OT - More about Engineers

When I went to my grand-daughter's graduation, I noticed that most
of the honour students were female. I posted about it on rctn, and since
this have done a bit of enquiring. You may well find your information
about females not going into sciences and engineering is out of date.
There seem to be major changes going on, *right now* in fields where
females are doing better than males. Science and engineering are some of
these. I would suggest you get some extremely up-to-date information on
this, and it will probably surprise you. I have heard that in some
universities, females now are 50% of the freshman engineering
students. And the proportion of females to males still seems to be
increasing, in engineering and sciences.



Beth Katz ) writes:

My sisters are both civil engineers. One founded her own traffic
engineering company and is doing quite well. The other works in
evaluating projects for their environmental consequences. Both are
great engineers with a much better fashion and social sense than
I have as a computer science professor.

While I've known engineers and scientists who fit these jokes
wonderfully, I've seen far more engineers and scientists who
are fascinating individuals. Yes, they/we look at the world a
bit differently, but the world needs a wide variety of people.

I'm posting in this thread to remind everyone of the subtle effects
of such stereotyping in jokes.

There are far too few women going into engineering and the sciences.
Girls in middle school and earlier hear these jokes or subtle snippets
of them and get discouraged from continuing math and science study.
Many pre-teen and teen girls want to be like everyone else or at
least not the object of ridicule. The message they get is that
being an engineer is nerdy and undesirable. Some of them decide
to do it anyway. But others take another path.

There have been studies of computer classes in high schools
where the guys think they know the material well and the girls
think that they don't know it very well at all. But in reality,
they know it about equally. So the guys continue on and the girls
get discouraged. And our university computer science classes have
maybe 3-4 women and 20-some men. The jokes certainly aren't the
only problem, but they are a reflection of society's stereotypes.

Yes, I forwarded the first set of jokes to my family. But I work
against those stereotypes with my kids and other young people.

Singing Peggy Seeger's "I'm Gonna be an Engineer":

Flying Folk Army's version of the song (3.8MB takes a while to load):
http://www.flyingfolk.ca/audio/engineer.mp3

--
Beth Katz





--
Jim Cripwell.
The gods do not subtract from the allotted span of one's life, any
time that is spent in stitching.
Adapted from a sign on The Cobb, Lyme Regis, England.

On 8/2/03 11:51 AM,"F.James Cripwell" posted:

When I went to my grand-daughter's graduation, I noticed that most
of the honour students were female. I posted about it on rctn, and since
this have done a bit of enquiring. You may well find your information
about females not going into sciences and engineering is out of date.
There seem to be major changes going on, *right now* in fields where
females are doing better than males. Science and engineering are some of
these. I would suggest you get some extremely up-to-date information on
this, and it will probably surprise you. I have heard that in some
universities, females now are 50% of the freshman engineering
students. And the proportion of females to males still seems to be
increasing, in engineering and sciences.

Jim,

It is you who has incorrect statistics. Engineering has been the strongest
hold-out of a large male majority in the profession. In universities and in
the working world. While the percentage of females entering the profession
has risen markedly in 20 years, it still lags far behind the percentage in
such traditional male strongholds as medicine and law. While many of the
high school honors students may have been female, this doesn't translate
into staying in engineering school. Some will try it, and opt for another
area. And the stereotype don't help.

In fact, for most women, if they are science orientated - medicine is posed
to them as an optimal career choice.Similarly for the skilled in language
arts, politics - they look into law school. At present, there are many more
female students who will major in some form of engineering, which will lead
them to a better job than a business degree. But, they are likely to be in
Industrial Engineering, or Management, or even doing an undergrad degree in
a core engineering area, but not intending to pursue work in that area.

When I was in grad school, and doing research in the mid-80's - the average
percentage in an engineering school of female students was about 4%, moving
up to about 12% in the nineties. I would be astonished if it were above 20%
now. At an engineering education conference I recall discussions that it was
expected that the enrollment of women would level out at about 12-15%.
Something to do with while women are more math oriented at a young age, and
many have a better spatial dimension perspective - there are other brain
function aspects of engineering which do not suit women. Kind of a
difference in the species.

