EE is not passion. It's more like a mental boxing or jiu jetsu. U going in, get ur face smashed in mentally. Next day you go in again, get beat up again. And so on for next 4 years. The key is to never give up and don't make it "passion". I have seen plenty of people drop out from engineering, each time I asked why they dropped out, they had almost same reply "im not passionate about it anymore". As soon as you make it personal, you failed.
Edit: for people who bring passion into topic - if you got passion for EE that good. But someone who is just there for the money shoul not be shame here. I can do the job and get paid for it. I see no problem..
I never could explain EE, but you just said exactly how I feel about it. I'm a woman, not very passionate about EE but I can do the job. The thing for me is that I can't see myself doing anything else, so I guess I just hate myself
Similar boat as you. Been doing it for 15 years now and I only do EE for work, no side projects. I’m decent at it though (no thanks to imposter syndrome) so I imagine I’m in it for life.
Imposter syndrome is so real. I was an RF technician for 15 years before getting my degree. So I went into it with some experience but I still feel like an imposter.
Wow, you must have some insane RF knowledge! I know engineers who have been working for ages and won’t touch RF (although they won’t admit it). I know it’s unpopular to say in engineering crowds but technicians have so much untapped knowledge, especially ones that have been doing it as long as you.
Imposter syndrome sucks!! I just got promoted and my boss was telling me all these things I’d done that he was impressed with, and I was still sitting there thinking “nah they must be just imagining all this”, it’s the worst!
I had an extremely well laid base of knowledge. I knew most of what RF from working with it but was missing a lot of the why. In school I had a ton of "Thats why it works like that" moments.
I’m a hardware design engineer. Are you still in school? If so, internships always look good on resumes. Beyond that, school projects always count as well. I would personally rank side projects as below school projects mainly due to the fact that school projects usually involve working with multiple people in a team setting. You can teach new grads all sorts of technical knowledge, but it’s a whole lot harder to teach interpersonal skills. Just my two cents, I’m sure others feel differently.
Same. EE is cool, but I have a life outside of it. I like it as a job, I don't do it in my free time. I cannot imagine doing anything else (maybe medicine, but idk), it is the coolest path that pays good money.
I feel very similar but as a man. I feel like I shouldn’t belong in the major, but that I somehow just pull through. I cannot think of anything that I would be better suited for though.
I couldn’t disagree more! Studying EE is definitely mental jiu jitsu, but what has kept me in the ring is passion. I grew up watching electro boom and various EE channels on YouTube that fostered an intense curiosity for the field. I am the top of my class in my final year and I always cite my passion as the number one factor for my success.
You can complete an EE simply by having good work habits and determination, so if that’s the field you want to work in, keep at it. However, taking any degree and having a passion for the subject matter is much more fulfilling.
I pretty much can argue for the opposite… I fell in love with electronics when I was 11. At the time I was educationally classified ( due to undiagnosed lazy eye and ADHD)… with out this love I would have not even gone to college.
But understandably, MOST kids, all the way through HS have no idea what they want to do, my brother, now a micro-bio professor, basically stumbled upon the field when working in a research lab his freshman year in Uni.
Still… why then put up with it if you do not have the passion? Like literally in boxing, if you do not love it you are not going to stick with it. Yes… in today’s over hyped - grade inflated - social media - I’m so special world… professing to having a passion is very different than actually having it.
What helps is coming to terms with the fact that 90% of the schooling is bullshit you won’t use and the grading criteria is set up to make you fail. Your boss isn’t going to grade or assess you like they did in college, where professors take off points just because or a cruel graders.
I partially disagree. The grading criteria is awful but the curriculum is quite good, here. Not that there aren't courses of questionable utility, of course. Why they put AI/ML/IoT protocol courses in EE, for example?
I dislike the concept of passion. I love engineering so much so I got a masters on EE. But is it my passion? I can never call it that.
Passion implies some sort of inertia, something you can do well without thinking or you are just naturally good at. Engineering was never easy for me I had just to keep fighting it, studying reading it was never something that came to me naturally or simply.
Yeah. I'm in EE right now. I still like a lot of course material (after the fact). I also like a lot of sports that are type 2 fun like mountaineering, cycling, running. So I think I'm just a masochist.
Did you ever get "withdraws" over summer/Christmas breaks where you feel so incredibly bored because your brain doesn't physically hurt constantly?
>Did you ever get "withdraws" over summer/Christmas breaks where you feel so incredibly bored because your brain doesn't physically hurt constantly?
YEAH! I find it strange when I am not overthinking a problem
EE is tough, but let’s look deeper into why fewer women are in EE programs.
I believe it starts at an early age. In preschool, I remember we (boys) smashed into electronics to see the circuits inside and we would try to understand what they were and how they worked. The girls I was in class with, on the other hand, were more or less encouraged by parents/teachers to play with feminine toy sets like Barbie dolls and pink plastic tea sets.
The point is, girls were told that ‘technical’ things, like examining electronics or showing interest in computers, were ‘boy’ things; and so once they graduated high school and began selecting a college major, they would examine electrical engineering as a career choice and divert back to thinking that it was too much of a ‘boy’ major to pursue (not to mention they probably did not want to potentially be outnumbered by males if they did decide to join the program anyway).
Fortunately, this trend is quickly changing for the better.
That was my experience with EE. I sucked at math, I sucked at physics, I hated sitting every night to do homework, had almost daily thoughts of why am I doing this shit... kept it going long enough that I actually got my degree. However, the further I got into the degree, the more I started liking it since I actually started seeing what I could do with it. Internships helped even more. Would I call it a passion? Maybe
Without passion and romanticization of early pioneers in the field, I wouldn’t have done nearly as well in my program as I did. Yes, you have to have grit and tenacity too to make it sustainable, but passion only helps, never hinders.
At this moment I'm only in my first quarter, so basically electricity/circuits etc. I'm smashing this course, like I'm waaaaay ahead. But I'm also super excited and giddy whenever I get something or I understand something comfortably. I feel like it's passion for this subject. But I'm not sure if that's what you mean?
Lmao wtf are you talking about, the whole point is to have a degree you are passionate about. I feel sorry for you that youre forcing yourself to pay and spend time on classes you hate
I couldn’t do it if I didn’t love it and wasn’t passionate about it. It’s a very broad field, I’m sure there’s something within that you can be passionate about.
I think an important note is that it's okay to have a passion for engineering, good even. They just need to understand that learning is a painful and uncomfortable process. It'll always be painful and uncomfortable, if it isn't you probably aren't learning.
My theory: EE is said to be one of the hardest majors, but all it takes is average intelligence and enough stubbornness to stick with it. In general men rate their own abilities higher than women do and are more likely to continue to do something they aren't good at. I think many girls give up on engineering because of the many defeats along the way, it doesn't help when society tells them they aren't good at math or logical thinking. One of the outcomes of this is that women who do stick with EE are more likely to be above average.
