Number of women in engineering 7

[caluna]

Hello, just wondering what your take is on this-Why is only a small percent of engineers made up of women?
I am writing an article for our PE newsletter. From my viewpoint here, in Canada, as a 1980 mech eng. graduate (female), it looks like that the national average on numbers of women - as percent of total undergraduates- is decreasing since 2000. Now it is less than 20%. Less than 10% registered engineers in Canada are women. I would assume figures for USA may be a bit better. What are the barriers for women or the discouraging aspects of the profession? I would have hoped that with passing years there would be more women in the field, but not so. The profession has been good to me and my female colleagues from university and work.

Thank you.

Heather in NWT Canada

 

[graybeach]

Kenat has a point - it is how you use them. A girl who plays with dolls, but sews clothes for them, might be a budding engineer. But maybe girls who like to sew get steered toward careers in fashion design or interior decorating rather then engineering. Probably they would have liked engineering, and would have enjoyed higher pay.

 

[possumk]

As one of four females in a mechanical engineering program of about 100, I'd definitely say women just aren't drawn to that discipline. Why? I don't know, other than my own reasons. I graduated ranked 3rd, so apparently women can do it. And interestingly enough, there are many more female engineers in the ME program at my university now, as they've really been building up their biomechanics program. Why are women drawn to human engineering but not automotive? It's interesting. . .the equations are the same either way : )

My experience growing up definitely pushed me towards engineering. NOt so much toys. As a kid, I had a healthy mix of male/female toys. I do believe I was drawn to the girls toys more. I liked legos and lincoln logs, but I wasn't too interested in guns or remote controlled cars. I think I got into engineering because of how I was tracked in school. As we progress through school, it becomes apparent that some kids are more gifted than others. . .some in the English/Social Studies type stuff, some in the math/science stuff, some in both. Usually, standardized test scores are used to to separate the smarties and the regular kids. The smart kids end up taking all the advanced math and science, at least until they can't hack it anymore. I'd say my jr. high algebra class was about 50/50, but by senior calculus, it was probably more 75/25 since it wasn't required to graduate. I think that tracking kids this way is a huge disservice because it really discourages kids from being open to new challenges. I honestly don't think that as many women as men want to be engineers, but I think some girls and boys are turned off the career path because someone tells them when they're 12 that it's too difficult. Plus, teachers and guidance counselors don't really know much about the real career world, and a lot of parents don't know beyond their own experiences either. Girls could be more interested in engineering if the counselors didn't tell them that engineers design bridges and motors. Some crunchy granola cheerleader airhead might be interested in being an environmental engineer, or a band dork might be a good acoustical engineer, a biology major could be a bio-engineer instead. We don't do a good enough job of telling kids about the possibilities out there, girls OR boys, and because of that we have too many lawyers and mortgage brokers!

 

[casseopeia]

reidh,

I wish I had more time to respond, but I must leave the comfort of the office very soon to inspect and crawl around a building undergoing destructive testing in the remote Central Valley of California. It is a horrible, dirty job in a place that is so remote you have to drive 30 miles away to get to a hardware store. I cannot beg one male in our office to switch over from the purely design work into the field because of these conditions.

As a female working in an engineering field (I’m actually a licensed architect), I agree with you that there are intrinsic differences between little girls and boys. Why do I do this stuff then? I wish I knew. I played with all kinds of toys, but had a habit of pulling the heads off of dolls to find out what was inside. I have very good spacial cognition, I can think on my feet, sketch fairly well standing up, with the wind blowing my paper around while carrying on a conversation with another consultant about his recent marriage to a paralegal. And I never get lost going from one site to the next. I don’t think I got this from playing with my brother’s Tonka Trucks. My feeling is that it is hardwired.

I stayed away from a purely design field because I found the office environment too stifling, and never thought I had the natural interest to be the best engineer.

I am in this line of work because my father, an engineer with a dual degree, electrical and petroleum, refused to pay for my college if I majored in some subject like art or languages (two of my choices at the time). Turns out architecture was a good choice, but I would not have been here without his influence. Once the technical die was set, it was my own interests that shaped my career. I could have gone the marketing route, but didn’t.

It is a very complex question, with a complex answer. I can only provide what my own limited experience has been. BTW, here’s a photo of me to prove I really do the nasty jobs, and sometimes have fun with it.