FWIW, when I first went to undergrad school, there was a 70:1 ratio of men
to females in the school. In grad school, 1985, in my department it was
about 20:1 . The undergrads in the engineering college, I'd say about 12:1 .
So, now in a class of 35, you're likely to see several female students.
Maybe in some classes a 4:1 ratio. But on the whole, it's far less.
My engineering professor friends often lament this - and one of my friends -
who is a Prof of Systems Engineering (no actual engineering degree, she's a
decision theorist & AI specialist) actually advises the Society of Women
Engineers - because she wanted to encourage them. But, her dept is very much
a Computer Sys dept. Occassionally I & my other professional friends will do
a guest talk at a meeting, or lecture at some class. We're always trying to
show that we could have nice clothes, good haircuts, not wear pocket pen
protectors, have lives, do art , and still be engineers.

It has been a source of amazement to my doctor and lawyer friends how still
different it is in engineering. But, that's life.

Ellice - now off the soapbox to go do some work

Interesting thoughts on a similar subject were discussed yesterday on
National Public Radio. Had to do with why women don't succeed in the
corporate world. Appropro to this discussion because it had to do with:
Do we change the university culture to train women to be more like men
or train men to be more like women. [I'm paraphrasing here, this was
the gist]

I only caught about 15 minutes of this delightful call-in/interview, so
I didn't get all the details. But finally, one woman called in to say
[I loved this . . . exactly what I would have said]

What we need to do is train people to allow individuals to be themselves
and accept them in any role as "themselves".

Dianne

Meredith wrote:
I still have classes that are primarily male. I think that the only
girls who stay in the hard sciences and engineering are the ones who are
stubborn enough to prove everyone wrong when they say, "You can't do
that." I'm at Tufts now, and the engineering school here is one of the
few in the country where there are more students majoring in eng. than
started as freshmen.

Meredith

Ellice wrote:

On 8/2/03 11:51 AM,"F.James Cripwell" posted:


When I went to my grand-daughter's graduation, I noticed that most
of the honour students were female. I posted about it on rctn, and since
this have done a bit of enquiring. You may well find your information
about females not going into sciences and engineering is out of date.
There seem to be major changes going on, *right now* in fields where
females are doing better than males. Science and engineering are some of
these. I would suggest you get some extremely up-to-date information on
this, and it will probably surprise you. I have heard that in some
universities, females now are 50% of the freshman engineering
students. And the proportion of females to males still seems to be
increasing, in engineering and sciences.


Jim,

It is you who has incorrect statistics. Engineering has been the strongest
hold-out of a large male majority in the profession. In universities and in
the working world. While the percentage of females entering the profession
has risen markedly in 20 years, it still lags far behind the percentage in
such traditional male strongholds as medicine and law. While many of the
high school honors students may have been female, this doesn't translate
into staying in engineering school. Some will try it, and opt for another
area. And the stereotype don't help.

In fact, for most women, if they are science orientated - medicine is posed
to them as an optimal career choice.Similarly for the skilled in language
arts, politics - they look into law school. At present, there are many more
female students who will major in some form of engineering, which will lead
them to a better job than a business degree. But, they are likely to be in
Industrial Engineering, or Management, or even doing an undergrad degree in
a core engineering area, but not intending to pursue work in that area.

When I was in grad school, and doing research in the mid-80's - the average
percentage in an engineering school of female students was about 4%, moving
up to about 12% in the nineties. I would be astonished if it were above 20%
now. At an engineering education conference I recall discussions that it was
expected that the enrollment of women would level out at about 12-15%.
Something to do with while women are more math oriented at a young age, and
many have a better spatial dimension perspective - there are other brain
function aspects of engineering which do not suit women. Kind of a
difference in the species.

FWIW, when I first went to undergrad school, there was a 70:1 ratio of men
to females in the school. In grad school, 1985, in my department it was
about 20:1 . The undergrads in the engineering college, I'd say about 12:1 .
So, now in a class of 35, you're likely to see several female students.
Maybe in some classes a 4:1 ratio. But on the whole, it's far less.
My engineering professor friends often lament this - and one of my friends -
who is a Prof of Systems Engineering (no actual engineering degree, she's a
decision theorist & AI specialist) actually advises the Society of Women
Engineers - because she wanted to encourage them. But, her dept is very much
a Computer Sys dept. Occassionally I & my other professional friends will do
a guest talk at a meeting, or lecture at some class. We're always trying to
show that we could have nice clothes, good haircuts, not wear pocket pen
protectors, have lives, do art , and still be engineers.