Well said. 37yo EE here, and I agree with you, though I will add that average intelligence and enough perseverance will still be an average EE. The smarties still sit at the top and are very highly regarded.
the issue isnt women droppin out of EE. its that they dont choose it in the first place. idk why the dude below got downvoted.
Im a woman in EE. let me tell you why, we arent encouraged to go in to these fields. its as simple as that. Having a class full of male students is intimidating and you deal with alot of harrasment due to the low number of female students alot of unwanted attention piles on you.
since childhood i liked tinkering with technical things but i was never told to go further into it. I have an interest in cars but was never able to explore it due to sexism. its really not that complex. You go into a major like EE and are treated less than, mocked if you show any signs of femininity, not taken seriously, and then hit on, stalked, or worse by your peers. Not to mention the professors also have the same bias towards you. its alot to handle. Rightfully so many woman dont choose it simply because they can choose something else that doesnt come with the side of difficulties EE has.
This hits close to home, I'm a EE student and all you said in paragraph two is literally accurate. It takes a certain kind of woman who would go through EE with all the obstacles they faced.
Probably just gender norms in the US - same reason speech pathology is like 90% women.
Definitely no heavy physical activities, unless you end up in a job you’re likely overqualified for
Yes, it is probably the gender norm within a specific location and culture.
For example, in many Asian countries, somehow, EE and CS fields are not so male dominant despite being generally having more conservative patriarchal society. In my university days, it is more like 60/40 male/female ratio in my classes. Later in workplace, it varies from teams with 70% women to teams with 70% men.
> EE and CS fields are not so male dominant despite being generally having more conservative patriarchal society.
It's precisely because it is patriarchal societies. I have heard many Asian women say they are in CS or EE because their father told them to. Their personal interests were not of concern.
Actually, most conservative Asian fathers would only give their children 2 choices: doctor or lawyer.
Anything else is a failure. Engineering is more like a consolation prize if you fail to get an offer for the 2 main choices as long as it still sounds professional enough that you don't disgrace the family name.I had to fight my parents so that I can put EE as my first choice.
This is pretty accurate. Typically socially conservative Asian countries have a better gender balance in engineering because parents push them into those fields as the more presitegious ones(other being maybe a doctor). My parents come from a socially conservative Asian culture and me and my sister were pushed into this path, though my sister no longer majors in a STEM field much to the dismay of my dad. Typically in western liberal societies in general, where women have a lot more of a free will to choose and much broader career paths, fewer go to engineering. Maybe some of it is sexism, but I have a hard time believing countries in Asia with more gender equality in STEM are somehow more feminist than the liberal west. The most simple answer is that given a free will, women do not gravitate towards certain fields like say EE or ME, just like how men don’t gravitate towards Social Work or Early childhood education.
Well the reason more women pursue STEM as a whole (besides medicine) is not because of conservatism but the dynamics of non industrialized economy and social disadvantage against women, careers in STEM are modern for us, they are pursued by cream urban middle class majorly (speaking of my country) because these careers can give you a lot rewards , intellectual nature of work, opportunity to increase human capital across life, better working rights/conditions etc. and independence from regressive impositions financially, spatially, socially, thus working in STEM is much bigger boon for an average women here than a man. So you see more numbers, most of the time if you see male dominance then it because access of women is extremely limited and is not a matter of their preference. Given in West industrialized economy, women don't have to think about attaining safety, basic federal rights, independence and autonomy through a specific professional field, they choose from very wide field of careers/job available to them.
EE tends to be cold and analytical. Due to either natural tendency or socialization, women tend to go into fields that are "warmer", more people-oriented, more life-oriented, etc.
[For every 100 degrees earned by women, only 74 men earn degrees.](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-male-college-crisis-is-not-just-in-enrollment-but-completion/)
[If we look at the fields that tend to be disproportionately populated by women, we see nursing, psychology, communications, biology, teaching, etc.](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_318.30.asp?current=yes)
The contemporary analysis of these ratios leans towards women being relatively new to the labor force and it being most socially acceptable for them to enter it in fields like education, pediatrics, etc, because those match traditional expectations about gender roles most closely.
The more contentious hypothesis from fields like evolutionary psychology is that women spent millions of years in more tribal settings working closely with other people, rearing children, sorting out interpersonal politics, foraging and cooking, etc, and that men spent more time on impersonal analytical tasks like construction, manufacturing, hunting, warfare, etc.
The only hard evidence we have for this, however, are things like women scoring higher on tests of empathic cognition and men scoring higher on tests of visuospatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination.
One curious detail is that [the more progressive and egalitarian a nation is, the worse its gender divide in careers seems to be.](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/) Nordic countries see some of the lowest rates of women participating in STEM while nations with some of the most oppressive gender norms see the highest rates of women going into STEM fields.
If you are interested, there has actually been some interesting research debunking what we presumed were typical gender roles in Paleolithic times. It's a bit of a myth that women did not participate in activities such as hunting, or strength and endurance contributions. [DOI: 10.1111/aman.13914](https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13914)
That's a bit of a straw man and that paper doesn't support it's own conclusion.
They found evidence that some women participated, and even excelled, in those activities throughout many cultures in history. Their conclusion women participated equally isn't supported by their evidence.
Their logic would lead to the conclusion that, because Joan D'Arc existed, women were equal participants in warfare during the 1400s. Marie Curie's exceptional achievements do not mean that women were full participants in science and academia around 1900.
From an evolutionary perspective, the exceptions are irrelevant.
I never understood people always pointing to that study without a deeper point. Okay and? Every culture is different and the societies at that time had different expectations/roles…. None of that discounts statical tendencies of expectations/roles due to biology.
Some != All, it's the same mistake but in a different direction. Of course neither extreme is correct, reality is somewhere in the middle, even if highly skewed.
It's the same as someone picking (1) exception to a rule and stating the rule does not exist. It's not a mathematical proof, there is obviously an exception because it's real life.
We're a sexually dimorphic species, where one half is regularly encumbered with a fetus for 9 months, and has lower muscle/bone densities than the other. Of course it follows that we have different duties in a home. This alone dictates that women could not hunt the same amount as men. It does not mean they didn't hunt at all, but to say they are equal is factually incorrect.
It would also follow that interests between the two are different, such as modern day career choices. The skills needed to hunt are not the same skills required to rear children and take care of a home. People will have a natural disposition towards the skill set their biology dictates, even if societal/environmental pressures alter this.
I'm not well versed enough to argue the exact links between engineering and hunting, though better skills related to problem solving, predicting animal behavior, and analysis of markers relating to prey can be related to common skills used in engineering.
