Women in Engineering

I found an interesting study while cruising the internet today, and although it was written in 1995, I think it still holds true today for the most part:

http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/long3.pdf

In case you don't have half an hour to read through this, I'll summarize.  The study compares men and women in Chemical Engineering at NC State.  The goal was to shed light on the low numbers of women who become interested in engineering both in college and at the professional level.  It has been suggested that this is due to natural abilities that men possess over women in the past, but this study does a pretty good job eliminating that factor.  The conclusion that the author reaches is that women tend to shy away from engineering for a variety of reasons, but most are tied to their confidence.  Women in engineering (as compared to men) tend to have lower confidence in both their natural ability and academic preparedness.  The study also made a good point in that women tend to be ignored or interrupted more in group settings (a focus of this study).  Another interesting statistic that this study brought to my attention is that around 20% of engineering students (men and women) believe it is too demanding to combine with family responsibilities.

I tend to agree with a lot of what this study concluded.  First, I don't think that women avoid education or careers in math and engineering because they are not as qualified as men or because they are naturally less intelligent.  I believe the reason is for more societal.  Women are not brought up the same way as men in our culture.  We tend to raise boys to compete and build things and be in charge, and girls to be dainty and pretty.

The problem with this tendency is that it repeats itself generationally.  Daughters usually identify with their mother, and usually emulate them at some level.  The study also showed that women beginning the engineering program were much more likely to have two parents who finished college than the men were.  To compound the problem, there are very few women who teach engineering on the college level, and this can leave a real lack of suitable role models for college-aged women.

As the article suggests, there are some proposed solutions for the disparity of women in the industry, but I won't get into much detail there.  I would like to say though, that men in engineering have a duty to respect and encourage our female counterparts (just like they would respect and encourage fellow males).  I have seen how prevalent sexism can be among small groups of male engineers, and while some jokes may be appropriate, sexist jokes or real sexist discrimination is not appropriate or professional.