do NOT want to drink coffee I've made, trust me on that one....

I get my

fix via

.

When my son was born nearly 20 years ago, my doctor was a female & my assigned nurse was male. They were a great team.

At one time, clerks and secretaries were male and there was no dishonor in having that job. There should be nothing dishonorable about it now.

 

[RDK]

I never said that there was anything dishonourable about any employment.

It’s just that it’s not always socially accepted. Gender should not matter for career and employment proposes.



Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[cbiber]

Rick,
"Gender should not matter for career and employment purposes."

Yes, yes, yes.

How do we get there?!

Why aren't there many girls in high school math classes?
How do we keep everyone's options open long enough for them to grow into a career choice? Goodness knows, I didn't always want to be an engineer. I just picked ME because it was the "most general" -- it would expose me to various possibilities before I had to make a choice.

If I were to do it over, I'd probably opt for Chemical Engineering, and curiously, at my alma mater, that major has often been close to gender-equal. Nobody needs to have previous experience fixing lawn mowers or motorcycles to understand the stuff -- everyone has to learn everything from the ground up. (Kid chemistry sets notwithstanding.)

 

[brad]

My wife, though not an engineer, was employed in a field which is about 90% dominated by men. She twice was given flowers by the department head on Secretary's Day (he apparently had trouble remembering that she was NOT a secretary). On the second occasion, she nearly made him something other than male.

In spite of many programs within her field that encourage gender-equity (most notably Title IX-mandated directives), true equity won't be relized as long as the "good-ol boys" equate females with secretaries. My impression is that her profession is about a generation behind engineering, but her experience made me sensitive to female engineers' situations.

Brad

 

[leanne]

Brad, your first paragraph needed a spew alert....

cbiber, I had would have preferred chem E, but there were no schools offering it in Dallas & at that time, I could not relocate to attend college. So, I majored in EE instead.

Rick, my use of the term dishonorable was correct linguistically

dis·hon·or (see dictionary.com)
n. [ol][li]Loss of honor, respect, or reputation. [/li]
[li]The condition of having lost honor or good repute. [/li]
[li]A cause of loss of honor: was a dishonor to the club. [/li]
[li]Failure to pay or refusal to accept a note, a bill, or another commercial obligation.
[/li][/ol]
tr.v. dis·hon·ored, dis·hon·or·ing, dis·hon·ors [ol][li]To bring shame or disgrace upon. [/li]
[li]To treat in a disrespectful or demeaning manner. [/li]
[li]To fail or refuse to accept or pay (a note, bill, or check, for example). [/li][/ol]

dis·hon·or·a·ble
adj [ol] [li]lacking honor or integrity; deserving disshonor; "dishonorable in thought and deed"; "a dishonorable discharge" [syn: dishonourable] [ant: honorable] [/li]
[li]deceptive or fraudulent; disposed to cheat or defraud or deceive [syn: dishonest] [ant: honest] [/li]
[li]not bringing honor and glory; "some mute inglorious Milton here may rest" [syn: inglorious] [ant: glorious] [/li]
[li]not adhering to ethical or moral principles; "base and unpatriotic motives"; "a base, degrading way of life"; "cheating is dishonorable"; "they considered colonialism immoral"; "unethical practices in handling public funds" [syn: base, dishonourable, immoral, unethical] [/li]
[li]morally unacceptable; "the dishonorable conduct of trusted men" [syn: dishonourable][/li] [/ol]

 

[brad]

Leanne,
I apologize if I was too oblique in making my point. I was trying to reinforce that your experience is not unique for many women in male-dominated fields (engineering and otherwise).
Brad

 

[leanne]

Brad, no apology needed...spew alert is net lingo for you wrote something that made me laugh & I snorted Dr Pepper through my nose while cackling so hard that it spewed all over my computer screen....

 

[FrenchCAD]

Geez, that sounds like horrible thing to see ;-)

Cyril Guichard
Mechanical Engineer

 

[GregLocock]

Nice one, brad.



Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[brad]

Leanne,
Thanks for the clarification; I thought I was being slammed for excessive verbosity (a common sin on my part).
Brad

 

[TheTick]

If you want more women to go into engineering, don't leave it to the men of engineering to convince them. Most of us have trouble convincing women to join us for a cup of coffee!


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

 

[Haf]

As I read through the posts above, I made the following observations.

A few have written that engineering suffers from an image problem. I don’t necessarily disagree with this, but I fail to see why this discourages women in specific from engineering (unless you are suggesting that women are more concerned with the image of the profession they choose than men are).

Many have also written that they think that the small number of women in the field discourages women from entering the profession. I think this plays a role, but I don’t think this is the main issue either. Years ago, there were few women working, period. Over time, as our culture started to change, more and more women started working. The percentage of women in nearly all professions started to rise. It also rose (and continues to rise) for engineering, but at a much slower rate. Why is this?

There are also a lot of posts that contend that the stereotypes set and perpetuated by society deter women from entering the profession. I don’t agree with this either. For example, one stereotype is that women aren’t good at math or science. This simply isn’t true. Percentage wise, there are many more women in accounting and financing than in engineering (that takes care of math). Similarly, percentage wise, there are many more women in biology, chemistry, and medicine than in engineering (that takes care of science). So what makes engineering different?

I also disagree that women are discouraged “by society” from entering engineering. Women engineers are not looked down upon at all, in my opinion (in contrast to male nurses or male secretaries, who are frequently ridiculed by society). Quite the contrary. Women are recruited by engineering schools more frequently than men. Scholarship and grant opportunities are abundant. Finding a job is generally not a problem.

A few of you have related stories about how women engineers have been assumed to be secretaries, etc. These stories are not unique to engineering. They are perpetrated by sexist individuals, and those same individuals exist in other professions as well. I suspect similar stories exist in which “engineer” is replaced by “lawyer,” “doctor,” “businessman” (or should I say person?), etc. In fact, in bradh’s story, our heroine was not an engineer.

I guess what I’m saying is that many of the reasons presented above for the low numbers of women in engineering are not unique to engineering. Women have overcome these same obstacles in other professions. So what makes engineering different?

Haf

 

[Binary]

Perhaps it's something along the lines that women, in general, tend to be more socialized than men (again, speaking in very broad terms).

Engineering, as a profession, seems much more isolated than many others. Many of us spend many hours alone at our desks doing design or analysis. Very engaging but very little interaction.

My observation of the women in my life is that they tend to be more socially interactive than many men. They may prefer professions which offer more interaction like law, medicine, sales, management.

 

[Haf]

I agree that that (socialization) may be one reason. What you're saying is similar to what I mentioned in my first post.

Men and women are different. Women tend to be more socialized. Men tend to be physically stronger. Women tend to learn languages faster. Women tend to be more emotional. Men tend to be more logical. These statements may bother some people, but I don’t think they are sexist comments. Sexist is when you use these tendencies to judge someone or to assume someone is incapable of performing a task.

In other words, just because men tend to be stronger than women, doesn’t mean that a woman can’t be a construction worker. Similarly, just because women tend to learn languages faster than men, doesn’t mean that a man can’t be a translator.

A few people noted above that the women engineers they worked with tended to be darn good engineers and had strengths that were apparently different than the male engineers they worked with. I don’t think those are sexist comments; however, I do think it would be sexist if one hired a female engineer under the assumption that she would have certain strengths or weaknesses, based solely on her sex. Understand the difference?

I know some may think it’s an “archaic” viewpoint (according to the “Boot Camp” thread from which this thread originated), but I stand by my claim that women naturally don’t tend to gravitate towards an engineering career. Frankly, I haven’t seen an argument that convincingly disproves this.

Haf

 

[havesealwilltravel]

I think women prefer professions that offer real careers like law, medicine, sales, and management. Many men (and I'm a man) get trapped by stereotype and ego into going into engineering and cannot admit they made a mistake.

I don't believe its the "interaction" that attracts them to the to other professions. They want a better return on their educational and work efforts. They don't want to feel under-appreciated and under-rewarded. "I DIDN'T SPEND 4 YEARS IN COLLEGE FOR THIS"