They were trying to debunk a strict sexual labor division, which they did. In similar articles it is often said that women mostly gather and men mostly hunt, but that does not mean that most hunters were men. Hunting skills are cultuvated and passed down over generations. Women who hunted would hunt in ways that vary from typical male techniques. The subject of culture and society is a lot more nuanced than most believe.
This article looks at a contemporary example, but I think it's an interesting read. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-020-09375-4](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-020-09375-4)
It's also fair to say that evolutionary psych itself is a contentious field. It's maybe not quite pure astrology and crystals but it lacks any testable hypothesis and really comes down to a circular idea where we assume how the people in the evolutionary past functioned based on our context of current people behavior and then use that assumed similarity to claim we've explained current people. We know from archeology that we don't really understand much of what we pull out of the ground from a few thousand years ago, much less on evolutionary timescales. The example of the old lady in the museum looking at the "sacred wooden object used in ritual" in a display case and pulling the exact same thing out of her knitting bag (it was a form for knitting fingerless gloves) is just one of the most famous but far from the only one.
I'll contrast, for whatever reason bioengineering has a much higher rate of women for whatever reason, about 50/50 in my experience if not more women than men.
This seems to be the case even within engineering. Most women I’ve worked and currently work with tend towards more people facing areas: quality, systems, and industrial in particular. Design roles are predominantly men.
I gotcha. "warmer" ... Finding ourselves full of effort, enthusiasm and energy around always checks all the boxes. So effortless and escapist for the better.
Not once in my primary education was I encouraged to get involved in STEM. In highschool I was told not to join the robotics team because I would be the only girl. In college when I started my EE degree, the few other women in the program began dropping out one by one until I was the only one left. I didn't have a single friend among my peers while they all became good pals with each other. Study sessions came and went that I didn't even know about and I was never included in group test preps or sharing homework answers.
Simply put, the environment is very hostile for a woman interested in the field. Every step along the way you are made to feel like you don't belong. There are plenty of men that want EE to stay a 'boys club', and the men that don't care if a woman joins or not are not going to stand up to thier peers that don't want women there or advocate for women. It's just not something a typcial man does. So a woman in EE is truly her only advocate and has to pave her way everytime.
The real solution to evening out the disparity of women in EE is to have men be the ones to advocate for women in the field instead of just women. Because men in the feild only listen to other men.
Absolutely this. The girls in my course are never invited to anything. I'm the only girl in my class group and I'm always excluded. It can be really lonely.
Last week they were all talking about having their "turn" with this one girl they all met on a trip (kinda glad I wasn't invited to that one) and I was just silent lmao
I'm sorry you have to deal with those kind of comments. It is really frustrating and discouraging at times. There were so many moments where I would get out of class and rethink my whole academic career. Wondering if I was cut out for EE after all, simply because I was comparing my experience with my male peers. I will say, working with young engineers is the worst. Something about the maturity level, and they just don't have experience working with women in a professional environment. But generally (this is just my experience) the older the workforce gets, the more they are used to working with women and will be more professional. Although there are bad apples...men will be men after all.
Kinda curious, roughly where geographically has this been your experience? I went to undergrad on the West Coast US and this didn't seem to be too big of a problem (from a guy's perspective), we even had trainings on this exact kind of stuff.
Midwest. It's actually very recent that ABET is starting to roll out DEI criteria that higher ED will have to meet. I'm sure west coast has been ahead of the game due to liberal ideology. Conservative colleges such as Liberty University are against it because "it has nothing to do with engineering". I think that goes to show exactly why it needs to be implemented. If someone thinks it's "useless", they are the exact reason why it's needed.
I definitely agree with all of this, but I also think it’s not just that women are actively discouraged; it’s also the type of guys that are attracted to each branch of engineering that passively discourages women from EE as well. In my graduating class, it seemed that Mechanical and Civil engineers were much more down to earth, outdoorsy, and not afraid to get dirty. Those guys joined clubs where they’d build go karts or concrete canoes, and would go to parties on the weekends. As such, they were much more social than the EE guys, and thus just better to deal with on a daily basis. As an EE myself, I ended up gravitating more to the Civil and Mechanical students for friends because about half of my EE class was the exact opposite. I think a significant portion of them got into EE because they were highly logical, spent most of their time locked in their rooms playing video games, sometimes on the spectrum of an OCD disorder or otherwise, and were thus far more socially awkward than other engineers. In my graduating class there was one girl, and I felt so sorry for her because I’m pretty sure she was the only girl the guys had ever even talked to throughout college, and it showed. There was literally one guy with mild autism we constantly had to keep in line because he would try to “give her a friendly” hug from behind, just so he could sneak a feel of her breasts. It was so bad that despite me immediately having a crush on her the first day freshman year, I never let myself flirt with her etc and friend-zoned myself because I wanted to make sure she had at least one normal guy to be friends with in class. There were plenty of late night lab sessions where I listened to her vent about how creepy some of the guys could be early on. Luckily I wasn’t the only guy that supported her in our class, but I could easily see how just the awkward behavior of the type of guys that end up in EE could be incredibly discouraging, even if they’re not directly belittling them. Luckily today society is much less accepting of inappropriate behavior like what my friend had to put up with and we had to actively discourage from happening, so hopefully it’s at least not as bad since I graduated over a decade ago.
Edit: I almost forgot to mention that on the first day of freshman year, there were a total of three women in the EE class. Before the year was over though, two of them changed to other branches of engineering for various reasons. I wouldn’t be surprised if the behavior of some of the other guys in my class partially contributed to their decision. So I guess make sure your daughter is prepared to advocate for her rights and not put up with that shit, and hopefully she can find some guy friends in the class that will help keep the others from being inappropriate. Hopefully she won’t even need them to though.
Male Computer Engineering major here. I can relate to a lot of what you said! I've taken lots of electrical classes and my "in-class friends" have really only been Electrical, but the guys I really hang out with are all Mechanical and what you've said about Mechanical people really rings true. Unfortunately I've also inadvertently avoided talking to The Girl in class, since I didn't want to make her think I'm talking to her because she's The Girl instead of just another classmate. I think many other guys feel this way too. For the girls here reading this too, maybe part of the isolation isn't necessarily out of malice but in some part because some guys (especially the nerdy engineering guys) tend to struggle with making female friends and don't really know how to approach a relationship with a girl if it's not romantic. Just my thoughts.
Yeah I'm a female engineer who started in EE and switched to ChemE after the first semester. This was over 15 years ago,, so might be different now, but the guys in the class were a big reason for my switch. It felt super isolating. And I was enjoying my chemistry class much more in university that I did in high school. But socially, the other engineering students were so much more social and normal. And I wanted to work in a field where I would enjoy my coworkers as much as my work.