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance!"

 

[swearingen]

A data point to add to the discussion:

My three daughters are not pushed either way when it comes to toys. They have Lego blocks to play with and I help them build towers and bridges sometimes. What do they build when they play on their own? Animals, flowers, telephones to play with, etc. I have to say I'm leaning towards casseopeia's suggestion that at least some of it is hard-wired.

If you "heard" it on the internet, it's guilty until proven innocent.

 

[KENAT]

If you "heard" it on the internet, it's guilty until proven innocent.

If you're talking about what I put about autism it wasn't on the internet. I think it was in a news paper or magazine and I've had conversations with people who know a little more about it than me and they've backed it up. I'm not saying I'm convinced I'm just throwing it out there.

 

[possumk]

"My three daughters are not pushed either way when it comes to toys. They have Lego blocks to play with and I help them build towers and bridges sometimes. What do they build when they play on their own? Animals, flowers, telephones to play with, etc. I have to say I'm leaning towards casseopeia's suggestion that at least some of it is hard-wired. "

Add to that my 9 y.o. and 2 y.o. boys who turn any stick, paper towel tube or piece of cardboard into a gun. I have never seen a girl playing by herself pretend to shoot imaginary bad guys, but the boys do it all the time. Conversely, my 2 y.o. also sometimes puts baby diapers on stuffed animals and pretends to burp them and turns any bag into his "purse". . .BUT, his purse holds tools, rocks, and leaves, not makeup and polly pockets.

 

[IRstuff]

I wasn't necessarily implying that toys make the person, but simply, that gender differences occur at absurdly early ages, despite our best efforts. Even the dreaded purple T-rex does it. There was a show where they were talking about jobs they could do when they grew up. Guess what, girls got the teacher and nurse jobs, while the boys were firemen, etc., even a chef.

Additionally, it would seem to be absurdly difficult to separate nature vs. nurture at this point in time, since the environmental factors are so pervasive. There's indeed a conspiracy to keep women in the "their place," but it's not organized, per se, it's just the way everyone has been raised and exposed to the cultural environment.

Only when there is no "pink" aisle could we expect to get a crop of children that are relatively unbiased with regard to gender roles. Only then can the question of nature be clearly resolved.

TTFN

Eng-Tips Policies FAQ731-376

 

[ejc]

Okay, I usually don't respond to this debate, but I have to get sucked into the toy discussion.
I stuck to the pink aisle in the toy store.
However, when the Barbie car broke, I just re-wired it. Easy to do.
Probably should have grabbed some Legos.

ejc

 

[reidh]

So I am guessing the Barbie's car was an MG if it needed a new wiring job?



Reidh

 

[caluna]

Thank you all very much for your posts! I was interested in the "toy aisle" comments-I had attempted to encourage my nieces and nephews into "gender-neutral games" and toys, with no effect whatsoever. And sewing, yes of course, that is definitely a construction and engineering process! But I do find it strange that despite engineering being an interesting and portable career, far less a great stepping stone to sales and marketing, management, law or other fields, women are still at about 10% of the engineering workforce, with some variation-more in some fields (chemical) and less in mechanical.

 

[ejc]

Actually, not that I want to get into the car thing; I think it was a Corvette.

As far as why there aren’t more women engineers – I agree with a previous poster when they said “teachers and guidance counselors don't really know much about the real career world, and a lot of parents don't know beyond their own experiences either. Girls could be more interested in engineering if the counselors didn't tell them that engineers design bridges and motors.”

I still can’t believe I’m in engineering. All I knew was I really liked math, and I intuitively understood Physics. That got me into the program at college, and I continued to enjoy the work.
I didn’t really know the depth of what an engineer could do until mid-college. Growing up in Michigan, I knew engineers designed stuff – mostly cars.

 

[TDAA]

Well, for the engineers in my family, the percentage is 25% female – 33% if you count the fact that my father retired.

Another item to note, my wife and I have noticed a trend (of people we know) that women are going to college, starting a career, and then becoming stay at home mothers. This is what my wife has done, although she is not in the engineering field. I believe the stay at home trend is becoming more popular with the latch key kids of the baby boomers. This will likely see the decrease of women in the workforce as a whole.

 

[lacajun]

My sister left engineering to raise a family. She couldn't return to it now because of the variety she enjoys in life now.

