Engineering is and has long been the most male-dominated educational and occupational field. Yet in the 1970s, the decade in which Ruth Baltus began her study of chemical engineering, the numbers of women going into engineering increased significantly. The percentage of women earning undergraduate degrees in engineering grew rapidly from less than 1% in 1970 to 9% in 1979. Many expected that the number of women in engineering would continue to rise. Surprisingly however, most of the gains had occurred by the mid-1980s, and the percentage of women earning undergraduate engineering degrees has remained largely unchanged since 2000. Women engineers who graduated from college in the 1970s, a time in U.S. history when women’s entry into engineering seemed most promising but failed to gain traction, offer important perspectives on the challenges facing women engineers in the past and today. To that end, my research team conducted a survey of women engineers from that era to understand their perspectives and experiences. The survey respondents were drawn into the field by changing social forces interacting with their own interests, aptitudes, and goals, along with the influences of family, friends, high school teachers, and others. The challenges these women faced reflect gender troubles which are deeply embedded in our interpersonal interactions and social structures – so much so that progress for women in engineering has been slow despite the anticipation that as more women went into the field, things would have gotten better. This talk discusses the challenges the survey respondents identified, along with their proposed solutions.

What pioneering women engineers tell us: Choices and challenges in context

2019 Spring National Meeting

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