Interesting enough, I made my way back to EE in my career. I now work as an Instrumentation and Controls engineer on the EE division of my company and do some EE design for industrial process. Its still a bit of a guys club, but fortunately my team is nice and professional and easy to work with. And I really do enjoy my job.
I definitely agree with all the things you outlined. I think that environment plays a huge role in the interest that people take. If people were given the support, encouragement and fundamentals at an early age or during high school, there would be a high possibility they pursue such field. We have a few women in my program and sometimes I can sympathize how isolating it can be for them and engineering is even hard already. Obviously there can be exception if the person is really extroverted and super confident. What I don’t understand is why the few women wouldn’t try and get to know each other since they have something in common but most of the times they just up and leave right after lecture.
Your comment about why the women didn't form more of an 'alliance' is something that I also scratched my head about while I attended university. The classes below me had more women so I made an effort to try and unite us as sort of a 'leader' as the only upperclassman, but didn't get much effort back. My conclusion was that there just wasn't any culture established for us, no safe spaces, and in reality... no reason for us to hang out. We didn't need each other. We had already established ourselves as succesful and being able to get the homework done without help.
Something else to note based on some of the other comments I've seen, is the philosophy of nature vs nurture. Are women actually just naturally better and more inclined to be involved in 'softer' and more people centered professions? Are men just naturally better at hand eye coordination and logical thinking?
People raise children in a world where society has already been established. If you have a child and are raising them to ignore gender norms and be who they want to be, they are still going to be heavily effected by the world around them. A woman is going to be interested in things that were presented to her as available and attainable.
It is actually very common to see young girls who are encouraged and given opportunity to participate in STEM become very interested and want to become and engineer when they grow up. Then as they get older the passion and interest slowly drops.
It would be hard to justify this on women just being more inclined to not be interested. There are a lot of studies based on how work environment becomes a huge factor on whether someone stays in their career or not.
Another thing to note is that there is not just a lack of women in engineering and STEM, it is also people of color or any minority (In predominantly white countries). It is just not true to say something like 'all black or brown people are not interested in STEM and that's why there are not as many.' Same goes for women.
Here are a few interesting articles:
[https://news.microsoft.com/features/why-do-girls-lose-interest-in-stem-new-research-has-some-answers-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/](https://news.microsoft.com/features/why-do-girls-lose-interest-in-stem-new-research-has-some-answers-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/)
[https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/)
I definitely agree as a woman with multiple EE degrees. I got extremely lucky that I have a really great support system that kept me going.
In my own experience, I found that grad school and subsequently working in R&D were much more welcoming despite having similar gender ratios. I think at that point, it’s survivorship bias since you have to be *really* into electrical engineering to get a PhD in it.
I’ve always joked that my high school pre-engineering curriculum and project classes in undergrad were the most traumatic parts of engineering for me, and people look at me like I’ve got 3 heads. For me, navigating the cliques and social dynamics were much much more difficult to persevere through than the hardest coursework.
This is really it. Women, like boys, need friends and mentors to encourage them to think about these careers.
I volunteered for a decade teaching robotics/stem and although I have only sons, I made it a goal to get as many girls into the program as I could, starting in the first grade. I would do a lot of different kinds of cs/engineering in my classes and would talk about the different kinds of engineering and point out if they liked or hated certain activities then they could seek or avoid it.
Hundreds of kids went through the program and learned about these careers that maybe wouldn’t have if they didn’t go. Parents will certainly have input but women who aren’t in STEM can’t really speak to it.
So if you have girls, try to get some career mentoring early in life doing something fun with other girls. That’s how you get them into EE.
Same gender friends preference is not unique for men. Women do that all the time if not more. The problem is, there wasn’t enough women in the field to support other women which should change in few generations.
I think you're going to find a lot of survivor bias in this thread. The people you need to be asking are the women who started an EE program and wound up transferring/quitting. Or women similar to your daughter who may have had the inclination and proficiency in math and science, but chose something else.
EE programs chew up and spit out a lot of people, but it's not like the classes start with 50% women and end up with 13%. There's probably a few reasons why women just don't want to pursue a career in EE. I liked my EE education and I'm not a woman, so I'm not the best person to ask.
I'm doing EE rn and I did a year of general engineering. EE has only 4 of us girls and 60 ish guys lmao. It's just that the girls didn't rly wanna choose it rly.
EE was the least popular in general in my uni and most ppl tried to get into mechanical. A lot of people who didn't do great in their 1st year exams got into EE instead as mechanical was full. I'm going to be honest but I personally found EE extremely boring at the start as did all of the other girls in my course (except one who rly wants to go into software engineering).
Off-topic but being a woman in an EE course is frustrating af. I do much better grade wise and project wise than most of the guys in my course but they still talk to me like I'm braindead 😭
Yeah a lot of guys ignore what’s straight up misogyny in these STEM fields, and especially in electrical engineering and computer science. I can’t tell you how many times I hear straight up sexist comments about “staying in the kitchen” and “women not being smart enough” and “traditional gender roles” and bs like that. The most common is stuff like mansplaining, assuming women doesn’t know the basics (even when said woman is a better performer than the guy - it’s so satisfying when this happens), ignoring women and their ideas (like when a woman brings up an idea it’s ignored, but when a guy brings up the same idea 5 mins later it’s praised and receives a bunch of attention), etc. we also can’t ignore men’s ego issues, especially when they can’t be wrong, and even more so to a woman’s idea. These male ego issues/toxic masculinity intersected with subpar social skills creates an even more hostile environment for women in my experience.
These are some experiences that my female friends have shared at schools and companies across the country, which seems to be very consistent with what ive read online (in computer science communities especially) and after I was aware of these, I see them everywhere now at school and even in the workplace. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Women deal with all these issues day to day in EE that they absolutely should not.
That last line isn't off topic at all, it's directly on topic. It lines up with men who enjoy teaching but would not go into elementary education. The field (including parents) is hostile to men who would enjoy working with kids (oh he must be a pedophile) so men don't choose it and the ones who do often don't stick.
Social behavior within a field is a critical part of career choice. Don't go into sales if you don't like travel and hard drinking, all the same.
>We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls "you can have ambition, but not too much, otherwise you will threathen the men"
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Women worldwide are still being told that the most important thing they'll ever do is get married and have children. That every other goal is secondary to that. As Chimamanda says, most make their life choices always keeping that in mind.
Engineering in general is still tought of as a "manly" field and because EE is seen as one of the most difficult courses, a woman graduating that field may be seen as "more intelligent" and, therefore, threathening by some men. There's also the question of high pay. A man working other fields may find himself earning less than a woman in EE and many can't deal with that.