I could write a book on this subject. I have seen a lot in my career, both from observation and personal experience.

The women I know that have left the field entirely or simply left corporate America did so because of very negative treatment.

It happens to men, too. One man was told early in his career, at the urinal no less, that he had gone as high as possible with that company.

 

[MechanicalAnimal]

As a woman engineer who's just starting out, I have to agree with the people who say that women stay away from engineering simply because there isn't enough information on what engineering is. That's why most mathematically inclined women end up studying physics, maths, or at least architecture, not engineering.

Toy theory is nice, but I see very few girls playing to be public toilet cleaners, yet in my country that's a female-predominated job.

 

[possumk]

Alright, here’s a story. . .this just happened 10 minutes ago and is the perfect example of why women might avoid engineering. . .we don’t enjoy dealing with people like my new co-worker.

A new engineer in our office just started. He is older (50-60??) and from another country originally. I’d say you could peg me at around 30 and I’m definitely a white American woman.

Our first conversation involved the general summary of what you know/what I know/where we worked/where I worked, etc. I mentioned that I worked at company X in the past, and he mentioned that his daughter also worked there around the same time period, only in marketing. He proceeded to tell me how she then left that company, got her MBA, then worked at 3 other companies and how she’s rocketing up the corporate ladder. He then (after 10 minutes of knowing each other) proceeded to tell me that I needed to get an MBA and get into management and that engineering was no place for a lady. Ladies do not want to sit at a computer and pay attention to so many details. I informed him that I had an MBA and I briefly left engineering to work on the business side and returned recently because I prefer engineering. He then said it all depended on character. Then, he outlined all the finer points of the analysis program he used at his last job and talked about everything you need to perform an analysis, as if I didn’t already know how to do my job.

On one hand, I could take the comments as fatherly advice of someone has been in a very cyclical industry for a long time telling me that I deserve a career that treats people better. . .but I really felt that he was saying women weren’t cut out to be engineers because we're just not wired for that kind of thinking.

Fortunately I work with lots of other men of all ages and races who think I'm quite competent as an engineer, but if everyone shared this new guy's attitude, it might cause me to start thinking about a new career field. . .or at least a new company!

 

[kchayfie]

I think the schools/career guidance is a very valid point. I picked engineering because it seemed like something related to maths and physics and seemed like it pointed towards a career at the end of the degree course. My careers office had no more useful information than that so it wasn't exactly an enlightened choice.

I've spent this week working with a couple of 17-year-olds who are off school and looking for work experience to put on a CV (incidentally, one girl and one boy). It was clear that neither had any clue what engineering involves. Both have gone away totally enthusiastic about it as a career path and planning to come back for paid work here in the summer. (although I think its the pay rather than the experience that enthuses them more!).

If we could educate the physics teachers we could interest a lot more girls (and boys)...

 

[swivel63]

i wish there were more women engineers. my ex got her degree in electrical engineering.

 

[dcasto]

As a male engineer with a wife in early childhood development and we have 5 kids...

Genetics, the way the brain is wired or what is different because of chomososes simple fine. You can make all the fuss about diversity and chavenism, but its just the facts. If we didn't have this difference the human race would have dropped off the face of the earth about 25,000 years ago or evolved into creatures that dropped hudreds of off spring each year apiece to let them scurry and survive the best they could.

Just watch a 12 year old boy and girl pick up a baby, the girl will hold it on here hip, the boy like a sack of potatoes, why if they have never seen a baby does that work. To many other examples here.

 

[cedent]

I have really enjoyed reading Dads talk about thier daughters and vice versa on this posting. My dad is an engineer. From an early age I leaned heavily towards the arts... but my dad insisted that I take the highest level of math and science I could for all four years of highschool. His arguement was that it would give me more options. I think I learned analytical thinking by just talking to my dad... we talked about things like the best way to mount a sculpture I was working on... and how to change the brakes on the 1980 chevy suburban my brother and I shared.

I still have my artsy side... and I think it has served me well as an engineer.

 

[IRstuff]

There's obviously a biological difference because of testoterone and estrogen balances, BUT, until you can raise a large enough sample of boys and girls with ZERO gender biases, the biological differences cannot be readily sorted out.

I don't think that anyone can claim with scientific rigor that the biological differences account for the dearth of women in engineering.


TTFN

Eng-Tips Policies FAQ731-376