I have been searching online and I found that engineering has high drop out rate especially women because of the male dominated field. I’d like to ask female who are pursuing a degree in engineering majors or working as engineers about the work environment.
Is it hard to make friends? And do you have mainly male or female friends?
Do you ever feel like you don’t belong?
Are you ever discriminated against because of your gender?
Have you ever thought of dropping out because of discrimination/intimidation/stress from the work environment?
My D is a second semester junior Chem E and is just finishing her 4th term of a 5 term co-op. There are around 21 students co-oping with the company she works for and approximately 15 of them are men. She currently lives in a house with 4 men and one other woman. I think it has been a mostly positive experience. She has never complained about her male coworkers (though she has mentioned that some of the guys can be kind of immature). One of the best engineering students she has worked with was a women who is now working for the company she co-oped with. She has plenty of both female and male friends. The engineering females tend to stick together and the guys are there in abundance.
There seems to be strong support for women in engineering such as engineering sororities and the Society of Women Engineers. Most of her female friends have been successful in finding work after college. What I cannot answer yet is whether or not they feel discriminated against in the regular workforce. Good luck.
I graduated as Mech Eng more than 30 years ago. Most of what I know about challenges for women in Engineering is based what I’ve read on this website in recent years . (I did college research for both kids… then stuck around.) My own positive experiences have been in a large corporation, with a job that blended Engineering/ problem solving and my Technical Communications minor. Most coworkers have been men, and that never bothered me… I was used to that from college.