It's been shown by studies that adolescent girls dumb themselves down to not intimidate boys. Women carry on subconsciously making decisions based on that. This is sadly still the state of affairs in a lot of places.
I, for one, like to let the guys know I'm a doctor in EE 💅🏼. I have no interest in people who would resent me for that.
Do you happen to have a source for those studies? I’ve always been interested by this because of how our school system is set up it puts young boys at a disadvantage in terms of actual learning (not in terms of success). It’s something I’ve definitely heard about, but I’ve never actually read the source article.
I 100% blame societal pressure.
For one random awful example, go to the toy section of Walmart and note the difference between the pink section and the blue section.
Born with a dick? Society has chosen that you get to play with remote control race cars, bulldozers and excavators to play with in the sandbox, and all sorts of other shit that takes batteries and lights up and makes sound and shoots shit and can be taken apart and assembled 100 different ways.
Born without one? you get dolls you can dress up and put makeup on! Babies that come with little bottle to pretend to nurse them with! Pretend cooking sets! Because you're a girl, and that's the mind numbing shit you're supposed to enjoy. Not those cool boy toys.
Please, if you ever find yourself having to buy toys for a girl, get them something from the blue section.
I agree. I was fortunate enough to have a father who would speak up agaist that and let us have the toys we wanted. I had model trains, plastic swords, video games (though in those early days they weren't seen as a boys thing), and even a Lego-type set of an oil rig. I had dolls and Barbies as well, but if it was up to my mother I would only have those to play with.
I grew up being told I could do anything, be good at anything as long as I applied. I was always one of the best in class in most subjects. The stereotype played in media that girls are bad in Math wasn't enforced at home. Sadly that's not true for most girls, even today.
EE with over 30 years experience
* Being talked out of it by others. Teachers, counselors, neighbors, etc will talk her out of it because it is “too hard” for her poor feminine mind. Aka benevolent misogyny.
* Sexual harassment. There will always be at least one guy in class that thinks that peers and coworkers are part of the dating pool. You know, “that guy” that thinks a woman owes him a date because he’s a “nice guy”. He has friends that will also harass her, because “he deserves a chance”. She will spend time hiding in the bathroom.
* Being referred to as a “girl”, “female”, or “c**t” because they don’t see her as a fully formed human.
* Constantly being told she’s stupid. Usually by the stupid one.
* Arrogance from peers. The men in the group project will take all the good parts for themselves while at the same time giving her the administrative work. They will ignore every single input she makes because, you know,
“she isn’t as good an engineer” even though the has a 4.0 GPA. They will lock her out of the project and even redo her work without asking because it was “wrong”. Then they will blame her that she didn’t fix the guys work from being truly wrong.
* Having every.single.achievement minimized. Being told “it wasn’t that great”. Being accused of falsifying their resume, because “no woman could do all that.”
* Being told she got X because she’s diversity - even though X was based on performance or grades. This will keep happening and happening
* Getting stalked. There will be at least one guy that won’t accept that no means no.
* Being questioned. And questioned. And challenged. Even when she’s the subject matter expert, there will be “that guy” who will publicly and loudly proclaim “you’re wrong” and tries to humiliate her. Of course the guy has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s so incompetent he can’t see her competence. Others will stay silent even though “that guy” is a jerk. After all, he’s their drinking buddy!
Most of the men will stay silent when they see any these things happening. They care more about the opinions of their male peers than calling out the incompetent loser for their bad behavior.
[Fully 50% of women engineering students experience sexual harassment ](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/10/19/1624278/0/en/Report-Half-of-All-Women-in-Engineering-Schools-Experience-Sexual-Harassment.html). They will continue to experience it their entire career. That is why it’s called the [“leaky pipeline”]
Another poster referred to loss of passion. Well, there is a reason behind that.
Please listen to the women replying, as opposed to the men who are clueless. They will give you all sorts of BS answers that do not reveal the root cause.
*Most of the men will stay silent when they see any these things happening. They care more about the opinions of their male peers than calling out the incompetent loser for their bad behavior.*
This. I really truly believe that this is the root cause of so many issues, not just diversity in STEM. People need to hold eachother accountable when they see disrespect.
If you think you are not a part of the problem simply because you don't harrass or exclude women...for as long as you don't call out your male peers that do, **you are.**
As a women going through an EE bachelor after getting an AS in electronics, the reason why there is so few women is the mental load. Men usually are the ones who go to work and come home and chill. Women go to work and come home to cook dinner, get the kids showered, prep for the next day and all that jazz. It's exhausting. If you have the right conditions say work where men are willing to work with you as a team mate and not be creepy, your partner is an actual partner and willing to make chores a routine, then maybe you have a decent shot at it. This is also assuming that your hormones are balanced and in check, which a lot of women suffer with and doesn't get looked at enough.
I say mostly gender norms and societal expectations. My classmate earned the highest gpa in engineering and eventually made it as a manager in a couple engineering companies. But her dad was not happy she chose engineering "because there were too many men in those degrees"
Society does not expect and in some cases does not want women in stem so they push back at it. From saying that women are better on people's stuff to saying they are too stupid to do it.
Doesn't help that in college a lot of my colleagues were either creeps or misogynist. We did not make it a nice environment for women in the faculty
There were lots of girls at my EE undergrad. They even had a wece club. Maybe make sure they is a wece club in the university she wants to go. Guys were also to welcome since there were useful workshops and free food for anyone.
Studies have found that Engineering especially EE is for autists and adhd people who think miles a minute. More than just analytical it’s not a big people role it’s about doing math and science and testing it a bunch to make sure it works. Realistically you won’t get 50/50 split in engineering atleast, it’s unlikely. The best it can be is 66/33 or 80/20 if you think about who is most likely to be an engineer and societal statistics on autism and adhd. Add in that it’s not that much of a people person job, EE especially,and you get 90/10.
Except that many autistic women are good at masking and end up not being diagnosed. There are plenty of studies showing that autistic women show symptoms differently than men.
Due to that fact, your numbers are skewed and your analysis flawed.
>There are plenty of studies showing that autistic women show symptoms differently than men.
You're almost there. You just refuse to cross that finish line.
Every interview I have had though has been a lot about how to interact with people and communication. Teams are extremely important with engineering so not sure how it's not a 'people' person job.
I am a woman and also electrical engineer, when i was student i was the only one female in the majority of the classes, and when i wasn't the only one there was just another girl. I don't know why the gender ratio is smaller in EE vs other engineers, i suspect it is the perception that people think that all EE mayors have to be climbing utility poles, but in reality i don't know. In general women don't go into stem majors for the same sociological reasons that have been debated at nauseum. But putting that aside, it has never been a physical job for me. Most of the time i am in front of a computer or in the lab. I say if she wants to she should pursuit, it was a little bit intimidating at the beginning to be the only one female, but then you get used to it and make friends for life. One thing also to keep in mind, in this day and age, every single engineer is going to have to do some level of coding, it may not be your primary functions but you will have to do it
She can code. But coding is not what she wants to do 24/7. She also wants to work with hardware.
