The future of women in Engineering... 17

[JohnRBaker]

I'm always on the watch for items on this topic, if for no other reason than the fact that we have 4 granddaughters, 3 of whom have shown a certain enhanced aptitude toward science and math, and I would like to think that one (or more) of them might follow in their grandfather's footsteps (my wife and I had 3 boys, 2 of whom are professional chefs) and enroll in engineering school (maybe even my old alma mater). Anyway, I hadn't seen any other thread covering this specific issue on E-Tips and thought that this would be as good a way as any to start the conversation, if anyone's interested:

http://electronicdesign.com/embedde...-targets-gender-gap-computing-and-engineering

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[msquared48]

Imagination is not gender specific.

my 2 cents...

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[SLTA]

Husband and I met at college, both in civil. At our 15 year reunion this year, the director of the program came up and welcomed Husband, and when Husband told the director that I was also a CEE grad, the director walked off. Never even said hello. And yes, he heard what Husband said.

Mike, sure, but try telling that to me with 15 years of stupidity to fight against. More than that, actually; in my AP Physics class in high school, I was the first girl in 4 years to take the class. The boys would ask a question and the teacher would answer. I would ask a question and the teacher would ask one of the boys to answer (they usually didn't know, either). Until the pervasive, subtle, and often unnoticed subtext to girls/women of "you can't do this, you don't belong here" goes away, there won't be more women in engineering.

I need to get out my boxing gloves now. dangit.

 

[zdas04]

Not being a woman, I can't speak to how pervasive sexism is. About 40% of the people I work with most closely at my client's are women. Some are really good. Some aren't. About the same mix of ability as the males I work with. Some are really assertive, some are not. But more than ever, I see women who just want to do their job and leave the cause to others. It seems like I have more "how do we do [something technical]?" discussions with women now than ever before. I see more women who insist on being evaluated as Engineers than as women every year. I found myself yelling at a young (female) Engineer last month for a bone-head newbie move just like I would have yelled at a guy. No worries about it being a male/female thing, it was just an old-Engineer/young-Engineer thing and we both took it that way. I didn't even think about getting in trouble for yelling at a girl until a few hours later.

I know that the garbage is far from over, but I have 3 granddaughters that I really hope can move into any field they have the talent to be in without the nonsense that my wife faced in the workplace in the '70's or people creating artificial incentives to meet quotas.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[moltenmetal]

Less than 30% of engineering grads here in Canada work as engineers. When you interview 4th year students, more than 90% of them intend a career in engineering, so not all of them are leaving the profession by choice- most are leaving because they cannot find an entry-level position to get a toe-hold in the profession. That's unlikely to dramatically improve in the next five to ten years.

Despite the poor capture of eng grads into engineering, eng school enrollments are rising year after year here, at a rate greater than economic or population growth. That is important information that every prospective engineering student should know before making the decision to enroll in an eng program. The stats are better in the US right now, but the capture of eng grads into eng careers is sagging there too. Engineering school has long ago ceased to be a ticket to a career as an engineer, though eng grads are sought out for other occupations.

When I was at school in the 80s, my chem eng class was about 30-35% female. The ratio increased toward graduation- guys failed more frequently than girls. Current chem eng classes at my alma mater are about 50% female. Mech, elec and computer (geek eng) are still almost free of females (5-10% female at most), but civil and systems/industrial are at least 1/3 female- that hasn't changed over the past 20 years or so. There is no reason in my mind that we should be taking active steps to make all these programs 50% female, any more than we should be concerned that there are now more female doctors graduating than there are males.

Unless your granddaughters have more than just an aptitude in math and science, encourage them to keep their options open by not dropping advanced math and science courses too early- that's essential. But like all people, they should seek out and pursue their passion- a mere aptitude may lead to a passion, but mere aptitude is insufficient for success. If technical problem solving is that passion, engineering might still be a good choice as an education.

As to what they'll end up doing for a living, that's years hence and nobody can predict it for them now. At present, anything that leads to a good white-collar salary here is oversupplied with entry-level candidates- with one exception: medicine. Medical schools and the provinces who fund them still control the number of residency spots to more closely match demand. Over 90% of people in Canada with medical degrees work as doctors, and that's not because a doctor's education makes them unqualified for other work.

 

[TenPenny]

When I did Mech Eng in the 80s, there were a few women, maybe 20%. Chem and Elect were higher percentages, Civil was highest. Never ran into a prof who dismissed women in class for any reason, and we had some weird specimens. I think my classmates would have roasted a prof alive if they had behaved that way, and we surely weren't the most enlightened crew at that time. But we surely liked having women in our classes, and at the social events. I run into quite a few female engs in industry, some in pretty senior positions in the local pulp and paper mills and refineries. I'm sure they've had issues, but for the most part, they get treated the same as everyone else, except people are often more polite to them.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I'll admit that when I was in engineering school back in the late 60's it was like attending a seminary without the dress code. I think the ME enrollment was less than 5% females however we did have several female professors and instructors. Now we did have a fairly decent business department so that helped somewhat, not to mention the nursing school affiliated with the local hospital and there was that small private (Finnish) liberal arts school across the lake from our campus...

After a couple of years I decided to marry my high school sweetheart and moved into married student housing, known affectionately on campus as 'fertile hill' (our two oldest sons were born while I was still a student).

