Fixing Engineering’s Gender Gap

Posted on March 14, 2006  Comments (0)

Fixing Engineering’s Gender Gap by Vivek Wadhwa, Business Week

We can debate whether an engineering gap between the U.S. and India and China exists, but among U.S. engineers there is an indisputable gender gap — fewer than 20% of engineering graduates are women, according to the National Science Foundation. Perhaps a simple solution to maintaining American competitiveness is to encourage more women to enter engineering.

I agree. We need to do a better job of taking advantage of what women engineers can bring to our economy. By taking sensible actions (see some of the related posts below) we can create a system that produces more women engineers and we will benefit from that result.

According to the National Science Foundation, women make up only 5.2% of tenured engineering faculty. Students felt that they had no one to turn to for help and guidance. One student said she felt disadvantaged “when it comes to being an engineer without being like a man.”

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