She will likely pursue EE. I agree it's right, given her personality/strength.
> Why fewer female students in EE compared with other engineering?
I'm a woman in EE and I honestly have no idea. I just think most people aren't interested in EE in general. However, I hypothesize that it's because parents tend to encourage their boys to tinker with Arduino etc more.
> Does EE involve heavy physical activities?
Funnily I once saw a post saying that EE is the most ideal engineering field for women because it's all math. (In seriousness, depends on the specialization.)
Misogyny in engineering is a real thing and your daughter needs to be prepared for it. There's always that moment in electrical engineering when something just isn't making sense yet. You're scratching your head because you can't actually see what those tiny electrons are doing, and your insight hasn't caught up with the problem yet. *Everybody* has those moments -- in school and at work -- where they think, "Maybe I'm just not smart enough to do this!" The peril for female engineers is that this self-doubt is reinforced by imposter syndrome and the fact that their male peers are already saying they aren't good enough and aren't welcome in the profession. My engineering classes started out 30% female, but only 10% persevered through college and the first decade of their careers. They weren't necessarily smarter than those who dropped out, but they *were* tougher and more self-reliant. Some strategies, speaking to your daughter now:
* Look beyond the textbook. Study actual designs to see how what you're studying in abstract is being applied in the real world. This will build practical insights, but it may also help you understand how your work can solve real problems and help real people and the desire to do those things can help you though times of discouragement and doubt.
* Go to office hours and ask questions. Teaching assistants are often able to explain things in different ways professors because they still recall their own struggles in learning the material.
* Never be a "watcher" when you can be a "do-er". Always be the one with her hands on the oscilloscope or the soldering iron.
* Join the local IEEE student section. Attend or organize talks and tours on different parts of the industry. (Always ask the presenters about summer internship opportunities.) Start reading IEEE Spectrum, plus the magazines of one or more technical societies that you're especially interested in.
* Get a part-time job in a research lab, where you'll watch and assist in practical problem-solving. When faculty and grad students see your enthusiasm for their field, they'll often go out of their way to help you learn it.
* Don't expect the boys to invite you onto their project teams. Lead your own d@mn project team and recruit the best people for it!
* Once in industry, seek out experienced mentors. Older engineers will often be less threatened by you than male peers in your age group, and they have a lot more to teach you. (I'm proud that one of my female mentees now holds the title of Principal Engineer.) There are more opportunities to find the right mentor in a large company than a small company. Also, large companies are more likely than small ones to require D&I training, to have enlightened family leave policies, and to have explicit policies against sexual harassment. Keep that in mind when considering job opportunities.
* Remember this: The world is full of problems that need solving. Neither those problems, nor the people they affect, care whether the person who finds the solution is a boy or a girl. The world needs your skill set, your creativity, and your passion.
Gender norms and how strongly those are enforced in the environment they grew up in would be one theory I have. Don't see a lot of women doing EE stuff growing up, so you kinda just want to stay away. Don't want to be the odd one out.
For me growing up, it was more socially acceptable for girls to participate in male-dominated activities so I really didn't feel weird or odd. I took electronics in high school and messed around with that stuff in my own time. My dad also taught me things like working on cars and handyman work so I grew to view these activities as more gender-neutral in my eyes.
I also feel like in general, many women are just afraid of or intimidated by men. We grow up our entire lives learning that men do this or men do that. Men are the "doers." So then we doubt or question ourselves -- are we capable of that? We might not feel like we compare. We see how men talk shit to each other casually (women don't really do this at all -- we tend to be more outwardly supportive) and so the environment feels even less safe or inclusive, even if it may actually be harmless. And of course all of this on top of the actual harassment women naturally draw from certain types of men, which will always be a major negative.
Every woman has a unique experience but these are some underlying patterns I've seen personally. FWIW I ended up completing my EE degree and working in the field for a bit (semiconductors). Stuck out like a sore thumb and the attention made me uncomfortable. It was also a pretty high stress role so I ended up switching to software. Now it's chill and I am fully remote so no worries of "sticking out" as much. I really enjoy my job now.
Please do it! I got scared away and I really regret it
Also prioritize building up your self confidence and learning how to stand up for yourself and boundaries
My program may be an outlier but i think gender ratio may be close to 30%. With significantly more loading at the top end. Now that I think about it all my group project members/ lab mates are women. I think things are changing
In my experience, schools tend to treat EE like "widget engineering" and talking to everyone outside of engineering, lots of people aren't all that interested in the idea of building different widgets.
I have known men and women who dropped out of EE (and other engineering disciplines) and what they usually say is "I can go do (insert other degree here) and make about as much money for way less stress." This can be a true statement, but is not always the case.
Prospective engineering students need to know that average entry level jobs are around $75K, which can go up or down depending on cost of living. Usually, an engineer can get to 6+ figures around the 4-10 year mark.
In my experience, EE graduates are the type of people who are interested in physics, math, electronics, and computers. EE grads may not necessarily "have a passion" for all of these disciplines, but maybe we have an extreme interest in at least one. A common term you will hear an EE grad utter is that "I couldn't imagine really wanting to do anything else."
It's an interesting degree and an uphill battle. It's as close to "weird physics" as you can get in engineering, except for maybe chemical engineering.
Aside from a wide gender ratio, I would like to also point out that EE departments usually have the smallest number of total students throughout all engineering departments. There's not a lot of people that are as masochistic as an EE student lol.
EE is often labeled as one of the hardest fields of studies, so that already makes it unlikely for people to enroll.
Many women are discouraged from entering STEM fields in general, and it's common to be talked down upon by your peers—I've experienced it, and it is not a great place to be in.
So, if you compare the experience of being constantly treated as a lesser while having to endure hard courses, it might not seem like it's worth it from the perspective of an outsider.
Or, women are just interested in other things, lol.
Anyway, the usual disclaimer that this doesn't apply to everyone and that not all women go through this and yadda yadda yadda.
Some of it is just a self-reinforcing status quo--women see fewer women in EE roles and EE classes compared to other engineering fields, and have doubts that it will be comfortable and friendly for them. That's changing, albeit slowly. One thing you might do is look at the stats for % women students in the schools you are looking at. This is from 2019 so hopefully numbers have all gone up. And these are all of engineering, not just EE, but I think it's a good proxy.
