Shortly after a female engineer signed on for her first position in the early 1970s, her boss commented that when she was hired the company was facing affirmative action pressures. He said that faced with the prospect of hiring a Caucasian woman or an African American, she became the lesser of two evils, so to speak.

Granted, this was an isolated incident, and given the social climate at the time, it probably was not one specific to the engineering profession. But, fast-forward to the present and it raises questions as to why engineering has lagged behind while women and racial minorities have integrated into so many other fields.

Women are currently about as rare as slide rules and minorities as common as drafting boards in the average engineering department. There are various reasons why women and minorities don’t enter the profession. Engineers, no matter what their gender or race, are becoming an endangered species. The numbers of engineering students and working engineers have decreased over the years, and unless more people are encouraged into the field, the profession could face serious shortages.

“There is a shortage [of engineers], and that shortage could be made up by women and minorities,” says Patrick J. Natale, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). Historically, women and minorities were underrepresented in many fields, yet changes have occurred in these areas and engineering has fallen behind. Factors such as a lack of role models, economic disadvantages, lack of proper education, and outright discrimination dissuade people from pursuing engineering careers.

Role models

Many young women and minorities are not interested in engineering because they do not see themselves represented in the field. Engineering has an image problem, Natale says, because young people do not know what engineers do or they find it uninteresting. If a young person shows interest in engineering that person is immediately asked if he or she likes math and science, instead of being shown the more interesting aspects of what engineers do.

“We want [young people] to be aware that there are opportunities here,” says Natale.

The NSPE recently started “The American Engineering Campaign,” a nationwide education effort to promote available engineering opportunities. The NSPE programs provide potential engineers with role models by placing engineering professionals in classrooms. NSPE is not the only organization trying this approach. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME), and countless others also provide mentors to female and minority students.

Education

Young people need qualified teachers in addition to role models. According to B. Dundee Holt, NACME’s vice president of communication, minorities from economically disadvantaged school systems are less likely to have teachers certified in math and science. Even if minority students show more interest in math than their peers, as a NACME poll found, they are given less access to education.

“Access more than anything keeps minorities from engineering,” says Holt.

In grade school the ways in which females are socialized often dissuade them from math and science. Research shows that sexist attitudes, from both teachers and students, influence the way girls are treated in the classroom. Boys tend to receive more personal attention from teachers, causing girls to participate less. Math and science become “boy stuff,” and girls feel pressured to conform to gender roles.

Engineer and author Kaitlin Duck Sherwood says girls tend to fall behind in math during high school. Gender conformity pressures are the strongest during these years, and young people will submit to gender roles — no matter how unfounded — in order to fit in. According to Sherwood, eliminating these roles is key to easing women into technical fields.

“If one of the gender roles is that ‘girls don’t like technical fields,’ it’s no surprise that girls drop out of technical fields,” Sherwood says.

Women and minorities in college

Lack of exposure to math and science for minorities and females in primary education is made obvious in college admissions statistics. According to 1999 NSPE statistics, only 14.6% of students on undergraduate engineering career tracks were African American, Hispanic American, or American Indian, and only 18.9% were women.

Continue on page 2