Do you think women are fully supported to pursue an engineer career?

We all have personal views based on personal experiences and they are valid from our personal experience.  But clearly we are but a few of billions and most of us replying here are male so how valid are our singular personal experiences?  Let us instead look at the data since we are technical people.

Here are statistics on engineering enrollment of several countries active on Element14 taken from a Wikipedia article :

I have lived and worked in all four of these countries.  The numbers are not good.  Several here have commented how difficult it is to improve situation.  True, but it appears to me we are doing something wrong.  Here are some numbers for the European Union on actual employment taken from a UK study by WES.

Clearly there are some countries doing considerably better than others.  The UK where I lived, worked, and love is at the bottom.  Why are women in Sweden 2.5x more likely to take up engineering than in the UK?  I didn't look up the numbers for Japan (one of my favorite places in the world) but I lived and worked there also and the numbers must be even worse.  Let's not leave the US and Canada out though as described in this article.

I find this interesting.   Note the numbers for biological and biomedical which are much higher than Engineering and Computer Science.  A quick search turned up the statistic that in 2017 for the first time there were more women enrolled in medical school in the United States than men.  Of course that wasn't always the case.  Further, the article stated that there was no difference in patient treatment outcome for women physicians than men which is no surprise.

The data does not show that women are fully supported to become engineers and it is worse in some places than others. This is a complicated issue that is unlikely to be quickly resolved but engineering and computer science clearly have ground to make up.

"...Let us instead look at the data since we are technical people..."

Equally need to be very careful how we interpret other people's statistical data though.

In the first table, the years don't match, with a difference of 7 years in some places.

In the chart alone, it is not clear as what is considered to be an 'engineering professional' role and this may vary by country to country distorting those figures. It is also around 13year old data.

"...Note the numbers for biological and biomedical which are much higher than Engineering and Computer Science..."

I was going to comment earlier if this perhaps might have something to do with the stereotypical image of the engineer ? In the past, engineers have quite often been photographed by the media in boiler suits and greasy overalls, whereas medicine and science professions have typically had pristine white lab coats. Maths and IT are usually suits/casual dress. Could it be that women tend to be more critical of their appearance and the stereotypical image is affecting that career path ? However Computer and Information Sciences here doesn't quite support that theory.

"...The data does not show that women are fully supported to become engineers and it is worse in some places than others..."

The data here is showing the percentage of women with degrees and in employment. Not sure that it actually indicates whether or not they are being supported or not though.

When I was at school in the UK, all women and men participated in maths and science subjects as part of the core curriculum, so they were presumably supported equally through the core engineering subjects (ICT didn't exist in my day) for at least the first 9 years or so until they could eventually drop subjects and take electives.

So that would be the go/no-go point for many (both women and men) if you were to pursue a career in engineering or not, as you would struggle to get into an undergraduate degree course straight from school if you had dropped certain subjects. Or you would have to take a couple of years out to take these subjects at college first before then applying for an undergraduate degree.

The data here would tend to suggest that there is a significant shift in percentages by the undergraduate degree stage, before entering engineering as a profession. Unfortunately the data doesn't show the percentages entering undergraduate degree.

Hi Dave,

My experiences for the most part are similar to the other commenters and I understand the perspectives.  I did not do a thorough study, just a brief Google search, and was aware of the shortcomings of the statistics when I made the post.  It is easy to pick it apart and I agree there are parts that could be interpreted differently.  So if there is better and more recent data, especially if it indicates something different I would like to see it.  But the data above isn't that old and things like this don't change overnight.

The bigger point is that there are issues here that many of us don't see because it may not exist around us currently,  occurs out of our sight, or is deemed minor and/or acceptable.  An extreme but not uncommon example is the misogynistic treatment that Karen described.  I see it all the time on other forums and blogs.  I shouldn't speculate on reasons or causes because I am unqualified but there must be cultural aspects in upbringing, education, opportunity, and the workplace.  I won't take a position on the preference of women for other professions as I am not qualified.  But I do think as a minimum we shouldn't be too quick to say "not a problem around here" when we aren't the ones facing the problem.

Hi Frank,

I'm not saying that there isn't an issue. I think this discussion has flagged up awareness of a number of important issues still needing to be addressed. Some however I think are perhaps more cross-discipline issues rather than specific to engineering which the poll was about.

As for support, then I've seen a huge increase in women in STEM type activities in educational publications over the past years which can only be a positive move, however the transition from school to undergraduate degree still appears to be unbalanced. The incidents reported on social media activities is indeed worrying.

Hi Frank,

I'm not saying that there isn't an issue. I think this discussion has flagged up awareness of a number of important issues still needing to be addressed. Some however I think are perhaps more cross-discipline issues rather than specific to engineering which the poll was about.

As for support, then I've seen a huge increase in women in STEM type activities in educational publications over the past years which can only be a positive move, however the transition from school to undergraduate degree still appears to be unbalanced. The incidents reported on social media activities is indeed worrying.