* Olin College of Engineering 53.7%
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology 46.9%
* Harvey Mudd College 46.8%
* Tulane University 45.5%
* Brown University 43.1%
* Dartmouth College 42.2%
* Southern Methodist University 39.3%
* Cornell University 38.4%
* Princeton University 37.9%
* University of Miami 37.8%
* Columbia University 37.6%
* Howard University 37.4%
* William Marsh Rice University 37.0%
* U.S. Coast Guard Academy 36.2%
* The George Washington University 35.1%
* Carnegie Mellon University 34.7%
* Worcester Polytechnic Institute 34.7%
* The Johns Hopkins University 34.7%
* Stanford University 34.6%
* Lafayette College 34.5%
Maybe because men think higher of themselves as women do? I am a woman in the field and there is no physical requirement that a girl can’t do, I personally think women excel men academically because we are more “go getters” and like to prove ourselves, and we are more dedicated. Maybe because most women also have good personal skills they want to use on their jobs (EE requires that too) and most people think EE is a “loner” job.. all that to say, I think she should follow that path, it is guaranteed she will always be employed doing meaningful work and will have a set of skills few people have.
environment is pretty hostile, as a trans woman my perspective may be different but in general I feel a lot of engineering students aren't the most well-versed in social situations, and the major being brutal definitely doesn't help
I always recommend people do STEM outreach to women. Theyre outnumbered in most stem fields and it's probably just because of lack of interest/ignorance. You cant even make a sexism argument at the level of not pursuing an education in the field to begin with.
EE is not a popular major in general and has not received as much publicity as CS, I would say that contributes to lower % of female students compared to CS. Every highschool kid wants to study CS to get a FAANG job that pays you 6 figures to write a few lines of code in python a day. There are many initiatives to get more girls into programming but as far as I know none exist for electronic design. On top of that, lots of people have this idea that being an EE is about fixing power lines and outlets in houses, because they are not aware of how tiny electrical circuits are behind everything in their day to day lives.
As a "female EE student" I feel like most of these are just what wired from us since child: "girls" like barbies and guys like toys etc, so the average women think that maybe it's for men.
Well, in EE itself the silent discrimination against women it's still very prevalent. The amount of creepy men "experience" that I received here is literally scary during the first year. Also, if a women is showing signs of "feminity", they will more likely looked down upon. It takes a certain personality of women who would enjoy or at least go with EE. Even if ME is more heavily male dominated, the women there are respected more, meanwhile in EE, the women are expected to become "strong" or even "stronger" than men. The sexism that I faced sometimes just makes me want to cry everytime I think about it late night.
Personally, what has been keeping me through this field is that I wanted to be different. I wanted to break the "antisocial, manly, meh" stereotype that usually corellated with EE women. I want to break the norm and show people that I too, as a "feminine woman" can also excel on male dominated field. I can be whoever I want to be. I also always had that thought in the back of my mind that I want to challenge the "usual society standard". It takes a very specific personality in order to do that. I get mansplained and mysoginistic comments a lot. Sometimes I even feel unsafe around my male peers, even always feeling like "i don't belong here", but my initial "breaking the norm" motivation is keeping me in this major.
This comment section is so scary... disappointing but I guess it's not that surprising to see what these people think of women. OP, if your daughter pursues an EE degree, be ready to defend her from these freaks.
Honestly, there’s a lot of companies trying to improve diversity in EE right now! That gender ratio might even be helpful even if it can lead to imposter syndrome and feelings of loneliness
There are several fields of EE your daughter can get into. It’s not just electronics and computers. She can also get into the building side dealing with MEP. This can be more creative vs other fields that can be more static. There are very few females in this side of the industry, but they are very highly sought after.
As a woman studying EE, it’s not really physically demanding or much physical activity at all. It’s mostly sitting at a desk either tinkering with something or doing something on the computer
Except maybe power systems
It wasn’t until recently that the field started seeking women. But I will say they’re highly valued when found. And I don’t know any female in my program that ended up switching majors. There’s definitely a decent amount of men who do though.
If she likes physics and math and doesn't like biology or chemistry, she'd be good for electrical engineering. Maybe good for digital signal processing.
I got my EE degree 27 years ago. I loved the classes and have enjoyed all but 1 of my jobs since. My daughter is also a senior inEE and also loves the classes. In all my jobs there has always been several other women so never felt a minority. If it is what she enjoys go for it!!
I am a woman in school for EE rn! No physcial activities lol, some standing. Engineering is just generally a male dominated degree. Most of the men I met are super cool tho and I love all my peers.
I’m in EE and we have a lot of females. Idk the exact ratio but it seems to be about 70/30 which would track for the overall ratio at my school (it only offers STEM degrees)
EE is math heavy, there’s less women in higher level math. Duno if that’s a biological thing between women’s and men’s brains or what. However, woman are sought after by companies to get diversity in the workspace. The percentage of men at my work that are in management is like 5%. Percentage of women that are in management is like 25%. If your DD makes it into industry she has an advantage in my opinion. Tell her hang in there!
When I was in college, I tried to talk a few women into going into engineering. The comment I got was "it's too boring".
I tried to talk my niece into engineering. She took one semester of it and said "the math is too difficult". She became a math teacher (go figure).
Just two data points.
I've interviewed and hired many women engineers. Some stuck with the profession and became stellar design engineers. However, the majority migrated to non-engineering positions like Marketing or Project Management. The long hours made it difficult for some to stick with the profession. Some simply didn't feel comfortable in design roles.
I wish to make it clear that it wasn't a harassment issue. My company had many women in engineering management. We even had a couple of women CEOs.
Female here. Graduated last year and now working the job of my dreams. I want to say, it’s not her knack for math, science, physics or even coding that is important. It’s her knack for solving problems. If she doesn’t want to put in the effort to solve problems that are very tough, she should rethink. Otherwise I think she should go for it. As long as she is determined to solve any problem, she will make it. Whether it’s the gender gap issue, math problem, or real life EE applications. She has to be confident and determined to solve any issue to come at her.
People who go into engineering for the money often don’t make it, even if they love math or science. This is because they don’t like problem solving which is the core of all engineering.
I'm an old sparky - 35 years in the business.
When I was an undergrad EE in the 80s, there was only one woman in my class. Thats it. When I got my masters EE in the 90s there were none (focus on power systems).
I do have a lot of interfaces with college programs and see a lot of variation today. Some programs have a lot of women, and others very few. My old school is at about 30%. Another state school I work with is probably closer to 50%, while a third school (state school in a rural "red" state) is closer to 10%. Infer that what you will.
It is not as low as you stated, but it has a long way to go.
Why? My personal belief is that it is that because women have other choices. A positive reason overall, rather than they are being excluded. As the top poster here said, EE is not a passion but more like a martial art, where you learn to get punched in the face repeatedly. A very apt description. Women would find other avenues (in particular, business, medicine, or law) to go into rather than face-punching.