It has been a source of amazement to my doctor and lawyer friends how still
different it is in engineering. But, that's life.

Ellice - now off the soapbox to go do some work

What we need to do is train people to allow individuals to be themselves
and accept them in any role as "themselves".

This reminds me of an Ali McBeal segment that delt with a woman who was not
made partner (or was fired) in a law firm because she refused to work
overtime because she had a child she wanted to spend time with. After the
owner of the firm admitted he hardly knew his children because of his
working long hours, the argument was made that no one, male or female,
should be expected to work the hours men have traditionally accepted as
necessary to advance in the workplace.

Realistically "the rules" are made by men and when change is attempted by
women, they are characterized as weak and/or man haters and/or worse.
Change will come slowly and I hope some day everyone will have more respect
for family/humanity and that the workplace will actually reflect the values
we, as a nation, say we embrace.

Jane

Just coincidentally, this week I have been working on a project from a college
which is best left unnamed because of this sorry statistic provided by one of
their deans. Only 19% of incoming students can pass the Basic Math test
without remedial classes. (Sorry, he didn't break it out by gender.)

The good news is that this college has gotten some inspiring math teachers, so
most students do pass the test after the remedial class, but that doesn't solve
the underlying problem that 80% of students are graduating high school without
even Basic Math skills.

If you can't pass Basic Math, then you can't do the algebra, geometry and
trigonometry required to pass Engineering classes. Unless you're unusually
determined to be an engineer, you'll probably pick a different major when you
discover that problem.

One of my friends, an otherwise bright girl, had some difficulty with Math, but
didn't work at overcoming it. Her other grades were good enough to please her
parents, who didn't think it was all that important for a girl to have more
than rudimentary math skills. Then her older brother got to high school and
reported that all students had to pass Ninth Grade Math to graduate. She
applied herself merely enough to pass, because by then she had convinced
herself that she'd never do well at math because she was a girl. (Meanwhile,
she's watching me collect every math award available, and one of our teachers
get a Ph.D. in math, which should have given her a suspicion that gender has
nothing to do with math skills.)

Unfortunately, she's not alone. As an adult, I got to know another woman,
whose father was an engineer, who was also allowed to slack off in that subject
because girls didn't need to know much math. If it's no big deal to an
engineer that his daughter is failing math, then who *is* going to impress on
girls that this is an important subject?




--
Finished 7/4/03 -- Army Wife
WIP: Angel of Autumn, Calif Sampler, Holiday Snowglobe, Guide the Hands (2d
one)

Paralegal - Writer - Editor - Researcher
http://hometown.aol.com/kmc528/KMC.html

My DH is the head of a structural engineering department at a large
consulting firm (many other depts than structural and he's not in the
biggest office). Currently he is over 7 people; 3 of them are female.
His very best EVER draftsperson is retiring soon and she is a 72 yo
female. She is a whiz with the Autocad and other computer drafting
programs and he is wondering if one person will be enough to replace
her. So at his workplace, at least, the ratio is not terribly
lopsided. Just .02. Paula B.

Ellice wrote in message ...
On 8/2/03 11:51 AM,"F.James Cripwell" posted:

When I went to my grand-daughter's graduation, I noticed that most
of the honour students were female. I posted about it on rctn, and since
this have done a bit of enquiring. You may well find your information
about females not going into sciences and engineering is out of date.
There seem to be major changes going on, *right now* in fields where
females are doing better than males. Science and engineering are some of
these. I would suggest you get some extremely up-to-date information on
this, and it will probably surprise you. I have heard that in some
universities, females now are 50% of the freshman engineering
students. And the proportion of females to males still seems to be
increasing, in engineering and sciences.

Jim,

It is you who has incorrect statistics. Engineering has been the strongest
hold-out of a large male majority in the profession. In universities and in
the working world. While the percentage of females entering the profession
has risen markedly in 20 years, it still lags far behind the percentage in
such traditional male strongholds as medicine and law. While many of the
high school honors students may have been female, this doesn't translate
into staying in engineering school. Some will try it, and opt for another
area. And the stereotype don't help.

