Jobs in engineering are in higher demand than ever, but women are struggling to find their place in a male-dominated field.
Local organizations such as the Hampton Roads chapter of The Society of Women Engineers are working to provide an environment in engineering that women can enter with confidence.
But one issue is getting young women interested in the field in the first place.
While boys usually play with toys that introduce them to technology and early forms of engineering, girls are typically given dolls, said Cathleen Saunders, vice-president of SWE.
“Most parents don’t think, ‘My daughter might want to build bridges instead of play with Barbies,’” Saunders said.
Young women are now being encouraged to consider these interests thanks to the integration of Science, Technology, Math and Engineering (STEM) in the classroom. Young women now have more interaction at a young age than ever before because of STEM programs, according to Stem for Her.
Across the board, statistics show that women of all ages struggle to elbow into engineering careers. According to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee , only 14 percent of engineers are women.
This creates a huge disparity in the workplace for the few women who do choose this career.
Since the 1980s, when only 5.8 percent of engineers were women, there have been efforts to encourage more women to become interested in engineering and technology, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering said.
Kodi Berger, a lighting and technical engineer for Kimley-Horn, has noticed the discrepancy in her work. After becoming interested in engineering programs in high school, Berger attended Michigan Technology Institute, where the ratio of men to women was four to one. Those numbers can make a woman feel pretty nervous, Berger said.
One of the issues is not only getting young women interested, but keeping them interested as they get older, according to Berger. The issue becomes especially prominent as women want to start a family.
“You realize that you would rather spend more time with your kids than your work,” Berger said. “But your work demands more than 40 hours and so you try to find something that is a little bit less demanding of your time.”
Companies such as Berger’s have started to combat these problems by offering more flexible work schedules, as well as emergency-childcare programs.
Berger also said that it helps to have other women around to be mentors and peers. Working in a male-dominated field can be difficult, Berger said. But having even just one such female relationship can help a woman engineer feel more supported in a field with such a large gender imbalance.
Starting at a young age
Reasons for the slow growth in female participation have been related to a lack of engineering role models, misconceptions of what it is to be an engineer and having fewer technical problem-solving skills taught at a young age, according to ASME.
Saunders said she noticed this disparity when she started taking engineering classes in college.
“I had my dad showing me and if a woman doesn’t have that, then they won’t think about engineering,” Saunders said. “A lot of it comes down to the parents and if the parents don’t try to engage the girls as much as the boys in STEM activities, then the girls will lose interest.”
SWE has developed outreach programs to combat these issues and create opportunities for women in engineering.
The organization has worked to reach high-school students with its pre-collegiate summer program, Unite. The program is directed at talented high-school students from groups historically underserved and underrepresented in STEM.
Activities include experiments such as filling a bottle up with dirty water and teaching the students how to make a filtration system. Girls are just as interested as boys, according to Saunders.
The program’s goal is to make the field seem as accessible to young women as young men, something that Saunders says parents can forget to do at home.
“Girls are inclined to like math and girls are inclined to do math,” Berger said. “It is just a matter of whether or not they’re being supported at home and whether or not they continue to be supported in it.”
