Five Reasons Why Women Are Under Represented In Engineering

Why does it matter? Why try and push women to do something that they quite clearly don't want to do?

See my earlier post about CompSci... Women were very much wanting to do it, until the 1980's.

There's no reason why women shouldn't do engineering either. After all engineering, isn't about being a mechanic, so physical "strength" is irrelevant.

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See my earlier post about CompSci... Women were very much wanting to do it, until the 1980's.

There's no reason why women shouldn't do engineering either. After all engineering, isn't about being a mechanic, so physical "strength" is irrelevant.

Posted from TSR Mobile

The hypothesis of your article is pretty unsound, by the way. Girls in this generation - and for many years now - have had extremely powerful computers at their disposal and in their pockets in equal numbers to boys.

It is interesting to think about why the proportion of women in computer science fell as it did, but social conditioning from a young age does not seem to be the answer.

One may look at the corresponding graphs for, say, Psychology - if that began to be considered a mainstream degree subject around that point in time, for example, and women were naturally more interested in that subject, then a corresponding decrease would have to occur in some other subject - and most likely, the ones they were least interested in.

Something has to change: http://www.starstryder.com/2014/10/25/fighting-to-stay/

I also think it can be quite daunting for a girl to go into engineering, especially if she wasn't the type that played with Lego or Meccano. Not because she'll face sexual discrimination, but because she'll likely be amongst people who did play with Lego and Mecanno from a young age, who have essentially been doing engineering from a young age, and they'll be talking a practically different language.

There is no specific reason I can see why any of her arguments should hold true for Engineering but not Law.

Law is certainly a more cutthroat and sexist environment than academia or an engineering department, but that doesn't seem to deter women. In fact, the real mystery is not 'why do women not go on to get X% of tenured positions in the mathematically-related sciences' but rather 'why do women overwhelmingly prefer Law over Engineering when choosing undergraduate degrees', which none of her points address.

In fact, every discipline in the past was a more sexist environment than now, but that didn't stop women attaining parity from a starting point of 0% in many of them. Discrimination and sexual remarks are by no means a particular proclivity of engineers . . .

I am skeptical, doubtless they play a part but I would think that those reasons applied equally (if not more so) to other careers such as medicine where women have actually become well represented. I highly doubt that the cultural barrier to women becoming engineers was stronger than to them becoming doctors.

It doesn't work like that. Remember Oprah Winfrey, worth over a $billion, complaining of racial discrimination because she walked into an expensive jewelry shop in Switzerland and she wasn't shown the most expensive jewelry right away?

Our Vice-Chancellor wrote an article for the guardian on why women are under represented in science and engineering. What do you all think, do you agree and feel put off taking a course in engineering for these reasons? or are you a female engineer and think it's all a load of hogwash?

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/women-leadership-blog/2014/oct/20/women-science-engineering-under-representation

I am not sure of the relevance of the Oprah thing.

But seriously, how comes traditionally male professions such as law and medicine now manage to have equal numbers of women joining as men while engineering is unable to get even close? What additional social barriers were there to women in engineering that were not faced by female doctors?

Hell, I am training to be a vet. A hundred years ago a female vet would have been unthinkable and now the profession is majorly dominated by women. If that is possible I don't see why women would be so far behind in engineering, unless it is simply because women tend not to be interested in it.

unless it is simply because women tend not to be interested in it.

Just my 2 cents on social barriers...

I interned for 6 months at an engineering company and can totally see why girls are put off by engineering - it was the sort of place where I got teased by people on the shop floor, men wouldn't let me carry things or open doors for myself and people made sexist remarks quite frequently with me in earshot, or even directly at me. I was always having to prove that I'm good 'despite being a woman', which is a pretty rubbish situation to be in. I spoke to a woman who trained there as an apprentice engineer, got enough qualifications to go to uni, then switched to marketing because she couldn't take the workplace atmosphere any more. The only women engineers there were married to other engineers at the company. Compared to another place that I've worked, it was awful and very backwards.

But why did I put myself through it? Because I loved the work, and wanted to prove people wrong. How were things going to change if I quit?

That isn't really an answer. One has to ask why aren't women interested in it.

8% of bus drivers are female. 4% of train drivers are female. Bus driving has very flexible shift patterns and can easily accommodate child care. Train driving has inflexible shift patterns. One might think that provides an answer but 27% of train guards and on-train catering staff are female.

5.5% of engineering professionals are women.

True, but I don't think that social conditioning is a good enough reason when it certainly hasn't stopped them in other careers.