In fact, for most women, if they are science orientated - medicine is posed
to them as an optimal career choice.Similarly for the skilled in language
arts, politics - they look into law school. At present, there are many more
female students who will major in some form of engineering, which will lead
them to a better job than a business degree. But, they are likely to be in
Industrial Engineering, or Management, or even doing an undergrad degree in
a core engineering area, but not intending to pursue work in that area.

When I was in grad school, and doing research in the mid-80's - the average
percentage in an engineering school of female students was about 4%, moving
up to about 12% in the nineties. I would be astonished if it were above 20%
now. At an engineering education conference I recall discussions that it was
expected that the enrollment of women would level out at about 12-15%.
Something to do with while women are more math oriented at a young age, and
many have a better spatial dimension perspective - there are other brain
function aspects of engineering which do not suit women. Kind of a
difference in the species.

FWIW, when I first went to undergrad school, there was a 70:1 ratio of men
to females in the school. In grad school, 1985, in my department it was
about 20:1 . The undergrads in the engineering college, I'd say about 12:1 .
So, now in a class of 35, you're likely to see several female students.
Maybe in some classes a 4:1 ratio. But on the whole, it's far less.
My engineering professor friends often lament this - and one of my friends -
who is a Prof of Systems Engineering (no actual engineering degree, she's a
decision theorist & AI specialist) actually advises the Society of Women
Engineers - because she wanted to encourage them. But, her dept is very much
a Computer Sys dept. Occassionally I & my other professional friends will do
a guest talk at a meeting, or lecture at some class. We're always trying to
show that we could have nice clothes, good haircuts, not wear pocket pen
protectors, have lives, do art , and still be engineers.

It has been a source of amazement to my doctor and lawyer friends how still
different it is in engineering. But, that's life.

Ellice - now off the soapbox to go do some work

On 8/3/03 9:35 PM,"PaulaB" posted:

My DH is the head of a structural engineering department at a large
consulting firm (many other depts than structural and he's not in the
biggest office). Currently he is over 7 people; 3 of them are female.
His very best EVER draftsperson is retiring soon and she is a 72 yo
female. She is a whiz with the Autocad and other computer drafting
programs and he is wondering if one person will be enough to replace
her. So at his workplace, at least, the ratio is not terribly
lopsided. Just .02. Paula B.

That's great. But, the draftsperson, who undoubtedly is very good at what
she does, isn't an engineer. That said, my dad had a great draftsperson
about 50 years ago, that was a woman, with an engineering degree. But his
boss wouldn't let him hire her as an engineer, and he always felt bad about
that.

My observations have been that Electrical and Civil engineering are the
disciplines with the highest percentage of women, as compared with the other
traditional engineering disciplines. Now, computer engineering is right up
there. A lot of very math oriented people go into EE, and I think Civ E
really calls to people who want to do field work.

There are plenty of companies out there with relatively high female staffs,
balanced by many with really low ones. A lot depends on the working attitude
as to how people mix. And now, there are tons of women doing computer
programming, working in Info Tech - much more so than in the other
engineering fields.

ellice

On 8/2/03 3:10 PM,"F.James Cripwell" posted:
From past statistics, you are absolutely correct. But I am talking
university enrolment in 2003; i.e. these students have not yet gone to
university. I am told that some engineering faculties will have 50%
female freshmen *next* year. Last year, I understand, that in all North
American universities, there were more first year female medical students
than male. This is the first time this has happened. So I am talking "up
to the minute" statistics. Not statistics that are more than a year or so
old. Do you have figures for next year's students?

Ellice wrote:
Jim, what you stated, IIRC, is there would be a majority of female students
in engineering and that someone who is on faculty in a science dept,
teaching and seeing these college students was wrong. You didn't say you
were just predicting university enrollment. And you stated this based upon
your observation of the majority of honor graduates at a high school
graduation, That is what I responded to. And that leap which you made about
what degree and career paths those high school graduates would take is still
incorrect. Having 50% freshman in universities does not equate to 50% in
engineering. Having more than 50% honor graduates as female doesn't mean
they're all majoring in the hard sciences, or engineering, or even that
they're all going to college. And it is indeed possible that some
engineering departments at some schools may indeed have 50% incoming
freshmen females. Again, that doesn't equate to there being 50% or more than
50% female engineering students.

