Author Naomi Baker - Chemical Engineer. Photo by Scott Hurst.
In my graduation class of around 50 chemical engineers, there were three women. Dawn’s father was a senior VP with the Belgium office of an international chemical company, so she had grown up exposed to industry and to engineering. The other woman, whose name I’ve forgotten, was a so-so student engaged to a classmate. It was so widely known that he did most of her homework and projects that the department head made them take their final year of classes in opposite semesters.
Twenty-nine years later, a good friend’s daughter is about to graduate from the same university. She is one of three women in her graduating class of mechanical engineers.
The president of the international Society for Petroleum Engineers, Behrooz Fattahi, addressed this issue in his May 2010 column in the Journal of Petroleum Technology, “Discover Who You Are”, which I recommend. Although women surpass men in the numbers employed in the workforce in both the U.S. and Canada, they represent only 17.5% of those employed in the U.S. oil and gas industry. Since that is my field, I can attest that most of those women are employed in clerical and accounting positions. This is a shame, because this particular industry has historically paid some of the highest salaries to engineers and geologists, both for new hires and throughout the range of employment in terms of experiences and job descriptions. I want women to get those salaries, and to have stimulating and important work. I’m still enough of a rarity in the field that, only last week, a contractor remembered meeting me once before, about 20 years ago. That’s how rare we still are.
Fattahi also points out that women earn only 20% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in science and engineering. That again parallels my own experiences, where the female freshman enrollment was close to parity but women left the degree program in higher numbers than men, as the years slogged on. I have also found that graduate women left the profession at higher rates than my male colleagues.
A study by the Catalyst, Inc., a nonprofit which works globally to expand opportunities for women, shows the breakdown between men and women in male-dominated fields, in the U.S. and Canada, which confirms this trend in many fields, both in professional fields as well as skilled positions.
The biases exhibited in hiring and promoting women in the male-dominated fields aren’t necessarily conscious. As the Catalyst article points out:
Because senior leadership teams, which tend to be dominated by men, set the tone for talent management norms, masculine stereotypes can creep into HR tools. All employees are inevitably affected by these tools; employees who meet criteria (potentially based on masculine stereotypes) are selected for promotion and/or tapped as future leaders and/or offered development opportunities. Because male-dominated industries and occupations tend to be particularly vulnerable to masculine stereotypes due to lack of diversity, women may find excelling in these industries or occupations to be particularly difficult.
As a friend of mine used to say “They don’t know what we are supposed to look like.” My first job was at Amoco, and the few women I worked with made a game of predicting which of our fellow engineers would be selected for fast-tracking through supervisory and management positions – based on their looks and height. Since none of us fit the old stereotypes about how a managing engineer was supposed to look or act, the company seemed to not be able to figure out how we would fit into their org charts.
I actively encourage young women to take as much science and math as they can in middle and high school, explaining that they will not have the option to study engineering or many of the sciences if they have not adequately prepared before they enter college. When I ask them why they are not interested in engineering as a profession, it’s often a result of not understanding exactly what engineers do on a day-to-day basis, math phobia, or unfortunately, a sometimes squeamish attitude about fieldwork or misconceptions about the work being too masculine or “dirty”.
As a last thought about stereotypes, I’ll leave you with this anecdote. I was in my car in a parking lot, waiting on my family’s errand. It was night, and dark, and I was enjoying the cool breeze through the open window. Two teenage girls were standing on the sidewalk, gossiping as they sometimes do, when I became aware of the topic – a third girl, who they apparently did not like. One of the girls said “She wants to be an electrical engineer, so that ought to tell you what she looks like” to which the other replied, “Yea, she’s kinda ugly.”
And yes, I spoke to them, sternly but kindly.
Good post. It is an interesting topic, I graduated from chemical engineering in the uk last year and out of myclass of 60 9 were female. I must say my experience sounds a bit different as the girls in my class were by far the most driven to do well and achieved some of the best grades.
However I would say in my experience that women tend to be less interested in things like engineering. This is ofcourse a generalisation but I think it may be naive to think that if all was equal engineering would be 50-50 men women. However I do think you are correct as far as executive level bias goes.
