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

 

[SomptingGuy]

... I just picked my daughter up from her grandparents following a weeks' holiday. She was so excited to show me the guns she'd made from Lego. So maybe it's not all dolls and roll playing after all.

 

[dcasto]

IRstuff, you cannot get to ZERO biases, thats the point. The girls still go to the pink isle and the boys to the trucks. Even GI Joe didn't sell as well as Barbie. It's more than hormones too.

 

[cksh]

I tend to agree with some posts above. It starts early on in life. But I think high school (heck, even our society in general is the culprit). There was never any push towards engineering in my high school. We must be a really small percentage of the population.

I don't think anyone really knows what engineering is. (even myself as an engineer) What is engineering? A bunch of nerds hiding in their cubicles all day crunching numbers? That is the picture I am sure most high schools paint. All the guys want to go into somethign related to sports and the woman I haven't got a clue. Doctor's, nurses, teachers? Never once did I ever hear engineering.

There are a few woman in my department. This is the first company I have worked for that has woman engineers.

 

[caluna]

It sounds as if career counselors are failing to mention the wonderful world of engineering to young women...certainly it was never mentioned to me, but that was a number of years ago. None of my high school girlfriends went into engineering, but then few men did either. I was good in math and physics and thought engineering sounded like a fun (HA!) and interesting way to use those subjects. My family was definitely arts-oriented-professors and teachers-with no engineers in sight.

One comment made in certain posts was that it is hard to get back into the field after "time out" -whether for family or other reasons. Not necessarily so; if you keep up with your subject and with your colleagues,continue networking,researching, attending conferences etc, it should not be too hard to get back in. This, speaking from my own experience and that of some of my friends.

 

[KENAT]

In the UK at the time I was in my last 2 years of 'high school' they were trying to get women into engineering.

They even had special scholarships etc to encourage it.

To the best of my knowledge none of the girls in my math &/or physics classes in school ended up studying Engineering at university.

Medical doctors, Physics & if I recall Mathematics were the courses they chose.

Maybe Doctoring is a possible comparison, 50 years ago I understan Medicine (as in Doctors) was male dominated. Now I believe it's close to 50/50 in med school with women ahead in some places.

Of course if there is some inherent ‘genetic’ factor relevant to Engineering but not Medicine then it’s unlikely to change.

However, perhaps if it’s more due to traditional gender roles then it will change, but I wont hold my breath.

 

[dcasto]

Here is an observation. The people in my school were in two catagories or should I say there were two nodes with some blurry arae between. One group could memorize anything and spit it out. The other group intuitively piced together the basics to get to the end. For example, one could memorize the equation Q = UHdTln and plug and go and try to take the log of a negative number when doing the dTln. Others looked at the temperatures and said, temperature cross and stop. Some could look at 10 minerals and spit out their names and the other group had to scratch, acid, look with 10x and find their way to the correct answer.

On the average, women were in the memorize group and not application group. I enjoyed getting an A in fluids and the #2 guy in the class who memorized 100 minerals got a B (his only one). The number one was a women. She went to summer school every year because she dropped classes if she was going to get a B. She got no job offers and went on to grad school. Went to work for a major oil company in R&D. She was worthless in lab because she had to stop and reread and memorize the mechanics that were obvious to us all (we traded lab partners evey lab).

In sumarry, all the women were in the memorize group and the men were spread in both.

 

[HgTX]

dcasto--so do you consider successful female engineers to be genetic freaks?

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[IRstuff]

Seems a bit cheeky to generalize from a small sample to the entire school and then to the entire universe.

TTFN

Eng-Tips Policies FAQ731-376

 

[KENAT]

Isn't that what we as engineers do though? (can't remember the exact quote but...) Make simple assumptions based on specific circumstances and extrapolate them to allow us to build wonderful things.

dcasto was just trying to do the same with sociology.

 

[dcasto]

Since it only takes about 30 samples to produce a normal distribution curve.....

I didn't define success or failure on how you process data, either memorize or extrapolate from physics.

Would you say that an engineer that has memorized the complete ASME vessel code makes for a good vessel designer or one that knows how to work the book and get things done? I report you decide.

However, I want my tax attorney to know every detail... My doctor to know which medicines don't mix...

 

[MechanicalAnimal]

I have another idea: my mother's a mechanical engineer. During a test drive of her latest construction, one of ~30 electric engines wasn't "pulling". After a 17-hour shift, she was done with reason, so she simply tugged at the belt a bit.
The belt pulled her hand in, crushing her index finger, breaking the skin, and tearing the tendons of the thumb and first two finger bones... (she's fine now, tho).

