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Michael Taraboulous Ms. Leslie Wolcott English 1102 20 October 2013 Why there are so Few Women in the Engineering Field The field of Engineering is a very vast and growing field. There are numerous branches of it that you can go into depending on what peeks your interest. Not to mention the great paycheck for just about any branch you can think of. So, why wouldnt you want to join the engineering field? For some it may be just because they are no good at math, and others my have their various reasons. One thing is for certain though and that is that the number of men in the engineering fields greatly out numbers the amount of women in just about every branch. Over the last century we have seen a large push in a positive direction for womens rights. This has sparked a rapid increase in the amount of women who decide to join the work force. In fact now days there are just about as many women in the work force as men and it has become part of the norm. With that being said, just about every occupation has shown an increase in the number of women that have engaged in that field of work, but the same cannot be said for engineering. There definitely was a slight increase in the number of women who joined the field of engineering from before the women rights movement, but ratio is tremendously unbalanced. I have taken it upon myself to research why this might be and I have come across many great articles and studies that may help explain just why there are so few women in the large field of engineering. The following are articles that I have annotated to see why

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there are so many less women in the field of engineering and what is being done to change that statistic:

Sonnert, Gerhard, and Mary Frank Fox. "Women, Men, And Academic Performance In Science And Engineering: The Gender Difference In Undergraduate Grade Point Averages." Journal Of Higher Education 83.1 (2012): 73-101. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. Mary Frank Fox is a sociologist of science and a professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia institute of Technology. Just about all of her work has to do with gender specific research. This article primarily talks about the GPA differences between men and women going into the engineering or science field. From 1995-2000 Seymours studied a group of 149 students comprised of both male and female participants. They took students from the same class year and found that about 78% of women took their GPA into consideration as to whether or not they would persist in their field of study. On the other hand only 43% of male students took their GPA into consideration when making the decision to stay in their field of study. With men seeming to not worry as much about their GPA when facing the decision to stick to a certain career it does make sense that there would be a lot less females students who stick it out until the end. This article came from The Journal of Higher Education by Ohio State University.

Smeding, Annique. "Women In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (STEM): An Investigation Of Their Implicit Gender Stereotypes And Stereotypes'

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Connectedness To Math Performance." Sex Roles 67.11/12 (2012): 617-629. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. Annique Smeding has a PH.D. She works for the Universite de Savoie in France and in psychology. She does work on experimental social psychology. In this article she wrote it discusses a study that had 117 participants who were aerospace and mechanical engineering students. There were 53 female students and 64 male students that took place in this study. The students that participated all were from a selective French Engineering school. They also studied 84 Humanities undergraduates in which 43 were female and 41 were male students from a selective French university. All students in the study were under the age of 30 to hold true to the standard of them being undergraduates. In Study number two results were rather interesting. The article states, Results showed that female engineering students held weaker implicit gender math and gender-reasoning stereotypes than female humanities, male engineering and male humanities students. (617) The author is from the Laboratory of Psychology Social, Institute of Sciences Social at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Milgram, Donna. "How To Recruit Women And Girls To The Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math (STEM) Classroom." Technology & Engineering Teacher 71.3 (2011): 4-11. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Oct. 2013. Donna Milgram is the Executive Director and founder of the Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS). Her article is interesting because it focuses more on different ways to entice more women into the Science,

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Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics field. A major section in the article is labeled Recruitment Strategies That Work. Under this category Milgram talks about various different ways that have show to help in recruiting women to join the field in the past. Of various strategies she talks about one of them is using certain colors in advertising to help catch the intended readers eye. It has been proven that blue is the most generally preferred color among all people, but in the case of enticing females to join the STEM field, on might want to use the color pink.

