Representation Of Women In Engineering Case Study

A large institution that leads women to not be involved in engineering is that of the education system as a whole. First off, at the engineering department faculty level, female faculty are extremely underrepresented. The ratio of male to female professors and lecturers is one of the lowest compared to other departments. Even at top engineering schools such as Oxford University, which is ranked as the number seven engineering school in the world, there are only seven female members in the department as within its ninety-one person faculty (Wynne). Of University of Nottingham’s thirty-seven person civil engineering faulty only two are women (Wynne). There are also only two women among the staff at the University of Birmingham, which has a twenty-nine …show more content…
Alexandra Wynne is quick to point out that “[there is] implicit sexism in the profession [of engineering].” This implicit sexism goes hand in hand with the underrepresentation of women in the field. However, some women do feel otherwise and have no problem with this sexism. Some also say that they do in fact feel that there is a good representation of women in higher leadership roles (Wynne), but this tends to not be the case. In a recent study, it was found that only thirty-two percent of women felt that their working conditions were free of gender equality issues and were happy with their work (Jones). That leaves a whopping seventy-eight percent of women in the engineering field who feel that their working conditions are not free of gender bias. This number shows how vast of a problem this gender bias really is and how it contributes to the gender gap itself. The causes for this are mainly that, as stated in the Global Efforts for Local Empowerment of Women Engineers, “women’s achievements are being undervalued” (Senger). This means that the achievements that women are making in the field are being highly regarded as not important and then credit for these achievements is being given to male superiors. This claim also leads to women being unable to realize their full potential within their jobs in the …show more content…
First off, the main solution that must be implemented is diversifying the workplace in respect to gender. Without gender diversity in the workplace, no other solution will matter. Seeing the incorporation of women in the field is an important factor that will contribute to all of the other solutions. This is most accurately conveyed by Karen Purcell when she states that “ensuring more opportunity for women in [engineering] careers is essential to helping our industries better serve and respond to the needs of humanity.” As you can see, the incorporation of women will prove to help more problems than equality. All types of people must be represented. A major contribution to this solution could be implementing a gender quota for female faculty within large companies, as was done in Norway, or even urging countries to implement voluntary targets for gender quotas (Williams). Some will say that using this kind of quota is not needed because women should not need these quotas as a way to climb the corporate ladder (Williams). However, for the time being, implementing quotas such as these will help women reach those higher positions that were previously unattainable. Girls and women need to see that there in fact are women prevalent in the field. An inclusive