The State of Women

in Engineering
Welcome

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Friday, October 28, 2016
The State of Women
in Engineering

Jessica Rannow
FY17 President
Society of Women Engineers
The State of Women
in Engineering –
Framing the Discussion

Peggy Layne, P.E., F.SWE

Assistant Provost for Faculty Development
Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost
Virginia Tech
 Employed women within the science and engineering
workforce as a percentage of selected occupations: 2013

Source: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and

Engineering: 2015. www.nsf.gov/statistics.wmpd/
Source: American Society for Engineering Education, 2016
 Percentage of Women
Engineering Faculty
25% 23.2%

20% 18.4%
15.7%
15%
10.5%
10%

5%

0%
All faculty Professor Associate Assistant
Professor Professor

Source: American Society for Engineering Education, 2016

 Median Earnings (dollars)
120000
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
All full-time All scientists & Aerospace Mechanical
workers engineers engineers engineers
Men Women
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2014 American Community Survey
Why So Few? What Does
Social Science Tell Us
About Women in
Engineering?

Peter Meiksins, Ph.D.

Vice Provost for Academic Programs
Professor of Sociology
Cleveland State University
There is no single answer
• Need to consider what happens at each point in the life course:

• K-12
• University
• Leaks in the pipeline
• Workplace
• Race and gender
K-12 Pipeline: Why aren’t girls attracted to
engineering?
• Is the field still stereotyped as male?
• Does engineering present itself so as to appeal to young women?
• Is it about math?
Ø Math achievement?
Ø Do girls enjoy/value math?
Ø Do girls have options?
Ø Stereotype threat
What happens in university?
• Is there a chilly climate?

• Is the curriculum too “male?”

Are there leaks in the pipeline?
• Do more women leave during college?

• Do women graduates enter the profession?

• Do women continue on to graduate programs?

What happens in the workplace?
• Is there hiring bias?

• Work/family conflict?

• Are women’s contributions undervalued?

Women of color: Why even fewer?
• Starting at community colleges

• Declining enrollment at HBCUs

• Need to address both race and gender

Established and Emerging
Themes in Research on
Women in Engineering

Kacey Beddoes, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Leading Themes
Established Emerging

1. Explicit bias 1. Teamwork culture

2. Engineering gendered 2. Intersectionality

male

3. Math outcomes

4. Leaky pipeline
Emerging Theme: Teamwork Culture
• Growing body of evidence documenting gender biases in
teamwork settings
• implicit and explicit biases and sexism
• Contributions not recognized / ideas not “heard”
• microaggressions
• team roles
• project topics
• evaluation
Emerging Theme: Teamwork Culture
• Suggestions that teamwork culture distinguishes engineering
from other fields and helps explain underrepresentation

• Fundamental shift in thinking about underrepresentation

Emerging Theme: Intersectionality
• Gender cannot be understood apart from other facets of identity
• Race and ethnicity
• Socioeconomic status
• Sexual orientation

• Forms of disadvantage not additive, but intersecting in complex

ways
Promising Directions for Future Research
• Stereotypes: where have they changed and where do they
still have effects?

• Workplace experiences of engineers outside the academy

• What can be done to make engineering more appealing to women?

• What are the gendered structures of engineering education and

workplaces that impede change?
Promising Directions for Future Research
• Rigorous studies addressing the intersections of race, ethnicity,
gender, and sexuality

