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Women in engineering in the United States

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Women in engineering fields are under represented because of biological and social factors and have historically faced obstacles due to a lack of gender equity. In the United States, science and engineering have traditionally not been areas in which women are involved at a proportion equal to their general proportion in society. A number of societies, organizations, and programs have been initiated in an attempt to understand why there is a disparity of gender representation in the field of engineering. These organizations often actively encourage a greater representation of women in engineering. As a part of this movement, there is also a current trend toward recognizing both historical and modern-day women in engineering.

Statistics - USA

Female participation in engineering and the sciences has increased since the 1960s, but is still not equally representative. The trend of increasing representation has followed a pattern that is termed the leaky pipeline: there have been greater increases in the proportion of women getting engineering bachelors degrees than any other possible stage of development. The percentage of female graduate students in engineering in 2001 was 20%.[1] Between graduate and doctoral degrees, there is another drop in the representation of women, although there is still a positive trend. Doctoral degrees awarded to women in engineering increased from 11.6% to 17.6% of total degrees awarded between 1995 and 2004.[2] The workforce remains as the area of highest under representation for women; only 11% of the engineering workforce in 2003 were women.[3]

Reasons for under representation

Biological Factors

Innate biological differences in ability contribute to the under representation of women in engineering. Male superiority in spatial ability (a strong indicator of ability in mathematics[4][5][6] and engineering[7][8][9][10][11][12] fields) is significant and widely acknowledged. [13][14]

Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns [6] noted that, "Large differences favoring males appear on visual-spatial tasks like mental rotation and spatio-temporal tasks like tracking a moving object through space"[15][14] and, "The sex difference on mental rotation tasks is substantial: a recent meta-analysis [16] puts the effect size at d = 0.9.".

Mental rotation tests, for which large sex differences are found [14], has shown a stable gender difference over time [16]. Mental rotation tests are used for selection of candidates for drafting, architecture, and engineering programs[16].

Social Factors

A study done in 2004 by the US Government Accountability Office showed that the four government agencies that are responsible for holding academic institutions accountable to Title IX have not been guaranteeing compliance.[17] It found that the improvements in female representation in engineering have lagged behind areas such as the life sciences. A number of possible causes for the gender disparity have been proposed, from different life choices and priorities to discrimination. One recommendation from the report was that discrimination may not be found if agencies simply wait for complaints, so the government agencies should become more proactive in ensuring that academic institutions are providing equal opportunity to women in the areas of science and engineering.

Other research (by the Economic and Social Research Council) shows that while there have been increases in women choosing engineering as a field of study, they use their degrees to work in fields other than engineering.[18]It has also found that women receive more help than their male counterparts, both in the workplace and in school. This may indicate that the females are perceived by their male counterparts and superiors to be less competent than the males.[citation needed] The women were found to naturally adopt coping strategies to help them deal with difficulties arising from gender based discrimination.[citation needed]

Many universities have studies regarding the distribution of women within their institution, and have instituted programs regarding diversity. Targeted research can provide more detailed information about a specific institution.

On the other side of the discussion regarding women and engineering is the belief that there has been too much of a push to have women in science and engineering. Instead, the outreach programs to K-12 girls should encourage them to choose what they want to study and not try and convince as many as possible to go into science and engineering fields.[19]

Support structures for women in engineering

There are a vast array of existing support systems for women interested in engineering. Examples of these support systems range from K-12 programs dedicated to encouraging young women to consider engineering as a career path to collegiate programs dedicated to the archiving of women's impact/history in engineering as well as several professional societies dedicated to the advancement of women in engineering.

K-12 programs

There are also numerous K-12 programs designed to provide encouragement/resources for young girls interested in science. Examples of this kind of program include the website-driven Engineer Girl program targeted to young girls and teacher/mentor-oriented programs such as WEPAN. These programs offer a variety of services, from making information available to young girls interested in science, to opportunities such as essay competitions and classroom activities, as well as anything else that captivates the attention of female engineering students.

Professional societies

Most of these professional societies provide women with support, professional development and networking opportunities, and advocate for women. There is a longer list of supporting organizations under the external links section.

Women engineers

See the Category:Women engineers to see biographies of women engineers on wikipedia. Some of the external links below also contain biographies of women engineers. The Archive of Women in Science and Engineering is trying to record and catalog the work of women engineers.Archives of Women in Science and Engineering : Mission StatementIowa State university.</ref>

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Data on Women in S&E p. 4, Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
  2. ^ Table 2. Doctorates awarded to women, by field of study: 1995–2004 in S&E Doctorate Awards: 2004, National Science Foundation.
  3. ^ TABLE H-5. Employed scientists and engineers, by occupation, highest degree level, and sex: 2006 in Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering (January 2009), National Science Foundation.
  4. ^ Hyde J.S., Geiringer E.R., Yen W.M, On the empirical relation between spatial ability and sex differences in other aspects of cognitive performance.Multivariate Behavioral Research, 1975, 10, 289-309.
  5. ^ Burnett S.A., Lane D.M., Dratt L.M. Spatial visualization and sex differences in quantitative ability. Intelligence, 1979,3, 345-354
  6. ^ CASEY M.B., NUTTALL R., PEZARIS E., PERSSON BENBOW C. The influence of spatial ability on gender differences in mathematics college entrance test scores across diverse samples Developmental Psychology, 1995
  7. ^ GP Adanez, AD Velasco - Journal of Geometry and Graphics, 2002, Predicting Academic Success of Engineering Students in Technical Drawing from Visualization Test Scores ([1])
  8. ^ S Hsi, MC Linn, JE Bell - JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION-WASHINGTON-, 1997, The role of spatial reasoning in engineering and the design of spatial instruction
  9. ^ N Newcombe, MM Bandura, DG Taylor - Sex Roles, 1983 ([2])
  10. ^ C Leopold, RA Gorska, SA Sorby - Journal for Geometry and Graphics, 2001 ([3])
  11. ^ Bennett G.K., Seashore H.G., Wesman A.G. Differential Aptitude Test (5th ed.). New York: Psychological Corporation, 1974
  12. ^ C Skorupan - The Penn State Behrend Psychology Journal, 1998 The Effect of Spatial Experience on Engineering Students’ Visualization Abilities ([4])
  13. ^ Voyer D, Voyer S, Bryden MP., Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: a meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables (PMID:7724690)
  14. ^ a b c Linn MC, Petersen AC. (1985), Emergence and characterization of sex differences in spatial ability: a meta-analysis. Child Development, 56, 1479-1498. (PMID:4075870) Cite error: The named reference "Linn" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  15. ^ Law, D.J.. Pellegrino, J.W., & Hunt, E.B. (1993). Comparing the tortoise and the hare: Gender differences and experience in dynamic spatial reasoning tasks. Psychological Science, 4, 35 40.
  16. ^ a b c Masters, M.S., & Sanders, B. (1993). Is the gender difference in mental rotation disappearing? Behavior Genetics. 23. 337-341, 1993 ([5])
  17. ^ GENDER ISSUES : Women’s Participation in the Sciences Has Increased, but Agencies Need to Do More to Ensure Compliance with Title IX (July 2004), GAO.
  18. ^ More women students choose engineering - but not as a career (23 August, 2007; archived from the original on 2007-09-28), ESRC - Economic & Social Research Council.
  19. ^ Mathieu Bouville, Should there be more women in science and engineering?, DOI:10.1007/s11948-007-9038-1, Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 14, p. 279 (2008), arXiv:physics/0611089v3 [physics.soc-ph.
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