Schreuders, P. D., S. E. Mannon, and B. Rutherford. "Pipeline Or Personal Preference: Women In Engineering." European Journal Of Engineering Education 34.1 (2009): 97-112. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. Schreuders, the primary author for this article, is part of the Department of Engineering & Technology Education at Utah State University. In this article Schreuders states, Unlike other historically male-dominated occupations that have seen gains in achieving gender equity, many science, math, and engineering fields have remained peculiarly unbalanced in terms of gender. (97) This article goes on to explain that unlike other occupations that have been predominately been run by males, which are now showing some sense of equity in the percentages, engineering is one of them that has not shown any drastic increase in women over the years. For the study done in this article there were 969 engineering students who were asked to complete a survey to the best of their ability. This survey included questions about demographics, high school course

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work, comfort with skills used in engineering, motivation, and interests. The students were from various different engineering schools across the United States. The majority of them, 37.3% (361), were from Utah State University. This article also hints that women seem do self-assessments more often than males, which might be a reason for them to second-guess themselves. The survey also seems to convey that women are much less comfortable than males when having to use computers, tools, and machinery. Overall, this analysis suggests that gender is important to consider in some respects Rather, it explains part of the difference in how comfortable students feel in various aspects of engineering education. Gender also helps explain the various motivations for going into engineering and the various interests for pursuing a career in engineering(111).

Sinkele, Carrie Nicole, and Davison M. Mupinga. "The Effectiveness Of Engineering Workshops In Attracting Females Into Engineering Fields: A Review Of The Literature." Clearing House 84.1 (2011): 37-42. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. On August 14, 2013, Nicole Carrie Sinkele was one of 420 teachers that was awarded the Governors Thomas Edison Award issued by the Ohio Academy of Science for their excellence in STEM education. Her article discusses some of the workshops that have been created to help educate and open up more opportunities in the engineering field for females. Even though you would expect with the equal rights movement that more females would enter into more STEM careers(37), the number of females graduating in the field of engineering is

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approximately one-fourth to that of males according to Carrie Sinkele an engineering instructor at Choffin Career and Technical Center in Ohio. Engineering continues to be a mans world even though, according to Slashinski, girls test scores in math and science classes are equivalent to boys (37). That is why engineering workshops have been developed to help educate and turn girls into engineers (Cavanagh 2007). The Extraordinary Women Engineering project was created in 2005 in attempt to find out what could help increase the number of females in the field of engineering. Some of the questions they tried to answer were related to hands on involvement, education background, and teacher and family influence. A questionnaire was taken prior and after the course and the answers were analyzed. The study included students from varied demographical backgrounds in the Toronto-Canada area, with approximately half the students being female. The results provided from the Anderson and Gilbride, professors at Ryerson University, study showed that only 32 percent of the participants correctly defined what an engineer was on a pretest. Basically the study that was conducted showed that it educated the knowledge of what an engineer was, but did not clearly indicate a significant interest in females interested in the field. Another study conducted by Weinburg, researcher at Southern Illinois University, and colleagues in 2007 looked at what the impact of including a robotics curriculum for females, but even though they were able to encourage females to participate, it also was unclear as whether it impacted any females to pursue an engineering career. A study conducted by Anderson and Gilbride, professors at

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Ryerson University, in 2007 to determine if a high school workshop promoting engineering had effect on males or females to pursue an engineering career had some positive results, The study looked beyond just the awareness impressions of girls and did find participating girls in the workshop did result in a significant increase in knowledge of the profession and with more girls wanting to pursue the career (38). Another study that specifically targeted responses from middle school girls after participation in an engineering camp was summarized by Quock, Lauren-Kovitz, and Bhattacharyya, engineers in Canada, The authors sought to determine the relevance of conducting an annual Introduce Girl to Engineering Day. It was hoped that the program would encourage middle school girls to learn more about the field of engineering. To provide the best opportunity for increasing the number of females pursuing an engineering degree, The reviewed studies point out that the most effective means of recruiting girls into STEM programs must incorporate the following factors: true knowledge of the profession, a network of support and relevance to personal goals(38).

