Julie E. Mills

I still wanna be an engineer! Women, education and the engineering profession

Womens low enrolment in post-school engineering degrees continues to be a problem for engineering faculties and the profession generally. A qualitative interview-based study of Australian women engineers across the range of engineering disciplines showed the relevance of success in math and science at school to their enrolling in engineering at university. However, for a significant number of the women the positive self-image connected with school success was not maintained by their workplace experience. Using a mixed methods approach, further investigations of the attitudes and experiences of working engineers at three large firms suggest that engineering workplaces continue to be uneasy environments for professional women. Particular issues for women working as professional engineers are identified in this paper and some educational strategies are suggested in order to better prepare engineers for an inclusive and participatory professional life.

‘Oh you must be very clever!’ High‐achieving women, professional power and the ongoing negotiation of workplace identity

This paper uses a gender perspective to problematise the connection between high educational achievement and a fulfilling professional career. Drawing data from an Australian study of women working as professional engineers in a range of locations, the paper investigates the ways in which the identities produced in the women’s educational experiences require further negotiation in dealing with the realities of their divergent workplaces. Through a deconstruction of the power relationships that form a key feature of the women’s reported workplace experience, the women are shown to engage in a range of tactics in the effort to achieve a degree of workplace acceptance and some professional recognition. The paper concludes by urging renewed attention to changing engineering education and workplace culture if the profession is to attract and retain able women.

‘Yes, I do belong’: the women who stay in engineering

Despite considerable work to encourage girls and women to enter the profession, engineering continues to be heavily male dominated, a situation which has implications for quality and gender equity. The gender disparity is accentuated by women being more likely to leave the profession than men. A number of studies have investigated why women leave engineering. This study focuses on the converse question, ‘What makes some women stay when many others leave?’ A survey of a cohort of Australian female civil engineers found an unusually high retention rate. Interviews with volunteers from the group revealed that they had all entered the profession strongly believing in themselves as engineers, a belief that had endured despite the difficulties they encountered. As found in other studies, many of these women had experienced being isolated, overlooked and marginalised in the prevailing masculine culture of engineering workplaces. Their persistence in the profession appeared to be connected to steps they had taken to ensure that their work environment matched their expectations of interesting, challenging and enjoyable work in a supportive and inclusive culture. The implications of their experiences for other women engineers and for engineering managers are suggested.

Engineering Ignorance: The Problem of Gender Equity in Engineering

Feminist politics aims to dismantle womens inequality by naming and challenging sexual oppression and gender disadvantage. In modern Western feminism, work is an important site for this politics. It is both means and ends. Feminists argue that work itself should be redefined so that work activities outside the labor market are recognized and demand that the conditions of work within the labor market be transformed to recognize diverse gender relations and practices. Feminists therefore argue that womens unpaid work should be valued, that we should be aware of how certain tasks become gendered, that things valued as feminine should be reevaluated, and that women have equal access to all forms of work so that unpaid work is distributed more equally.2 These gains are the means to achieving feminist ends. Feminism brought womens work, which has been largely invisible, onto the stage and has effectively destabilized assumptions that womens work is gender-neutral (paid) or unimportant (unpaid).3 Feminist campaigns for political change through womens access to paid work on equal terms with men have challenged assumptions about mens natural capacities, as much as they have womens.4

