Diversity Issues in Communication - Women in Engineering

Essay by califblonde01University, Bachelor'sA, January 2009

download word file, 6 pages 5.0

Engineering has typically been seen as a male profession. Engineering is no longer a field that strictly involves dirty work and heavy machinery. In recent years the engineering field has evolved into specialized fields such as computer technology which takes on an analytical approach rather than a hands-on one. This paper will discuss how being a woman in the engineering industry is different from being a man in the engineering industry. The paper will examine the difference in communication styles between men and women, the acceptance of women into the field, and how women can use their skills and knowledge to break through the glass ceiling.

Since the end of World War II, the proportion of engineers who are women has increased markedly. In 1947, which is the earliest date for reliable statistics, 0.3% of all engineers in the United States were women. Over the next 40 years, the rate of increase was astonishing.

By 1983, 20 years after Betty Friedan had published The Feminine Mystique and a little more than a decade after Congress had passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the proportion was up to 5.8% (Cowan, 2004). By the end of the millennium, after engineering colleges had spent millions of dollars making special efforts to woo and retain women students, the figure had almost doubled, to 10.6%.

Back in 1947, around the time that the Society for Women Engineers was being formed, women made up 4.9% of all physicists, 16.6% of all astronomers and 7.0% of all chemists-not large proportions, but significantly higher than the proportion in engineering: 0.3%. This strange pattern has persisted through the era of affirmative action. In 1983, about 15% of all physicians and attorneys were female; as were about 23% of all chemists and 30% of all mathematicians and computer scientists...