• Meta-analyses that look across disciplines to make sense of

conflicting findings and provide grounds for moving forward to
advance research

• Gender in teamwork
 Driving Positive Systemic
Change in STEM Workplaces
Through Critical Research,
Policy, & Practice
Heather Metcalf, Ph.D.
Director of Research & Analysis
The Association for Women in Science
metcalf@awis.org
AWIS Research Areas
• Diversity, inclusion, & broadening participation
• Equitable workplace policies, practices, & cultures
• Leadership, promotion, & recognition
• Innovation & entrepreneurship
Diversity, Inclusion, & Broadening Participation
• Broadening Participation Report
• > 68% of people who report “severe difficulty” walking are outside of
the workforce, vs <14% of people with no difficulty walking
• LGBTQ+ women in physics: 3x more harassment
• Since 2003, black women have earned 1% of PhDs in physics,
engineering, math & computer science, & geosciences respectively
• One AWIS member was the only black person in the U.S. to earn a PhD in
astronomy when she graduated in 2011
Equitable Workplace Policies, Practices, &
Cultures
Equitable Solutions for Retaining a Robust Workforce
How often do work demands conflict
• < 3/5 satisfied with work-life with personal life demands?
integration
• = importance by gender below 40
• 54% women v 28% men responsible
for core household tasks
• Men 16% more likely to report
workplaces that are family friendly
• Women 10% more likely to report
negative career consequences from
attempts to obtain WLI
Leadership, Promotion, & Recognition
AWARDS: Regardless of their representation in the nomination pool,
women were half as likely to win research awards
2011-2014:
Service &
Teaching Awards
Physical Sciences % Women Tenure
Track Faculty

Mathematical Sciences % Women Teaching/

Service Awards
Research &
Scholarly Awards

% Women Scholarly
Biological & Life Sciences
Awards

0% 15% 30% 45% 60%

Innovation & Entrepreneurship
• Five most entrepreneurial fields
• Highest industry funding
• Lowest rates of women’s participation
• Women in STEM:
• File fewer patents
• Half as likely to start, own or manage a business
• Half as likely to be tapped by tech transfer officers for commercialization
• Receive <4% of venture capital (<1% to women of color)
• Receive <14% of SBIR funding
• Bias and barriers in:
• Funding & access to key networks/sponsors
• Training environments
• Reward structures & perceptions of commercialization
• Promotion
Get in Touch
Engineering Culture & Female Attrition:
Four Insights from SWE’s National Gender Culture Study 2016

Beth Michaels
Primer Michaels
www.primermichaels.com
“I often refer to a subtle headwind
that I have felt throughout my
career. These results shed new
light on just what I was feeling.”

Barbara Brockett, V.P. Engineering

30+ yrs. of experience
The National Engineering Culture Study Questions

Desired
Culture

Personal Current
Values Culture
What we tolerate is what we endorse.
Reported Constraints

Bureaucracy
Cost Reduction
Hierarchy
Resource Constrained / Long Hours
Short Term Focus
1) Women respond to the culture differently
than men.
The Values Gap Driving Female Leaders’ Attrition:
Accountability
2) Women have limited tolerance for values stretch.
3) Women sense time & fairness differently
than men.
Female Leader Outcomes
McKinsey 2016….
89 European Companies
% female leaders / 2 trustees =
+48% pre-tax/int earnings
+17% stock price growth =
Criteria for investment decisions
4) Diversity 101 – Gender Intelligence – has
disappeared from corporate D/I outcomes.
Female Engineering Leaders’ Message to C-Suite:

Be accountable…
• Decide what you want
• Mean what you say
• Take down the barriers and
let me do my job.
SWE Research

Roberta Rincon, Ph.D.

Manager of Research
Society of Women Engineers
Climate Control:
Gender & Racial Bias in Engineering
• Study conducted with the Center for WorkLife Law at the
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
• Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law
• Su Li, Ph.D., Director of Research on Organization Bias
• Survey of over 3,000 engineers
• Focus on implicit bias
• Experiences of bias in the workplace
• Effects of bias in hiring, promotions, performance evaluations, and
compensation
Prove-It-Again
Engineers of
White Men Women
Color
I feel that I am held to a higher standard than my
40% 53% 60%
colleagues
I have to repeatedly prove myself to get the same level
35% 61% 68%
of respect and recognition as my colleagues

