Women in Engineering
According to a 1996 report published by the National Science Foundation (NSF)1, a significant disparity exists between the percentage of women in non-technical fields in both education and industry. Women comprise between 51% of the US population and 45% of the US labor force, but account for only 22% of employed scientists and engineers. At the undergraduate college level, women still tend to study non-technical fields more commonly than technical ones. Women earn more than half of the bachelor's degrees in social sciences, however, they earn only one third of the bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physical sciences. Women earn only 16% of the bachelor's degrees in engineering. Women earn an even smaller fraction of graduate degrees in science and engineering.
An even smaller percentage of women exists in the engineering workplace than in undergraduate engineering education. This reality has been attributed to two main factors. First, women often cite family-oriented reasons for taking time off from work and say that the engineering industry is not conducive to such leaves of absence due to the incredibly fast rate of change in technology. Second, women, more often than men, choose to enter other fields such as law, medicine, and education after obtaining bachelor's degrees in engineering.
Studies have also attempted to trace this disparity back to the high school level. Although male and female high school students do not differ significantly in the science courses they take, male students are much more likely than female students to take physics classes -- advanced physics classes in particular. According to the Dean of Admissions at MIT2, many math and science magnet high schools have roughly equal enrollment by gender. Most of the women from these schools, however, choose not to study math and science fields in college. Instead, they pursue courses of study in liberal arts, medicine, and law.