Note that I'm a frequent visitor to my alma mater as we have a rather strong academic relationship with them (they use our software products extensively in their graduate and undergraduate as well as their research programs) and I've noted that the number of females on campus has really exploded recently. In fact, they have a very active 'women in engineering' program that goes out to high schools and encourages the student to attend summer youth programs which while they are open to both boys and girls, the real push is to get the girls interested as early as possible since moltenmetal was correct in that one of the secrets to keeping girls interested in engineering is making sure that they get early and continued exposure to science and math as well as an opportunity to learn what engineering is really all about, thus the emphasis on the summer programs (we hope to arrange for one or two of our granddaughters to attend as they become old enough for the program, which starts at the middle school level).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[UcfSE]

When I went through undergrad, female students were less than 10% of the class in my experience. As a professor now, I typically have about 20% of my students as females (structural). I'm encouraged by that, and as much as I can I encourage them to stick with it. There is certainly no basis for ignoring their abilities from what I have seen first hand. Still though, by the time they get to me, they already know they want to be engineers. I think what would be more helpful would be helping the undecided, at least in knowing they can do it, and there is no gender-based reason why they can't.

 

[cranky108]

I work with several women engineers, and some of them have a very different way by which they came into engineering. Most of the people in engineering, that I know, came from living on a farm and had to figgure out how to do things, and have a get it done attitude. However, I don't see that as much now. And some of the women I work with see engineering as a chance to learn more. More of a fast and fourious get it done. Maybe I'm just missing the depth part in them. Or with them being younger I'm just not hearing the discussions.

Yes I have also seen this with some of the male engineers, but just not where I work. And maybe some of the things I am seeing is generation related, and not gender related.

However I do value the different viewpoints they have. I think they can also be role models for my daughter, who will be soon, or is already, looking for what they want to do in life.

 

[ornerynorsk]

There is definitely gender bias in organizations, be it university, government, or business. The higher-ups have the opportunity to set the tone for the corporate culture, and more often than not, I think it is an uncomfortable issue that many in leadership want to shy away from.

That being said, my eldest daughter is in the mechanical program at School of Mines, Rapid City, and they have various aspects specific to their programming to both encourage and retain females in the program. She was my baby at the time I had my CNC shop, so she was always my companion at the table at night when I was studying drawings, working up quotes, and perusing the various tooling and fixturing catalogs. She knew the names of more materials and tools and measuring instruments by the time she was 6 than most non-tradespeople will know in a lifetime.

SLTA, I have witnessed incidents exactly like those you have described and it really pisses me off that people will render judgement and totally discount valid ideas and even informal peer-to-peer conversation based on gender. Women and men think differently and approach problems and challenges differently, which is a tremendously valuable asset, in my opinion.

My 2 cents.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[SLTA]

ornerynorsk, I remember hanging out with my daddy when he was fixing tractors in his shop. Fire burning in the woodstove he built, opera or bluegrass on the radio, and me cleaning out the metal shavings from his lathe. Thank you for reminding me of that. He died 4 years ago, in a week and a half. He and my mom being so matter-of-fact that women can do anything, just like men, is a huge reason I'm still an engineer today.

You should hear the stories my mom can tell, as a nuclear physicist, and a *GASP* woman.

 

[oldfieldguy]

Who knows what motivates one to become an engineer anyway?

I worked with a couple of them with my present employment, neither of them in any way using gender as a crutch. That is not to say that somebody unfamiliar with either of these ladies might see one as a pretty little ball of fluff. It's just that behind the 'cute' is an industrial-strength mind and underestimating that fact is the stuff of legend in several cases.

As I move on to the upper edge of age, I am quite satisfied with the young engineers I see coming along. Just happens that some of them are female.



old field guy

 

[Maui]

There's a future in engineering? If it were up to the MBAs we would all go the way of the dodo bird...

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[cranky108]

I think the MBAs see engineers as people who bring up inconvient facts, like the laws of gravity. The MBAs seem like small children fighting over there place in line. I don't see a glass cealing for women, I see that most women are smart enough to want to avoid such child play.

Yes I do believe universitys descriminite for many things because those who do it can hide behind the walls of the university. Besides if those professors were really that good, why would they be teaching and not out making real money? Because they have an agenda, or they can't (or both).

And in the working word there are two types of bosses, those that grow there people to better themselves, and those who make there people look small so they look better. If you find you are working for the second type, run.

 

[moltenmetal]

slta: good on you dad and your mom for helping you as a child to realize what should be obvious, but somehow isn't- that a person's gender doesn't determine their abilities. That's what I want my daughter to realize as well. Girls need to be given a chance to explore all their options. Societal role pressure for the sexes is still incredibly strong.

I had the good fortune to not only have brilliant female classmates, but also some excellent female engineers as mentors all the way back to my 1st co-op jobs. I literally didn't have time to develop any kind of an attitude about whether or not women could do the job- it was obvious from the get-go.

Where many women tended to start from behind a notch was in advantage provided by hands-on experience- the parents were at fault there, not giving their girls a chance to work with tools, take things apart to see how they work etc. Even in my day, in chem eng at least I was in the minority, like you having growing up with a dad with a lathe and a milling machine in the basement and permission to use them at an age that today would result in accusations of negligent parenting, whereas it was actually absolutely the opposite. These days the males are, on average, every bit as sheltered as the females, so any comparative advantage the males had there is long gone.

 

[SomptingGuy]

Plenty of talented ladies where I work. No gender issues.

At uni, we only had <10% of females, which is probably where the disparity starts.

- Steve

 

[looslib]

Those that can do, do.
Those that can't do, teach.
Those that can't teach, consult.



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[Maui]

Yet those that consult make the most.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[SNORGY]

Those who can't do any of the above become MBAs. Sadly, they make the most.

 

[SLTA]

Have y'all heard of Goldie Blox?

http://www.goldieblox.com/

and one of the best ads ever:

http://youtu.be/eyTQDX-ItiM