The point is, engineering jobs often aren't just sitting in the cozy office, and a lot of women simply won't take up a lifetime of a career that can result in crushed fingers...

 

[MikeHalloran]

Some people learn everything the hard way.

I carry a pen or a pencil in a pocket, for sticking into pinch points and nips. Writing is a secondary usage.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[bk11]

And yet, Mechanical Animal, many women take up nursing. Which, from what I can tell, gets your hands dirtier, involves heavier lifting and involves higher levels of personal danger than anything I've dealt with in my engineering career.

 

[KENAT]

Good point bk11, while I've got my hands dirty (and cut) in fairly dangerous conditions (with hindsight often unecessarily and foolishly so) in engineering I don't think I've ever risked stabbing myself with something that could give me an incurable and probably fatal disease.

I've known at least one woman in the medical field who's managed to prick themselves with a needle used on a HIV+ patient.

 

[wjsd]

I wish there were a lot more women in Engineering...The ones' I have run it to were very good. Highly organized. I always have great respect for a female engineer knowing they juggle mother role and engineer role.

 

[swivel63]

my current firm has a young woman engineer from one of the local schools (recent grad, 2 years). i think she's content with some of the little jobs (smaller design and less responsibility) and she's being brought along very slowly in relation to some of the other young engineers (like myself) who are getting a ton of responsibility at a very young age.

i tried to get her to be more ambitious as far as her role in the company, becuase constantly doing the small garbage time engineering isn't going to adequately prepare her for the PE whenever she's able to take it. hell, her supervisor wouldn't even let me give her some of my work with slab designs and working with building models. i know she can do it, but i don't know if that's where her motivation lies.

*shrugs*

 

[EngineerDave]

Dont know if someone mentioned it, but here in the US, alot of women are going to become doctors. I think the ratios are shifting to where there are more female doctors than males.

This is probably one factor in the number of women becoming engineers. A certain number of them that would probably consider engineering are going into medicine instead.

 

[cadengnr]

I'm with the boys-and-their-toys theory here. In any engineering class or lecture hall at 'SC I could count the number of girls on one hand.

The best-looking one by a longshot was a sorority queen. I once waited nearly an hour for a help session with my 60-year-old EE prof'; after knocking repeatedly, she emerged from behind the closed door, and the look of ire on the guy's face for me having "interrupted" them was priceless.

Anyway, of the female handful, most were in ROTC. Although I worked one summer under a female postdoc in aero, I think their parental environment, college funding, and the "want-to-fly" factor all play major sub-roles. In the end, few want engineering for the nuts-and-bolts aspect. At Point Mugu, again, I ran into very few female engineers, and all who'd been there any amount of time were up the management chain. One in particular was extremely adept at it; she took a lot of crap for having come in as an outsider, but she could both multiplex, lead, and handle herself with any of the big boys: 'saved our program, and probably now works in DC.

The point made about how poorly our education shows us who does what in the real world is also valid; but that can be a whole other topic.

 

[civeng3]

I am also a young woman in the world of engineering. I often get strange and surprised reactions from people when they find out that I am in civil engineering and wanting to major in (male dominated) structural engineering.

As a woman in engineering, I often get underestimated in my capability, but I have always succeeded in gaining respect from everybody. Most of my female friends are also in engineering, and not every one of them is as ambitious as the other, but that has nothing to do with their incapability as a woman. It just depends on what is on top of your priorities list.

In my opinion, young girls are not stimulated enough to choose a engineering profession, and it definately has nothing to do with what kind of toys a child plays in its childhood. As a child, I was crazy about dolls, and I have always been very girly and womanly-like.

 

[queenbee]

I really can't buy into the biology is destiny- The men in my family are way too good with kids from a very young age!

As the mother of a young daughter, I know one of the issues I've come up against is the lack of schedule flexibility in an engineering job- Before I had my daughter I worked for a company where not working 40 hours a week and having interests outside work got in the way of advancement. All the managers were men with wives who stayed home with their children- Even with the equitable split of childcare my husband and I have, I never would have been able to compete on a level playing field at that company.

Post-baby I worked 2nd shift and can say it's a lot easier to negotiate a flexed schedule on the way into a new company than to ask for a change later on.

One factor that I think pushes some women away from traditional engineering fields into biotech and healthcare fields where you derive your job satisfaction- and I think for many women (I can hardly say it's universal) knowing that what they do will help someone is a huge part of their job satisfaction.

As for why I ended up in engineering- I fell in love with organic chemistry in my (all-girls) highschool and was more interested in making things, rather than working in a lab. I like that I work on real stuff.