You're walking down the street enjoying one of the last warm breezes of the year when you hear it: chanting. It’s deafening, and grows louder and louder as you look around trying to find the source. Then you spot them as they round the corner, a sea of colourfully-attired teenagers in hard hats and letterman jackets yelling at the top of their lungs; first year Engineering students. There’s something amiss about this crowd you can’t quite place at first, but then it dawns on you. Where are the girls?
Even though females and males are nearly equally represented in the pursuit of undergraduate studies, the number of women enrolling in engineering programs has been on a steady decline since peaking at 21 percent in 2001. Despite increasing efforts by universities to encourage female enrollment, according to Engineers Canada the percentage of women in engineering has continued to dip, dropping to a disappointing 17 percent in 2009. The reasons for this are many and subject to heated debate, but no two reasons elicit stronger opinions or are attributed more blame than the prevalence of a sexist sub-culture in the industry, and the intrinsically tied perception of engineering, along with Science and Technology (SET) industries as ‘hard’ professions not suited to women.
“I think it’s a mix of things,” says Maygan McGuire, a Chemical Engineering PhD candidate. Having worked in the industry as a Metallurgical Engineer serving Canada’s natural gas pipeline, and the only female engineer in a company of nearly 150 employees, Maygan feels very strongly about the need to increase the numbers of women in the industry. “We’re [women] not encouraged to get into engineering, and engineering is such a broad field that most people don’t really know what an engineer is. But it’s such a broad industry with so many different opportunities.”
Women in traditionally male-dominated fields like SET often face the extra burden of subtle, outright, or culture-specific sexism. Certain university publications perpetuate a stereotypically dismissive attitude towards women. A recent study conducted by the National Science Foundation in the US found that engineers have a “hard hat culture,” biological and chemical scientists a “lab coat” culture and computer experts a “geek culture.” What they all have in common is that they are “at best unsupportive and at worst downright hostile to women.” These attitudes, outright or ingrained, make the few women pursuing engineering educations uncomfortable but unwilling to contradict the status quo. “The women in engineering tend to be less ‘girly’ than those outside the industry. When engineers get together, it’s kind of like an extension of the locker room, especially with regards to humour. Women in engineering kind of blend in and become ‘one of the guys’,” says Matt Slowikowski, a Masters student at UOIT. “It’s definitely a male-dominated industry,” agrees Maygan. “You don’t want to stand out so you go along with it, it’s a cultural issue that needs to be addressed, and that can only happen if there are more women.”
The second piece to the puzzle — intrinsically tied to the first — seems to be an ill-informed perception of the industry as one that is ‘hard’ and not suited to women. In a recent study supported by Engineers Canada, it was found that young women tend to “equate engineering and technology with construction, outdoor work, working in a cubicle, and relating primarily to computers and machines, rather than people.”
Maygan agrees with this perception. “Women tend to veer towards ‘caring’ professions but what doesn’t seem to get across is that engineering is a caring profession; it’s all about improving people’s lives. Engineers work in public safety, infrastructure, hospitals... You do get the opportunity to help others because you’re working to help solve society’s problems.” Tania, a Chemical Engineer feels the same. “An engineer is just someone who loves to solve problems. They say that behind every great idea is an engineer tweaking the details.” She further argues a lack of knowledge about the profession is one of the most limiting factors in female involvement. “Many women don’t understand the various skills engineers learn in school. Not only are you learning about your particular stream of engineering, you also learn about business, the environment, and a number of other subjects. It gives students a very well-rounded education.” One that is very transferable and very marketable across various sectors.
These two factors, the existence of a culturally ingrained sexism and the misconception about roles, no doubt have a negative effect on the industry. Slowikowski argues that “to be an engineer you have to figure out how to create, fix, and make things better; essentially ,to generate ideas. Ideas and the way people’s minds work are based on a number of things including life experiences, values, beliefs — you can only ever bring to the table what you know. A woman’s life experience will always be different from a man’s, so you could say that the lack of women in the industry creates an idea void.” The question remains, how does the void get filled? “Women in engineering need to stand out more, not be flies on the wall,” Maygan explains. “They need to speak up, and become role models for other women.” jp