It may jUst be the uk but there is no bias in getting into an engineering degree, it is all based on grades and women tend to have the best high school grades.
Well done Naomi! Naomi also is a terrific mentor and example for women wanting to go into the engineering profession. She’s successful, has a beautiful house she has paid for with her hard work, nice car (a convertable), 2 dogs, oh and 2 wonderful sons.
My own daughter in graduate school for geology. To say it has been stressful is an understatement. Her first advisor at MIT expected her to bring coffee to all the meetings. She was the “woman” so she wouldn’t mess up the order (so he thought). Her advisor now is a woman that took her on because she wants women to be successful in graduate school. This woman advisor is VERY BUSY (she’s in charge or rebuilding the Alvin). She doesn’t have to take time to mentor and help my daughter. But she does. Because, like Naomi, she knows the importance of women entering these fields and that women can be successful and heck, this stuff can be very interesting and exciting also.
@David – I have to agree with your point. The women that I graduated with were usually more driven, and often among the brightest, for a reason. Because of the obstacles, the biases, the culture, you won’t make it if you are not driven.
I think the relationship is probably a bit less obvious. I think a lot of it probably comes down to what books we are given as kids. I always think things like this can’t easily be distilled down to one problem. It’s a combination between social expectations, the persons interests and what they enjoy as they grow up.
My degrees are in the biological sciences which seems to draw more women. In college, most of my classes were at least half female. Of the 6 people in my graduate lab, 4 of us were women. The research I worked with after grad school was all female and the forensics lab I later went to was about half and half. I only got to the master’s level so I have not had to deal with the PhD gender issues.
One of the reasons I chose to homeschool was to make sure my son AND daughter get a strong math and science. They may not go into a science field, but at least they will learn useful skills. Right now I can see my son doing some kind of engineer work and my girl…well I just don’t know. I think she is going to negotiate world peace and kick anyone’s butt who stands in her way. She wanted me show her exactly where babies come out and she wanted me to be the exhibit.
yeah my daughter would not be in grad school now if she hadn’t gone to a school that pushed math and science for women. There is an excellent program run by RPI called WISE (Women in Science and ENgineering). It targets high school women for math and science careers and mentors students at the high school level.
I’m quickly gaining on the “leaky pipeline” problem myself as a grad student. It’s a scary workplace out there regardless of gender in sciences and engineering, and strong mentors (such as yourself) will certainly help us n00bs along the way.
Naomi,
I really enjoyed reading your post – thank you for writing about such a controversial, but important, topic! Last year I graduated from the University of Alberta with my Bachelors of Science in Materials Engineering. The female representation in my class was 6 out of 36 students. I have now moved on to complete my Masters degree in Materials Engineering (at the same university) where the ratio of females to males is MUCH higher – although this trend is not reflected in my personal research group (only 2 females out of 12 students).
I was very fortunate in that I registered in the Co-Op program, whereby work terms are interspersed with school terms. There are a total of 20 working months integrated into a 4 year educational degree, which adds another year to the program. During my Co-Op experience, I worked at 3 separate companies: an oil and gas service company (where the lab work force was approximately 40% female – all engineers or engineering technologists), a local research company (I was the only female engineer out of that group of 20 engineers), and my final work term was at a steel mill in Ontario (I was the only female in MANAGEMENT, let alone the only female engineer). I have therefore had a variety of experience in the ‘real world’ and have seen different responses to female engineers in the work force.
I still remain hopeful that women will be respected in the work place, although I do recognize the ‘glass ceiling’ that inevitably may be present in some work environments. During my work term in Ontario, I was told by a trusted (and male!) mentor that women bring a very different perspective to the table when it comes to problem-solving. He truly valued female involvement in all ranges of company activities (meaning, everyday plant operations or major technical decisions or suggestions on shifts in economic planning). I hope that all management teams (male or female) will learn that EVERY individual can bring something important to the table, regardless of gender.
Thanks for the great comments, KJ> I hope you continue to rock the engineering world!