Ruth Carter

Women in Professional Engineering: The Interaction of Gendered Structures and Values

For more than a decade we have been engaged, as educationalists, in trying to improve the opportunities for women in engineering, technology and related, nontraditional fields. We reached a point where we felt we could not continue without knowing more about what it is like to be a woman working as a professional engineer. Excellent research had been done on the working lives of blue-collar women (Cockburn, 1985; Coyle, 1984; Walshok, 1981) and on the lives of women in other professions (Kanter, 1977; Marshall, 1984), but there was nothing specifically on professional engineers. Within that profession, particular questions needed to be addressed. How is gender manifest in the engineering profession, how is that gendering perpetuated, and, most importantly, how does this affect the life experience of women engineers both inside and outside their work? In 1986 we carried out a small research project based on interviewing thirty-seven women engineers in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, to find out why they had chosen engineering as a profession and what, for them, were the rewards and penalties. Engineering is still a predominantly white profession but our sample did include some women of colour.

Collaborative Learning in Advanced Supply Systems: The KLASS Pilot Project.

The KLASS project – Knowledge and Learning in Advanced Supply Systems – focused on the automotive and aerospace sectors. It sought to develop collaborative learning networks of suppliers. In Type 1 networks, tier one companies encouraged supplier SMEs to identify key shop floor personnel as change agents, who participated in an innovative continuous improvement learning programme. Delivery was a mix of face‐to‐face tuition and multimedia distance learning. A series of workshops, followed by in‐company diagnostic visits, enabled change agents to assess their own workplaces and to devise and implement continuous improvement programmes. Simultaneously, they worked towards accreditation. Shared learning developed across the supplier networks, benefiting operators, management, the SMEs and the tier one companies, streamlining supply and improving competitive advantage. In Type 2 networks, SME managers acquired capabilities directed towards improving their awareness of QCD performance. The KLASS approach provid...

The daily round

In a recent book written as a guide to engineering for secondary school students, the author suggests that engineering consists of controlling nature, asking questions, designing, making things work, and communicating. As we shall see, each of these broad activities conceals a multitude of tasks in which engineers are involved every day. He also describes the process of engineering: Engineers are involved in providing material answers to real problems. Engineering does not start by knowing the answers but by attempting to fill the need. Identifying the problem comes first and is often the most difficult part; sorting out the constraints follows, and the art of engineering is in proposing and executing a solution which most closely fits those constraints. (Walton, 1987, p 6)

Home-based Computing for Woman Students

The Open University (OU) has always recruited a significant proportion of women into its courses: by 1988 32,992 women were registered as undergraduates (46% of total) and 46,555 women had graduated with BA degrees (49% of total graduates). As with all institutions of higher education, women have been much less well represented on courses in maths, science and technology — including computing courses. However, unlike many institutions the OU has managed to encourage women onto courses where computer use is a significant element, see Table 26.1.

Engineering, technology and personal values

What distinguishes engineering from other masculine professions is the machismo myth which surrounds it, and the aura of masculinity which is associated, by male engineers, with their role. We have seen nothing in the job descriptions or work tasks themselves which are especially difficult for women, but we have seen how social interactions with colleagues can make them so. We have also seen, in common with other studies of professional women, that fulfilling family responsibilities and professional commitments is extremely difficult. Since many of our sample complained that engineering, especially in the UK, was a low-status and relatively low-paid profession, we should not be surprised that other women who struggle to qualify as professionals choose fields in which they are likely to earn more, and which, although male-dominated, are less exclusively masculine than engineering.

Commitment to a career

The acquisition of engineering skills and qualifications is a rigorous process. Everyone in our sample felt that it had been worthwhile. So positive and enthusiastic were the engineers about their work that, in all the pages of interview transcripts, one quote is notably missing. No one said to us: ‘engineering is just a job like any other job’.

Working for change

Having surveyed and analysed the work and lives of some professional women engineers, we return to our original question: Should we be encouraging more women to become engineers? The answer seems to be: Yes, but with caution. Our reservation is that engineering is likely to remain an uncomfortable environment for women for some years to come.

The critical step

After hearing about the personal satisfaction the women in our sample gained from their work, we might have been forgiven for accepting one person’s view of their choice: All the girls that I’ve met haven’t drifted into engineering; they are there because they believe in it. (Jennifer)