Faloyan, Nike. "A Career In Engineering Is There For The Taking For Those Women Who Want It." Engineering & Technology (17509637) 8.6 (2013): 26. Business Source Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. In this article, Dr. Nike Faloyan, chair of the Association of Black Engineers, a female engineer consultant with Parsons Brinkerhoff, states that engineering careers for females is out there for the taking. One of the problems with females going into to the field of engineering is the misconception of what the field is.

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Historically engineering has been perceived as construction, and most women dont see themselves in construction. Faloyan goes on to state, women are exposed the wide variation of the careers on offer to them, then it has been found to be just as interesting to them as it is to men to chose engineering as their discipline. So in order to encourage more women to pursue an engineering career schools, parents, and engineering organizations, must do a better job at selling it properly and making woman realize there's more to engineering than just repairing things.

Hill, Theodore, and Erika Rogers. "Gender Gaps In Science: The Creativity Factor." Mathematical Intelligencer 34.2 (2012): 19-26. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. Theodore Hill is a mathematician known for his research on mathematical probability theory. He spent most of his career as a professor in the School of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Erica Rogers is retired from the California Polytechnic State University where she was a professor of computer science and director of their honors program. Their article gives the statistics for females in the engineering field. The underrepresentation of women in the mathematically-intensive sciences has been a concern in the United States for over a half a century. The U.S. National Science Foundation has set up the Advance of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers which has awarded over $130 million dollars encouraging and helping women to be successful in the engineering field. During a speech that Hillary Clinton

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conducted she argued, Women comprise 43 percent of the workforce, but only 23 percent are scientists and engineers. A study conducted by Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams, psychologists from Cornell, determined that reverse discrimination had nothing to do with the poor representation of women in the field. So why do women not show an interest in the field? One theory of thought is that women do no show their creativity into after they enter college and at that time are not encouraged to change their field to engineering. If our society chooses to continue to expend significant resources for psychological studies in gender gaps in science, at least some should be aimed at understanding essential creativity factors (25). Both authors are from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Glenda P. La Rue, et al. "Assessing An Engineering Day Camp For Middle-School Girls." Journal Of Professional Issues In Engineering Education & Practice 137.3 (2011): 127-134. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. The author La Rue is the Director of Women in Engineering Program at the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. Even though females and males performance in mathematics equated to approximately the same in eighth grade, females under performed in science compared to that of males. Graduating females with a bachelor of engineering represented only 18% compared to males at 82 %( Gibbons 2009). In order to increase the participation of females the engineering fields a free 1-week day camp for eighth grade girls was created by FESC (Future Engineers Summer Camp) in 2002. The camp goals are to recruit

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girls who already have an interest in math or science but are not interested or just gifted in engineering and give them the opportunity explores the possibility of entering the engineering field. FESC team heading up the camp consists of a regular tenure-track professor, the Director of the Women in Engineering Program, an outreach coordinator, and between two or four undergraduate engineering students. The camp has various modules, which involve sets of activities. Each module was evaluated to see if they had the WOW factor to peek interest in the program. In the 2006 camp, there were a total of 27 activities conducted during the week. They had the girls evaluate the activities and the campers defined the majority of the activities as exceptional. Of all the evaluations, the Leaders of the activities were rated the highest. The Leaders were chosen based on their enthusiasm and their ability to be an effective role model. Which proves that and positive role models encourage more females to pursue engineering disciplines in their life. A list of each activity conducted at the FESC camp on 2006 can be viewed at the website http://www.ceegs.ohio-state. A survey was taken prior to the weeklong camp and after completion of the camp. Below are the results of a survey the camp during a feasibility study for the 2006 camp:

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The above questionnaire was very informative to view how much the girls were influenced and how much their knowledge increased about careers in engineering, showing that prior to the camp only 49% interested prior to the weeks activities, but at the end of the week 88% of girls were interested. Even though it would be the goal to track girls who participated in the camp to see what their final career choice was, maintaining their current contact information has been difficult.