DISRUPTING MASCULINITIES: Women Engineers and Engineering Workplace Culture

The disproportionate under-representation of women among engineering faculty and workplaces, and the tendency of women engineers to drop out of the profession in higher numbers than their male counterparts, continues to be a problem in Englishspeaking countries. Within the literature on women in engineering there has been an increased emphasis upon the need to refocus attention away from strategies that target women as the site of solutions, to those that address the workplace culture within engineering faculty and workplaces (Mills et al. 2006). This paper aims to contribute to this work via an exploration of cultural imaginaries of the ‘engineer’ and the implications of this for women engineers and the gender balance in engineering. The discussion flows from a research project about women engineers based on 51 in-depth interviews with 10 men and 41 women engineers. The interview sample is generally representative of the spread of Australian women engineers in terms of age, career progression, employment type, geography and engineering field. We interviewed civil, structural, electrical, metallurgical, mechanical, aeronautical, chemical and environmental engineers at a range of ages and career stages in companies, consultancies and government agencies. We also interviewed engineers in regional and remote parts of Australia. The paper opens by canvassing two of the main explanations for women’s underrepresentation within the engineering profession. Each revolves around a representation of women and their actions as either driven by reproductive roles or, alternatively, as technically under-confident and unskilled by virtue of their socialisation into femininity. Gathering support from feminist studies on women and technology, this paper suggests that these explanations recirculate a discourse about women and technology that circumscribes the possibilities for women within the profession of engineering. In the discussion that follows we argue that there are two distinctive and dominant narratives about what it means to be a woman engineer. While all the women engineers interviewed expressed confidence and passion in the technical aspects of engineering work, one group of interviews (just less than half the sample) recirculate discourse in which women engineers are ‘just as good as’ men engineers. A second group of interviews emphasise women’s difference and offer a more far-reaching critique of engineering work culture and its effects upon the quality of engineering interventions. ‘Difference’ narratives offer a radical alternative to prevailing perceptions of the ‘good engineer’, emphasising professional values and ethics within engineering work. In exploring the way women engineers negotiate the contradictions and limitations of prevailing cultural norms about women and engineering, we hope to challenge cultural perceptions about women and

Strength and Seismic Performance Factors of Posttensioned Masonry Walls

AbstractIn this study, the behavior of posttensioned masonry walls is investigated using a database of 31 tested walls. The accuracy of the current Masonry Standards Joint Committee (MSJC) in evaluating the strength of posttensioned masonry walls is studied using the available test results. Moreover, using the experimental results, the seismic performance factors including ductility, response modification factor, and displacement amplification factor are determined for different types of walls including fully grouted, partially grouted, ungrouted walls, walls with confinement plates, walls with supplemental mild steel, and walls with an opening. As a result of this study, it was determined that the MSJC underestimates the strength of fully grouted unbonded posttensioned walls by about 20%. Using the strain compatibility method to determine the flexural capacity of bonded masonry walls resulted in reasonable predictions of strength. Moreover, an average response modification factor of 4.27 to 7.76 and disp...

Using Projects to Teach Structural Engineering

Abstract Traditional approaches to structural engineering education place a heavy emphasis on lecture-based delivery of the theories of structural analysis and the behaviour of common construction materials. This study proposed that the use of design projects is an effective method of learning that should be given greater emphasis in undergraduate programs. The effectiveness of project-based learning was evaluated using a science education evaluation framework in a case study conducted in a third year undergraduate course. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of the study and the possible extensions of project-based learning to other areas of engineering.

Challenging Knowledge, Sex and Power : Gender, Work and Engineering

1. Why So Few Women Engineers? 2. Collaborative Research and Analytic Strategies 3. Working as a Woman Engineer 4. The Politics of Knowledge and Ignorance in Workplace Cultures 5. Women Challenging Engineering through Associations and Networks 6. Campaigns to Challenge Gender and Power in Engineering 7. Conclusions

Using wikis and blogs for assessment in first‐year engineering

Purpose – This paper aims to examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of the use of online tools such as wikis and blogs for assessment purposes, with the aim of proposing future developments and improvements.Design/methodology/approach – The paper utilises a case study approach by examining the outcomes of a new first‐year course for all engineering students at the Institution Name that was introduced in 2008. The course, Sustainable Engineering Practice (SEP), gives students an insight into the disciplines of engineering and emphasises the skills required for working in multi‐disciplinary teams. It introduces students to the profession of engineering and how it is practised within a sustainable context.Findings – The major assessment task for the course is the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) challenge and, for the first time in the engineering program at the university, wikis and blogs were used as assessment tools to evaluate student progress in meeting the course objectives.Originality/value – The...

Seismic Performance of Precast Posttensioned Segmental FRP-Confined and Unconfined Crumb Rubber Concrete Columns

AbstractThis paper presents an experimental study carried out on unbonded posttensioned (PT) segmental precast concrete columns. In total, eight cylindrical columns were posttensioned and tested un...