Early on in these initiatives, there was a modest increase of women up to almost 20% of graduates, but then it dropped back and is currently stuck just above 15%, as I recall. What's more, a large fraction of women engineers drop out of the profession, or seek non-engineering roles once they have graduated and worked for awhile. Some people look upon this situation as a shameful failure, especially when some other professions have had great success building gender balance in their ranks. Thus, efforts are redoubled to change the engineering atmosphere, or even the profession itself, and there is much soul-searching and hand wringing among certain leadership groups. Certainly if a particular workplace harasses or is biased against women as engineers, then changes are needed there, but I have not seen that in the fields where I have worked.
It is great that some women do want to become engineers and those I've worked with have done as good a job as the men in similar roles. There is nothing intrinsically wrong about women doing engineering, but why should it be necessary to increase their numbers beyond whatever the natural percentage of interested women may be? Is it not possible that, by and large, most women simply do not want to be engineers? Is there something special about engineering that we think we need to almost force women to sign up? Maybe women look at engineering work hours and conditions, or pay scales and decide to pursue another career. Or could it be that women generally prefer to work with human beings, rather than with things, as in most of engineering? (e.g. design, hardware, testing, software.) Yes, of course, engineering involves human interaction, but much less than in medicine, teaching, or law, where most of what you do is for and with other people.
Speaking of other professions, is there any similar push for gender balance in nursing or the teaching profession? This short article suggests that such typically female professions have the opposite "problem" (if problem it is), but are not doing much to address it. If gender parity in engineering is so important, why is it not also important in other imbalanced professions? And beyond the professions, is there a similar push for gender equality in the trades, which often pay as well, and can be every bit as rewarding as the professions? Is there a nation-wide full-scale campaign to recruit women plumbers, or women truck drivers? I somehow doubt it.
Given that there are many professions and job categories where women are in the majority, one could also ask where would all these women engineers come from? I doubt there are large numbers of young women out there just waiting for the chance to become engineers. Rather, those women simply choose other interest areas for their education and careers. So a growth in women in engineering would mean a reduction somewhere else.
What's more, most women want to have children at some point and many of those want (and for good reasons are often encouraged) to stay at home with their kids for a few years, thereby taking themselves out of the paid work force. This suggests that, if we want to have enough children to replace ourselves, and want them raised in the most effective way (i.e. by their parents), and don't want a higher unemployment rate for men, then overall, there must be fewer women than men with paid employment.
Before you castigate me for my incorrigible male chauvinism, I am well aware that men can raise children too, but child bearing and breast feeding (the recommended approach) by necessity fall to women, and on average, women make better caregivers than men, at least for pre-schoolers. There is a reason why almost all early-childhood educators and day care personnel are women. Biology is not destiny, but it is a big factor in certain aspects of life, and who is going to tell young mothers NOT to stay at home with their young children if that is what they want to do? Indeed, many working mothers wish they could be at home with their kids.
If engineering societies want to keep banging their heads against the wall trying to increase the number of women practitioners, they will doubtless continue to do so. However, I do not expect them to have much in the way of success, and I for one, do not want my dues or fees going toward pointless and increasingly desperate recruitment efforts. At some point these groups have to recognize that most women simply choose not to become engineers, and let it go. If some professions can be mostly female, we do not need to be sorry or feel ashamed that some others will inevitably be mostly male.
