Still Wondering: Where Are the Women Engineers?

The following first ran in the Spring 2024 edition of PE Magazine.

If you work in an engineering field, look around and notice the people in your organization. What do you see? Do you see homogeneity or diversity?

If you see people who look like you and share similar experiences, you’ve already got a leg up on others. Working with someone you can easily identify with is a critical factor for networking, skill development, having a sense of belonging, and realizing career success. Unfortunately, in engineering, too many women employees are still “the only one” and are unlikely to see themselves reflected in the workplace.

The lack of women in engineering fields continues despite ongoing efforts to increase the number of young women entering—and thriving in—STEM education and STEM industries. It’s unfortunate because engineering truly is a field where everyone can and should have a voice. At its core, engineering is very much a helping profession—people solving problems that impact others. As a woman engineer and a dean of an engineering school, respectively, we believe engineering is a field that can be very appealing to women.

To investigate retention and success in engineering fields, WPI recently surveyed over 2,000 alumni. Consistently, women alumni reported more positive impacts from project work than did men. In particular, they reported greater self-efficacy. And prior surveys found that women tend to be more energized by winning together against a shared opponent (such as a problem) in a project-based environment or purpose-driven organization.

Women indicated that they gained more project management, critical thinking, communication, and cross-cultural skills. In addition, women undergraduates were more likely to have chosen to enroll in an optional first-year project-based course on human-focused problems. [Read about the survey.]

And why does it matter? One reason is that a STEM degree can have a significant positive impact on economic standing—not just for the student, but for their family and for economic growth directly. The increase in workforce participation boosts production and, hence, income, savings, spending, taxes, and bigger contributions at the community and national levels. More important, women and other underrepresented groups bring a diversity of thought that allows for fuller, more applicable, and more sustainable solutions to the complex issues that face communities around the world.

As universities work to attract more women into STEM by fostering more opportunities for teamwork and projects, it’s up to industry—organizations and their leaders and hiring managers, and professional associations—to build the demand for women scientists and engineers. Employers can begin by looking internally to:

• Take off the blinders to see beyond the same schools from which they’ve historically recruited students. Look at schools that have both diversity and academic rigor and not just the “top schools” in paid rankings.

• Implement structured coaching and shadowing programs: identify allies and mentors and help them share their experiences with others.

• Elevate organic networks like sports clubs or other employee interest groups and make them intentional. Provide paid time off or financial stipends to support engagement, with the goal
of putting people together around nonwork activities.

• Create volunteer opportunities with human-centered organizations that speak to your company’s mission and values (and, again, incentivize engagement).

• Support family leave—not just maternity leave. This is a particular barrier in the career path for women, and it’s in the company’s best interest to retain experienced women. Help with the transition back to work in creative ways. We proved it’s possible in this COVID era.

• Do away with unhelpful generational pressure, which, at its worst, can be akin to hazing. Instead of crushing the next generation under “the way it’s always been done,” senior engineers should be eager to tap their creativity and adapt training for new learners.

Fostering inclusion is not “lowering the bar” to entry. Instead, it’s “widening the pathway” to attract more brilliant people—including those who might not yet see themselves in engineering—into a transformative education and a critically important field.