I have been mistaken for administrative or custodial staff 9% 45% 45%

“I have learned that I never have the benefit of the

“…I have to prove myself to student[s] and
doubt…and must make for myself opportunities
colleagues before I can get the respect that a male
which are given to others.” – Hispanic female
will get by default.” – White female engineer
engineer
Tightrope
Engineers of
White Men Women
Color

I seldom receive pushback when I behave assertively 67% 51% 49%

I am more often expected to do “office housework” as

26% 55% 52%
compared to colleagues in comparable roles
I have the same access to desirable assignments as my
85% 65% 55%
colleagues

“I had my white male counterpart engineers who were

“I was specifically asked to get coffee in the being given the opportunity to present papers [at a
middle of my presentation during one conference]. My boss wanted me to write those papers
event.” – Hispanic female engineer for them, but didn’t want me to go to the conference to
present.” - African-American female engineer
Maternal Wall
White Men Women

Asking for family leave or flexible work arrangements

63% 50%
would not hurt my career
Having children did not change my colleagues’
78% 55%
perceptions of my work commitment or competence

“When I was pregnant, my boss really didn’t know

how to handle planning for my absence. He took a “The biggest obstacle is the negative perception
team leader role away from me when I was about of needing a flexible work schedule as a single
20 weeks pregnant ‘just in case’ I had to be out mother.” - African-American female engineer
before my due date. “ – White female engineer
 Workplace Processes
Engineers of
White Men Women
Color

As compared to my colleagues, I work more but get paid less 29% 40% 48%
I feel I get less honest feedback on my performance than my
20% 29% 35%
colleagues
I have been given the advancement opportunities and
71% 62% 53%
promotions I deserve
I have had as much access to informal or formal networking
84% 67% 64%
opportunities as my colleagues

“I didn’t realize until I moved up to [management] how much “I miss out on informal social networking
I was underpaid until I was able to see the entire team’s pay. I opportunities when my colleagues go
also realized the trend was not just with me but the other hunting/fishing/to lunch or happy hour and
females on the team.” – White female engineer don’t invite me.” – White female engineer
SWE Research Site research.swe.org
STEM Reentry
• Partnership with iRelaunch
• Task Force Founding Members:
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Caterpillar
• Cummins
• General Motors Company reentry.swe.org
• IBM
• Intel
• Johnson Controls
2017 STEM Reentry
• Task Force companies will include:
• Ford Motor Company
• GE Power
• Johnson & Johnson
• Medtronic
• Northrop Grumman
reentry.swe.org
• Schneider Electric
Future Research
• Minority Women in the Workplace
• Collaboration with NSBE
• Experiences of early career engineers
• K-12
• Community college pathways
SWE Magazine

Anne Perusek
Director of Editorial and Publications
Society of Women Engineers
From SWE’s Beginning
Aiding Governmental Agencies

1954 Women’s Bureau Bulletin,

U.S. Department of Labor, compiled
with SWE’s statistics
And at the Same Time
“Women themselves will
continue, for some time to
come, to carry the major
responsibility for
development of equal
opportunity in engineering.”

- Katharine Stinson, SWE’s third

president, left, with Joan Barrage.
Stinson was the first woman engineer at
the Federal Aviation Administration.
Documentation Through the Years

Profiles were published

irregularly between 1963
and 1982. Research picked up
again in 1993 with the release of
“A National Survey of Women and
Men Engineers: A Study of the
Members of 22 Engineering
Societies.” A follow-up was
released in 2006.
SWE Annual
Literature
Review
More than 15 years
running, issued every
spring. All past literature
reviews are compiled into a
single document available
at swe.org
Coming this Spring: Special issue of
SWE Magazine
• Devoted to research, presented in a manner that is accessible
to non-academics
• Includes:
- Annual Literature Review
- SWE’s research results
- Insights from noted researchers
- Digital format with print on demand option
- Stay tuned through SWE social media, issue release will
be announced in March
In Conclusion

Karen Horting, CAE

Executive Director & CEO
Society of Women Engineers
Questions?
 Thank You

Please join us
at our
WE16 Career Fair