<<<tricia berry,="" director="" of="" the="" women="" in="" engineering="" program,="" said="" school="" saw="" an="" overall="" increase="" to="" 30="" percent="" this="" incoming="" class="" —="" highest="" ever="" for="" school.="" berry="" diversity="" within="" school,="" program="" is="" working="" recruit="" potential="" students="" and="" get="" them="" interested="" program.="">>>
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/10/08/cockrell-school-of-engineering-increases-number-of-women
Using 2014 enrollment numbers (it was 27% of freshman), here’s a break down of enrollment by class and gender.
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/6460/screen/20?school_name=The+University+of+Texas+at+Austin
That’s a reach goal, as the senior class iwas at 15% in 2014.
This part is important:
Unlike privates, they can’t use admissions to balance by gender. UT-Austin has to do it the hard way, by building programs like the Women in Engineering Program and actively recruiting and support students.
It’s interesting the push to get more women in STEM even though it may not be the best long term career for them. I speaking about this a local mom who happened to have an engineering degree from a Big 10 school. She wishes she studied something different as the gap she took between having kids and returning to the workforce eroded her professional skills to the point she found she was unemployable in her chosen field. There is also little part time employment, so she was not able to stay employed during her hiatus.
It depends on the person. But I took time off, not long but not 6 months and longer than a year and had no trouble. I don’t have a degree from top 10 Engineering.
Those challenges exist in many fields (for women and sometimes men too).
The idea is not to push women into STEM. Rather it’s to break down the implicit, sexist barriers which keep them out. That really needs to start as early as kindergarten but this is a start!
Zinhead’s mother is a perfect example of the sexist barriers.
I don’t know if I would describe Zinhead’s example as a problem with sexist barriers. It’s simply harder to take an extended leave (a year or more) in STEM (especially engineering) than many other fields. When applying for that next job, the number one requirement is demonstrative skills (not where you got your degree).
It’s a lot easier taking a few years off to raise young children and then return to working, if you’re working in HR, management, a creative field, etc.
Would a more flexible workplace (flex hours, job sharing, work at home, etc…) help a working mother (or father)? Of course, but these don’t do you much good if you’re trying to take a multi-year break, and then get back into the workforce.
I would love to hear the opinions and experiences of working engineers, who also raised children. What choices did they make?
I personally know 3 women who are engineers who have worked part time in their field.
Maybe I hang around with an unusual crowd.
I was able to work from home with one kid up until the kid was 18 months, but I also hired a nanny to take care of my kid while I was working. The difference is I was next door, I could see my kid any time, and for lunch. When I went back to work for another company because the previous company was sold. I was able to leave early and pick up my first kid while continue to work at home till the evening. My career did take a back seat but it’s not completely void or empty on the resume,
I don’t think a working engineer has any harder choices to make when raising a family than women in consulting, medicine, law, accounting, info systems, or any number of careers. Harvey Mudd graduated more female than male engineers in recent years – 30% seems like a pretty low bar, in my opinion.
It’s a large school vs Harvey Mudd.
If the percent of women exceeds 50%, is the diversity then decreasing?
Anyone taking a gap is going to have to do something to catch up before they go back to a job. Technology changes but so do laws, accounting practices, medical practice even business practices. Imagine coming back to HR after the ACA changed the face of health care insurance. In the STEM fields you can catch up by taking a continuing ed class. Also, what you really learn as an engineer is how to solve a problem, much of the specific technical expertise is OJT. And, what an employer will be most concerned about someone returning from a gap is whether they are going to change their mind in a few weeks or months.
That said I am happy to see this moving a bit. Back in the dark ages when I graduated as an EE the national average was about 2% female.
Why do discussions of women in engineering get routed to “family issues” that are not unique to engineering at all?
The focus should be on women being able to work without sexist behavior from men.
There is always the anecdote. “I knew a woman one time. She learnt her letters, and numbers. After time off, she wished she done sumpin’ else.” This is a part of the problem, not a reason it is not worth doing.
The story here is why women are still pushed out on tech jobs by bigots. Until women in these fields become established and accepted, the problem will persist.
Thread title is inaccurate. The SCHOOL isn’t 30% women. The freshman class is 30% women.
Uh, no. There are more females in Biology – a stem field – than males; so nothing “keeping them out”. The big gender disparity is in the physical STEM fields, and that requires advanced math.
The dearth of engineering females starts in late elementary and middle school when top girls get off the top math track. Just take a look-see on how many girls take Calc BC in high school. (Unless you are suggesting that the elementary and middle school teachers – which are primarily female – are sexist.)
fwiw: I would submit that its the lack of advanced math in HS that also discourages females from undergrad biz and quant-heavy majors like Econ, Math and Stats.
This means in 3 years the engineering school will likely have 30% women. And the school is aiming for 35% in 5 years.
This is good. Many colleges did not enroll women until 1970.
Regarding time off for women engineers: When there are more women in engineering, the industries will have to change the culture, adjust and support the need to raise a family for women engineers. Time is changing.
That is very true about girls dropping the tougher math classes in middle school. Our middle schooler is in advanced math and the class has five girls and 15 boys. Four of the five girls are Asian.
It is laughable when people blame sexism for the lack of women studying STEM in college. Applying the same logic, there is a shortage of men in Nursing or Education because sexist women are keeping them out.
My bad! Thanks for pointing it out, Cardinal Fang. I fixed the title. 
I also don’t understand why the “family issues” question comes up more often when it’s engineers who are being discussed.
I got my master’s degree in engineering in 1986. I worked full-time until 1991. Then the economy went south and it was hard to find full-time work in Maine. My husband and I actually interviewed for the same job, and the company told us they would hire either one of us! We decided it should be DH, since we knew we wanted to have kids soon. So I found part-time work for a local engineer. My oldest child was born in 1992. I worked for the engineer for awhile, then worked for a precast concrete fabricator three days a week until my youngest child was born in 1998. In 1999, my husband and I started our own firm, so I’ve been able to work flexible hours since then. We’re now trying to get our business classified as a Woman Owned Small Business, so we can get more work from the government.
I have dealt with sexist men just four times in 29 years. Not too bad.