So, while there has been a trend for 20 years for there to be an increase in
the number of female engineering students - it is still far below 50%. And
everything that I've seen in professional journals would indicate that for
numerous reasons ranging from sociology to specific brain functions the area
of engineering will be one that reaches its natural balance point at more
like 4:1 male to female, if not even less.

If you want to talk up to the minute statistics, as opposed to discussion
from a radio or tv program, then you need some numbers, and assumptions that
go with those statistics - as in what's their basis. Is this a survey of
1000, or 100, or 10 high schools? How many universities, or does it include
community colleges? What year student population are you considering, or is
it graduating classes, or incoming freshmen only. And from experience, as
anyone who has been through professional school can tell you, the
composition of an incoming class will vary greatly from the graduating class
- whether it's engineering, physics, med school, law school, music school,
etc.

And, when I get the newest report information from the National Academy of
Science, and the Professional Engineering organization, and the Society of
Women Engineers, and maybe the Accrediting board for Engineering, I'll be
happy to forward some hard numbers. Of course, my experience, is only as
current as last year - based on doing invited lectures and working on a
survey of female engineering professionals, with other female faculty, to be
published hopefully in the next year.

FWIW, I've worked at three public universities and none would release
registration data until at least the tenth day of class. Some will not
consider it accurate until the normal withdrawal window has closed. Too
many students accept admission to more than one school and wait until
the last minute to decide which to attend. Others stick around until
the first round of exams and decide it is too hard or they are homesick.
Any data released now is probably PR hype which is not an official
report from the Registrar. I would not consider it reliable.

To *really* know how many engineering students are in a particular
class, you need to check the retainment data after both year one and
year two. This will tell you how many are weeded out or change/leave by
choice. If an engineering student can stay on track through the first
two years, they are very likely to complete the program.

--
Brenda Lewis
WIP: J. Himsworth "I Shall Not Want" xs
J & P Coats "Dancing Snoopy" latchhook

Ellice wrote in message ...
On 8/3/03 9:35 PM,"PaulaB" posted:

My DH is the head of a structural engineering department at a large
consulting firm (many other depts than structural and he's not in the
biggest office). Currently he is over 7 people; 3 of them are female.
His very best EVER draftsperson is retiring soon and she is a 72 yo
female. She is a whiz with the Autocad and other computer drafting
programs and he is wondering if one person will be enough to replace
her. So at his workplace, at least, the ratio is not terribly
lopsided. Just .02. Paula B.

That's great. But, the draftsperson, who undoubtedly is very good at what
she does, isn't an engineer. That said, my dad had a great draftsperson
about 50 years ago, that was a woman, with an engineering degree. But his
boss wouldn't let him hire her as an engineer, and he always felt bad about
that.

Well, I know that! Duh. But I thought it was interesting that Monica
is still in her career of choice, which was certainly nearly all
male-dominated back when she started. Paula B.

On 8/4/03 4:06 AM,"Brenda Lewis" posted:

To *really* know how many engineering students are in a particular
class, you need to check the retainment data after both year one and
year two. This will tell you how many are weeded out or change/leave by
choice. If an engineering student can stay on track through the first
two years, they are very likely to complete the program.

You are very right, Brenda. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) used to do
an annual report with statistics on the different engineering fields, #s
working in them, how many years - grouped by experience - 1-3, and so forth.
Also, the Professional Engineers org does a similar annual report. SWE is
more likely to reflect enrollments. And there is info available thru ABET
(the engineering accreditation group).

Definitely the 2nd year is a good indicator. Most engineering students make
the switch out either right away, or at the end of 2nd year. If they've made
it thru 2nd year, they're more likely to stay - at least struggling isn't
the issue. It's in 3rd year where course work is mostly engineering, and
then people either like it, love it or leave. Not worth the agony if you
don't really like it ;^)

Thanks for chiming in with some good info.
ellice