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Why are there so few women in Engineering jobs?

Why do women usually fill softer roles such as human resources, marketing, business management and accounting and rarely fill out engineering roles? Men and women share the same education, so it's not that. Are men generally better at Maths?

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 1

Blueclueless

Original post by jojau6

Why do women usually fill softer roles such as Human resources, marketing, business management and accounting and rarely fill out engineering roles? Are men generally better at Maths?

It’s more to do with women are discouraged from doing them, even at a younger age girls a socialised not to like stuff like that (think about the toys that are marketed towards girls)

And when they’re in an environment like school where they have the choice to try engineering they may be pressured by peers/staff/parents to not do it. I dealt with this in school and even if women aren’t pressured, going into a male dominated class where it’s seen as a “guys thing” can be intimidating for a lot of young women.

Also just googling “women engineers” will turn out a fair few stories of facing a lot of sexism/sexual harassment on and off the job.

Any one of these things or even all of them together can really put women off wanting to do things like that but there are a lot of women who do! And hopefully the stigma will change soon

Reply 2

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by jojau6

Why do women usually fill softer roles such as Human resources, marketing, business management and accounting and rarely fill out engineering roles? Are men generally better at Maths?

What makes those roles "softer"? And there is definitely huge amounts of men in "business management" and accounting too!

Basically, a lot more males than females study engineering at university, or take up engineer apprenticeships. But it also varies by discipline. I don't have the figures to hand, but some disciplines at university have a much more even gender balance: environmental engineering, for example, and even chemical and civil, too. Mechanical and electrical seem to be the worst for being skewed towards men.

Why are women much more attracted to some engineering disciplines than others?

Reply 3

mnot

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by jojau6

Men at an early age pick the subjects that lead to engineering.
From the academic side: its well known maths & physics has always disproportionately been applied to from males and this filters through to degree then career (whereas women disproportionately pick careers in nursing, law, education, childcare, veterinarians, pharmacities...).
A large side of engineering requires technicians: testing and manufacturing can be very labour intensive, manual labour roles tend to be dominated by males...

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 4

username5173262

In general men prefer working with things while women tend to lean towards people. This has been shown in Scandinavian countries where the genders are pretty much completely equal in terms of rights and social aspects. They still differ. Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology

"A meta-analysis of scientific studies concluded that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people. When interests were classified by RIASEC type Holland Codes (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional), men showed stronger Realistic and Investigative interests, and women showed stronger Artistic, Social, and Conventional interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering, science, and mathematics interests."

You can read it here
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 5

z-hog

The fallacy in this and similar cases, pushed by those intent on making everything a war of the sexes and a matter of victhimhood for women, is that there are vast amounts of women frustrated because they can't become engineers. It's women themselves who choose not to join certain professions and the whole thing is turned into a matter of them being blocked, prevented, dissuaded and all the rest.

We need more women in politics, they say. No we don't, the fact that any radio phone-in on the subject attracts an almost exclusively male element of interest doesn't mean they are crying out for the opportunity but having it denied. Men are generally more interested, fact. We see it here.

Reply 6

Pinkisk

Original post by z-hog

These people, they like to argue that these disparities are caused by sexism, a conspiracy by society and men against women that deprives women of such wonderful opportunities as those found in engineering, an uncompetitive career path with very poor job security, relatively low salaries and poor progression prospects.

Tell these same people about the fact that men are outnumbered in most of the top fields at university, medicine, pharmacy, veterinary, dentistry, law etc. and they will refuse to admit that these disparities are evidence of sexism. They will do everything to justify the disparities...

Women outnumber men in most all fields at university level. They outperform men. Most disparities in education significantly, negatively affect men relative women, but this does not serve the feminist, women are the main victims narrative. So it's purposely ignored, in favour of the one or two disparities remaining in education were men outnumber women and these disparities are always in fields like engineering which have very poor job prospects.