Does anybody have FACTS on why women shy away from engineering careers?
Answer:
Men and women are different. Men are better at somethings than women, just like women are better than something than men. Men have better spatial skills, women have better verbal skills. *This is in general*. Since men have better spatial skills, this puts them in a better place for careers in engineering. This doesn't mean that women can't do it, it just means that more men are inclined to do it.
People do things that they enjoy, and people enjoy things that they are good at, so more men would enjoy a career in engineering than women.
However, every opportunity needs to be given to women to overcome the stigma of engineering being a man's field. Giving women opportunities for internships, even things like take your daughter to work day help.
Women can make great engineers too.
idk...a friend of mine is pursueing a career in engineering who is a woman,
women are gently build,if i may say so,they tend to seek the exraterrestrial,pure science is not the answer for the questions bubbling in their mind
Maybe the same goes for male nurses.
Most likely the fact that its a BOY job. They dont want to work with all buys and are most likely a little bit scared.
no facts, just what ive seen. most engineers know nothing other than what they were taught. they have no common sense, and alot of what they come up with is totally stupid. women are accused of being that way, why amplify it?
One answer talked about the difference between verbal skills and spacial skills. That is a fact; on average.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa...
The studies show the difference consistently but the difference shown is small.
There is an hypothesis that men are motivated by the desire for achievement and women are motivated by the desire to get along with others.
see
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa...
also see
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa...
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa...
The article pointed to by those links deals with gender differences with regard to advertising (it is very important to advertisers to get this right) but I think it also shows why more men would be drawn to engineering. Engineering is a results and achievements oriented field in which interpersonal stuff is not high on the list of priorities.
I think it is near impossible to change this. Schools may attract a few more women in the past but when they get into industry many women quickly find themselves dissatisfied with the profession and work environment.
One women speaker that I heard once said that she found men most peculiar in that they find things more interesting than people. She suggested that women tend to find people more interesting than things. I believe this is the reason women tend to either stay away from engineering or get out of it quickly.
In Samuel Florman's 1987 book "The Civilized Engineer", he poses two possible reasons why women do not pick engineering.
The first he talks about is that women do not see it as a road to power and prestige. According to Florman, women look at engineering and for the same amount of effort they can go into other careers (say, medicine) in which the political power and social prestige pay-offs are greater. The second thing he mentions is that many women may not see engineering as a career in which they can express their humanistic interests.
Whether that is the real answer or not I cannot say. When I did my undergraduate work, perhaps 40-50% of our class was female. In graduate school I would say it was about 50/50 as well. So those numbers seem to suggest (at least where I went to school) that there are a lot of women in engineering these days.
Larry Small of Harvard tried to answer that question not too long ago and got into all kinds of trouble for the "political incorrectness" of even raising the issue. But the demographics do support the fact that there are fewer women in engineering than men. Who knows if it is an innate difference in the sexes, or just carryover of long time tradition that will eventually self correct. I know some pretty sharp female engineers, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were the latter.
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