Wiehert, Ines. "How Engineering Can Use Its Strengths To Encourage Women Into Stem Careers." Engineering & Technology (17509637) 8.6 (2013): 23. Academic Search Premier. Web 20 Oct. 2013. Dr. Ines Wichert, a senior psychologist at the Kenexa High Performance Institute has a special interest in female leadership development. In the article she wrote,

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How Engineering Can Use Its Strengths to Encourage Women Into STEM Careers, She states that over 90 percent of women rule out a career in science, engineering, or technology by the age of 14. Among the problems she states as reasons women do not pursue an engineering career, is the fact that many engineering jobs are front-line roles in industrial environments which tend to be male dominated because of the lack of flexibility in the positions. Kenexa High Performance Institute has suggested three principles that organizations can adopt in order to recruit more females into the industry. Those three principles are science, data driven solutions, and better execution. Science is developing a clear understanding to what barriers woman are faced by taking an engineering position and what a company can do to break down those barriers. Then a company needs to know where they failing in recruiting and keeping female talent. They can do this by statically collecting information. Lastly, executing a plan to recruit and keep females. This can be done effectively by establishing a training program, which includes a mentor in the engineering field.

Bailey, Jane. "Industry Works To Introduce Engineering To More Girls." Industrial Paint & Powder 77.5 (2001): 6. Business Source Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. Jane Bailey, holds ED.D, Masters, and Bachelors degree in education. She is the Dean of Post Universitys School of Education. She writes this article talking about how there is a shortage of engineers today. Since woman constitutes 50% of the population, having them enter the engineering field could help alleviate this problem. To alleviate this shortage of qualified engineers a coalition of public and

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private groups launched what is called, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day during engineering week conducted in the month of February. This movement has continued on yearly to encourage females to pursue careers in engineering. The National Academy of Engineering hosted a live online chat for girls and women in engineering through Celebration of Women in Engineering (CWE). The Internet site is www.nae.edu.

Lawrence, Deborah A.1, lawred@sage.edu, and TINA A.2, mancut@sage.edu MANCUSO. "PROMOTING GIRLS' AWARENESS AND INTEREST IN Engineering." Technology & Engineering Teacher 72.1 (2012): 11-16. Education Full Text (H.W.Wilson). Web. 20 Oct 2013. Deborah Lawrence has a PH.D and is the Associate Professor in mathematics at The Sage Colleges. She holds a PHD, Mathematics, MA, Mathematics, and a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science. She actually responsible for designing mathematics programs at the college and is an advisor to SMART (Science, Mathematics, Research, and Technology) for women. In her article she writes, that According to Mason (2010), our economy is increasingly dependent on workers skilled in advanced technology, but at each education level, from K-12 onward, structural barriers discourage women from entering into the challenging and much higher-paid, fields of science, technology, engineering, and math(11). A program called Girls Excited about Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (GE2MCS) is a program designed to help encourage and support girls in high school and college in the field of science, math, and engineering. This

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specific article goes into how higher education can collaborate with local secondary schools to develop a program to promote the participation of girls in the study of engineering (11). One of the main points is to conduct workshops in schools to have a hand on approach to produce what is known as the WOW factor to spark an interest in the field. Both authors are from the Associate professor of Mathematics at Russell Sage College of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York.

Little, Alison J., and Bernardo A. Len de la Barra. "Attracting Girls To Science, Engineering And Technology: An Australian Perspective."European Journal Of Engineering Education 34.5 (2009): 439-445. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. Little is part of the School of Engineering at the University of Tasmania in Australia. This article discusses a project that was undertaken by an outreach team at the School of Engineering, at University of Tasmania, Australia, to attract girls to science, engineering, and technology (SET) (439). The project was called Attracting Girls to SET and has a website at http://www.stem.utas.edu.au and was funded in 2008 by the Australian Government of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. A pre-project questionnaire was asked to be filled out by 74 girls, and was rated using the Likert scale, with 1 meaning you strongly agree and 5 meaning you strongly disagree. The survey determined that the majority of the girls learned well with hand on activities, than teacher based teaching. This is in line with other, Studies, which have shown that more gender-aware teaching is

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better for girls engagement with the physical sciences (Daly 2009) (441). The other thing the pre-survey determined is that girls were more interested in the physical sciences, which U.S. surveys have come up with similar results(Johnson and Murphy 1984) (442). There were eighteen learning modules, which the girls participated in. Once the girls completed the modules a post-survey was taken and results were evaluated. Even though the survey result comparisons did not appear to have many significant results, a question asking the students whether they had a clear understanding on how to build a device returned a mean score of 2.5 compared to that of 4.0. This suggests the girls technology skills may have been enhanced as a result of their participation in the project (444).

