In the 1970s, many feminists decried the institutionalized bias against permitting women to enter law and medicine, effectively limiting them to careers as nurses and secretaries. You might recall that not so long ago Harvard University President Lawrence Summers was forced to resign after making the claim that women have inferior "intrinsic" aptitudes in math and science.
Today, a majority of medical students are women, having successfully deconstructed the myth that women lack the innate scientific and mathematical skills of which the male brain is capable. It seems almost laughable today to think that women were once barred from medical schools — how many of us have not had a female doctor? But the fact that women have successfully challenged one persistent prejudice has not translated into universal acceptance.
Why hasn't the number of women in engineering risen along with the numbers in the rest of the majors? The most blatant culprit is the still-standing belief that engineering is a boys' club. The implications of this prevailing attitude are obvious: aside from the wide gender gap, a lack of women engineers threatens the nation's economic competitiveness.
Women in nations with booming economies like China and India have — thanks in large part to the progress of their western counterparts — made significant strides in bolstering their nations' science and engineering industries. Their impact has also extended beyond their native borders. Indeed, it was New Delhi-born Arati Prabhakar who became the first woman to receive a doctorate in applied physics from Caltech, a distinction which ultimately led to President Clinton's decision to appoint her as the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the first time a woman had assumed the post of director at the institute.
But American women have not taken to the engineering trenches in the numbers one might expect. Indeed, for every Toni Morrison or Nancy Pelosi — women who have made their names in non-scientific or mathematics-based professions — there are less than half the number of women in engineering.
Historically, women have made up only the tiniest fraction of engineers. How many famous women engineers can you name? And when they do complete their engineering degrees, many women choose to transition into related industries, like technology or aeronautics. Almost all of NASA's female astronauts (including Mae Jemison, Judith Resnik, Lisa Nowak, and the late Kalpana Chawla) completed their undergraduate studies in engineering only to move on to other specialized fields. The driving sentiment seems to be that women are not wanted or cannot be trusted with major engineering endeavors which traditionally have been male-exclusive domains.
The dearth of women engineers also presents other obstacles, particularly regarding the prevalence of women in president- and CEO-level positions. According to the September 16-17, 2006, Wall Street Journal weekend edition, a full 20% of the nation's CEOs of industry-leading companies have engineering degrees — the most common degree. And while the number of women on the Forbes list of the richest Americans continues to grow each year, many of them inherited their fortunes from their fathers and husbands.
Self-made female billionaires like Oprah, Martha Stewart, and J.K. Rowling are far outnumbered by their male counterparts. There are, however, some encouraging trends: according to the National Women's Business Council, 41% (about 10.4 million) of all privately held firms are at least half owned by women, while 7.7 million are entirely women owned.
Of course, realizing this kind of widespread social change is a slow process and can take many decades, if not centuries. You might be surprised to learn that at the beginning of the 20th century, women were considered the legal property of their husbands — not in Saudi Arabia, but in America, the land of "freedom and equality." A century later, a woman is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen, and now other doors can be opened.
The challenge of recruiting women into engineering has been a long-recognized problem. Accordingly, many women have founded academic and professional organizations intended specifically to recruit young women into engineering. Many of them, like the IEEE Women in Engineering and the UK-based Women's Engineering Society, encourage young girls to acquaint themselves with engineering by excelling in math and science in the formative years of their instruction.
Many of these organizations believe that the fault lies not with the girls but with their schools. Twenty years ago, male students regularly outperformed female students in standardized chemistry exams. Today, the numbers have flipped: female students perform on par with males in calculus and chemistry and now consistently outperform them in biology as well. Biology and chemistry, however, typically lead female students into medical careers.
Thus the question naturally arises: what can schools do to encourage girls and young women to consider engineering? Many established female scientists and engineers say that strong, positive female role models in their professions are a must. It is at least slightly less daunting to tread waters you know have already been disturbed.
Also, it is especially important for colleges to actively promote the idea to their female undergraduates that a career in engineering is not incompatible with a personal or family life, which most women wish to maintain while working. If female doctors and astronauts can have careers and families, why not female engineers?
These are only preliminary steps the industry and engineering schools will have to take to ameliorate the situation. You can expect that the relatively small number of women engineers currently serving in the industry will help create opportunities previously unfathomed.
Gloria Steinem famously said, "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn." And sometimes the unlearning, whether by individuals or by industry, is what leads — inevitably — to progress.
