Women in Engineering Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Women in Engineering - Term Paper Example What is it about engineering which keeps the fairer sex away from the profession? Do they lack engineering acumen or there are systematic problems which keep them away from the professions. Women have busted many male dominated professions lately like medicine , college education and even started joining the army. There are of course the professions where women have always been more successful as compared to men such as nursing and teaching. Then what is it about Engineering that keeps women away? The small number of engineers that we do find are working in the field of computer Engineering , there are almost negligible women working in core engineering fields such as civil , mechanical or electrical. In this term paper we will try to examine the reasons for the low representation of women in engineering and also discuss some steps which can be taken in order to ensure that number of women engineers increase in the USA. No field can be said to be truly marvelous if almost 50% of our workforce is excluded from it. The main reason for worry for USA is not that there are very less number of females who are engineers. The bigger worry is that number of women graduating from engineering programs has declined by about 5.2% by 2009 (Fouad and Singh.).At present about 20% of women graduating from engineering colleges are women – a figure which has remained static for the last 15 years. The bigger worry is that even Islamic countries like Qatar , Pakistan are producing more percentage of engineers than USA. ... No field can be said to be truly marvelous if almost 50% of our workforce is excluded from it. Body The main reason for worry for USA is not that there are very less number of females who are engineers. The bigger worry is that number of women graduating from engineering programs has declined by about 5.2% by 2009 (Fouad and Singh.).At present about 20% of women graduating from engineering colleges are women – a figure which has remained static for the last 15 years. The bigger worry is that even Islamic countries like Qatar , Pakistan are producing more percentage of engineers than USA. There is no indication that this figure is likely to increase any time soon. At a time when China and India are producing engineers in much larger number, USA cannot afford to close its doors on women engineers. We are already facing outsourcing of backend jobs to these countries , if the number of engineers in USA keeps on decreasing , we will soon see even research jobs being outsourced. A b eginning has already been made with companies like Yahoo and Google opening their research centers in India. The thing which is sad is the fact that although 20 % of women graduated as Engineers, in 2011 only 11% of them was actually working in the engineering field (Shellenbarger). Thus not only do women not prefer to opt for engineering but 50% of them who do engineering consider it as a mistake and do not take up engineering careers. In order to find out the reasons for this we will start to have a look right from the engineering colleges and then move up to the work place. Engineering Colleges: A male Bastion If you move around the campus of any engineering college , you