Shapiro, Jenessa R. [b2] (analytic), and Amy M. [b1] (analytic) WILLIAMS. "The Role Of Stereotype Threats In Undermining Girls' And Women's Performance And Interest In STEM Fields : Women In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (English)." Sex Roles 66.3-4 (0001): 175-183. FRANCIS. Web. 21 Oct. 2013.0 The authors of this article are Amy M. Williams and Jenessa Shapiro. Williams is a part of the Department of Psychology at the University of California. Shapiro is part of the Anderson School of Management at the University of California. In their article they discuss how stereotyping has a negative effect on girls keeping them from pursuing careers in the STEM fields of study. Guderson et al. (2011) states, that negative stereotyping comes from parents and teachers resulting in girls performance and interest in the STEM fields (175). in addition to

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hindering performance, stereotype threat can also negatively influence career aspirations(175). Studying environmental factors that allow gender related math attitudes to undermine girls interest in STEM domain will facilitate the development of theoretically driven interventions (181).

Rutz, Eugene, and Michelle Shafer. "Impact Of An Engineering Case Study In A High School Pre-Engineering Course." Journal Of STEM Education: Innovations & Research 12.3/4 (2011): 26-34. Academic Search Premier.Web. 21 Oct. 2013. Eugene Rutz the Academic Director in the College of Engineering at the University of Cincinnati and has taught many face-to face courses. He writes about a study done in the Cincinnati area. The University of Cincinnati, and several area Cincinnati area high schools worked together to develop a preengineering course for high school students called Engineering Your Future (26). Since the study was conducted in a course of female students, which preselected they may be interested in the engineering field, the results could prove to be different if the group had been randomly selected. The end results did show an improvement in development of female cognitive skills and improved attitudes towards engineering itself (33). The study was supported by grant money from the Herman Schneider Foundation to Mt. Notre Dame High School and support from the national Science Foundation, but the results do not necessarily reflect the views of either organization (33).

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Bix, Amy Sue. "From "Engineeresses" To "Girl Engineers" To "Good Engineers":A History Of Women's U.S. Engineering Education." NWSA Journal 16.1 (2004): 27-49. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. Bix is an Associate Professor of History, Iowa State University. She also is in the ISUs Women's Studies Program. This article talks about the history of women entering the field of engineering. Before the 1900 hundreds, most high school advisors would sway females away from the field. The Society of Woman Engineers (SWE) was founded in 1950 to encourage woman to pursue the field. They have taken many strides to depict that engineering is not just a career path for males, but one of that women need to pursue. In the early 1950s corporations never thought to recruit woman in an engineering position. A business recruited for engineers never had advertisement that included women. A 1954 advertisement in MITs engineering magazine for the Ramo-Wooldridge Communications Corporation featured a photograph of its senior staff, 23 key men clad almost identically in dark suits and white shirts. In most of the 1960s, company recruitment for engineers ignored the existence of women in the profession (35) and advertisement was the proof. There were cartoons printed showing men building complicated machines while girls were shown carrying a doll looking up to a man. A 1968 ad centered around a photograph of a seriouslooking middle-aged man in white shirt, dark tie, and thick glasses, under the headline, This is the image of a Kodak mechanical engineer (36). There is also a phenomenon called micro discrimination that has developed through the years which is when when small. But cumulative assaults on womens careers are

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being made in work places and among society that has to be overcome still (44). This article comes from the NWSA journal so it may have some bias since there are many feminists in the organization, but overall it was very straightforward.