Women In Engineering

Electronic News, August 31, 1998 by Richard Bruner

In 1997, women were only 18.6 percent of the nation's "engineering and related technologists and technicians" and only 14.2 percent of "electrical and electronic technicians," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among Americans employed as engineers, only 8.5 percent are women, even though about 20 percent of engineering college graduates are female.

Such low percentages are not accidental, according to some advocates of change. Congresswoman Connie Morella of Maryland has introduced a bill in Congress which she says "will be a first step in countering the roadblocks for women in our rapidly-evolving high tech society."

The bill would establish a commission that she says will "help women break through the 'Glass Ceiling' as well as the 'Silicon Ceiling.' " She spoke of the need to counter "the barriers for women in the fields of science, engineering, and technology." Suzie Laurich-McIntyre, associate director of the Center for Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) at the University of Washington, believes there is still "underlying discrimination against women" entering the field of engineering. And that includes the semiconductor industry.

Not so, says Jeff Weir, spokesman for the Semiconductor Industry Association. "There is certainly nothing intentional or deliberate about it." It may have been true in earlier years, since "the cultural male-female biases that we all grew up with help explain a lot of things that occur out here in the business world. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure that out." But today, "I'm not aware of any overt discrimination against women or minorities in this industry."

Linda Scherr, program director for IBM women in technology, tends to support Mr. Weir's contention. In an interview with Electronic News, she pointed to IBM's long history of policies and programs designed to attract women and minorities to the corporation. She added, "In general, in the industry, I think the larger companies have recognized that, because of the shortage of technology workers, if they're not great companies for women and minorities to work for and to do business with, they're not going to survive. The larger companies have recognized this and they are trying to do what IBM is trying to do."

Ms. Scherr also spoke about the difficulties of pinpointing the reasons why women are under-represented in the high-tech industry. A task force survey, beginning in 1995, "looked at things like providing opportunities for women to network and making sure of their career development plans. But I think the real issue is the fact that, in our culture, more girls are not steered into math and science at an early age, so the pool that you go to, to tap resources as a high-tech company, does not contain a very large representation of women."

She cited a personal experience with her eight-year-old daughter who attended a computer camp this summer. When Ms. Scherr attended an orientation session, she discovered, "There are 12 counselors -- one woman, the rest are guys. And there were four girls out of 35 kids there."

IBM focuses on three areas in its efforts to attract women: "making sure IBM has the right environment" for women; recruiting college-educated women through relationships with universities and mentoring programs; and trying "to reach into the long-term pipeline, kindergarten through 12th grade and see how to impact our culture really and have more girls pursue educations and careers in math, science, and technology."

Women who are attracted to math often reject physics. College mathematics teacher Lynn Steen of St. Olaf College points out, "Any student who's going to become an engineer has to take both physics and mathematics. You have as many women in (undergraduate-level) mathematics as you have men, but you don't have as many in physics. The women who are in mathematics tend to go into areas that don't require much physics -- school teaching, finance, operations research, the telecommunications industry." And they go into statistics. "More than half of the presidents of the American Statistical Association for the last several years have been women."

In testimony last March 10 to the Subcommittee on Technology of the House Science Committee, Catherine Jay Didion, Executive Director of Association for Women in Science, said, "It is well documented that women tend to drop out of science and mathematics fields at all levels of the academic pipeline. Women scientists are discouraged from an early age; even Barbie dolls have been manufactured to say, 'math class is tough.' A girl who is having trouble with math is often told that her difficulties are normal, rather than being challenged to improve."

As another advocate, Ms. Laurich-McIntyre of WISE told EN, "Girls believe it's not cool to be smart in things that are technical and certainly not cool to be smarter than boys." Ms. Laurich-McIntyre believes young girls need an extra push from mentors and tutors to encourage them to study physics and math.