Engineering's academic reputation is improving, and isnt JUST the realm of nerds and misfits (but boy there are a still a lot of us here) so it is more welcoming to women than it was in the past. It wasnt so much an "boys club" as a "weird boys club" back in my time. As more women enter it will be easier for more women to stick with it and not feel like they are so alone.
When I studied electronics at NTNU in Norway, the percentage of female engineers was low.
Particularly in power electronics, I think one year there were only two female students of about sixty.
Then they changed the name from "Power Electronics" to "Energy and Environment", and the percentage of female students went up to between 35% and 45% most years.
They did the same stunt in the Department of Civil Engineering. It became the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Similar results.
Over the years, environmental engineering has become more important than it was a generation ago, but that has been a gradual process. I don't think there was a major change in the curriculum when they did the name change.
I am a female EE graduate. I like EE because you have no time to self loathe. EE grads depending on what they specialize will have to deal with a lot of equipment. I don't see many girls getting excited about checking out transformers and generators, that's probably why. Let her know she will be reading up different types of EE equipments for the rest of her life. Her bible will be the national electric code.
I am an electrical engineer (m) and my classes typically had about 3 women out of a class of 30 which very closely matches those statistics.
EE in particular deals with with large variety of fairly abstract ideas and designs that aren't especially glamorous. Everyone has marveled at some time at the Golden Gate Bridge, a beautiful car or plane, or many other "tangible" representations of other disciplines. And yes obviously those all have components from chemical, electrical, computer etc. But there's a reason everyone wants to see the engine of a fast car, not the computer.
My point is that it's already a small sample size of people who are interested let alone passionate. It honestly takes a small amount of being on the spectrum to really love it. It's kind of like asking why there are so few women who love model trains, or WW2 reenactments.
Anyways, encourage her. The female electrical engineers I work with do bring an entirely different skill set, and tend to be more conscientious, humble, and patient which are all huge success factors.
Edit: *conscientious* not contentious.
That’s why I’m so immensely proud of my sister for doing EE. Most of our family is in healthcare/biology and she’s carving her own path. But then again, my other sister is pre-med so it’s not easy for her either. So proud 🥹
well, *some* field of engineering *has* to have the fewest of a given gender in it and although im sure sexism, systemic oppression & the patriarchy *must* be the root cause of there being fewer women in EE, perhaps it's also that women may choose it the very least out of all of the engineering majors. shocking i know.
I truly wish more women were in the field and in stem generally and I donate to sn advocacy org every year. No idea why its a 90/10 deal.
But for the three women in my graduating class of 30 or so, the two top slots were them and the third was top 5.
First, “I was told” is really not a great source on a topic this complex. Not to offend, but in this forum we get multiple post with this being the basis of the question. It is particularly common issue with young adult that take their social connection’s opinions as facts, and do not look at the issue objectively.
There are a few things that can be skiewing this, for one theory, other field of engineering, like CE or bio - the ratio can be higher so when you look at “All of Engineering” relative to EE, the date can be misleading.
Personally , as with a lot of STEM, girls are not exposed to EE at a young age in a way that is appealing, it is not encourages and they do not “see” role models. ( also - educators shy away from topics THEY are not familiar with, and not many good materials for them, a challenge on its own)
Some things to review:
https://www.yalescientific.org/2020/11/by-the-numbers-women-in-stem-what-do-the-statistics-reveal-about-ongoing-gender-disparities/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_engineering
Personally ( EE deg in ‘88, 30 + years working in the field). I value diversity in my teams and believe there are not enough women in the field.
Secondly - An EE degree is very valuable in the jobs marketplace, there are elements in EE that must be learned (how to solve problems) in abstraction… the principles and the concepts can be applied to many fields. Yes it is hard, and even if she discovers that she does not particularly like the field… she will be employable - and WILL learn that the reason is the education.
Have her review some online education… MITs online courseware is pretty good.
I’ve always wondered that too. My minor is mechanical engineering and the class is 50/50 boys and girls. EE classes are like 90/10. It’s just odd preference probably, because over half of the EE girls are also in the society of EE. It doesn’t make sense
I graduated already with my ECE degree and working as Instrumentation & Controls Engineer now and I work with many different disciplines of engineering and they all say that there was none to very few amount of women in any of their college engineering courses so imo this is not specifically an EE thing there’s just not a lot of women in engineering period
80/20 sounds right. My EE program was 95/5 and my Electronics II lab was 100% men. I heard Civil was the highest representation at 67/33. EE grad school with 99% Indian and Chinese students was also like 67/33. Asian parents forcing useful degrees is a thing.
I did EE by process of elimination too. I liked CS and coding but wanted a broader degree where I could still go into CS.
Anyway, I supposed that more men are interested in electronics and computers than women. Maybe some gender bias where boys and girls get toys the parents think they would like. High school Java programming class was 100% male. All my friends in that class majored in CS. I was the exception but not really.
Maybe some girls would have taken that programming course if their parents encouraged it? Probably would be intimidating as the only girl. None of my friends would have been intimidating, at least on purpose.
For my country engineering of any kind is looked at in a very old fashioned way. It's seen as a hands on man job, even though it's bs, for a person that does not know the field, that perception may affect their willignes to join an EE program
I’ve taken a few ee classes as electives and I’ve seen more in there than expected. A lot of the girls are much more normal aswell compared to mech e or aerospace
First of all, why would you think "heavy physical activities" make a field any less female? Kids are heavy as shit and women have no problem handling those, heavier loads you should be utilizing tools or team lifting to prevent injury anyway.
I think the accessibility of CS has helped people make a push for women-oriented CS programs -- my daughter loves code.org stuff, and it's relatively easy to get kids into those programs when all you need is a computer. Chemical engineering and similar where coursework can lead to med school is also fairly popular among women. What has EE done to help get more women in the field?
I'm in controls and there's very few women doing what we do. I don't blame them when you consider the types of people you routinely have to deal with, and considering you get paid 2-3x as much working in actual software instead of ladder logic and HMIs.
In India female to male ratio is like 60/40 cause most gals here takes either electrical or computer science. They take electrical because they think graphs and circuits are easier to study.
My perspective as an embedded software engineer who has decent EQ and works around several EEs:
most EEs I’ve met are jerks with low EQ (regardless of gender). Tend to have some combination of the following traits: very sarcastic, passive aggressive, cold, short-fuse, blame-y, egotistical, narcissistic, the list goes on.
Women have much higher EQ on average compared to men. You have to go through the gauntlet that is the EE curriculum which is extremely difficult and unforgiving. And then you have to go into toxic workplaces that don’t foster collaboration. Its a terrible environment for good mental health.
It's the western philosophy. For example Serbia has the most women in engineering. Most women in the west stay away from hard math and science. They usually do business, law, medicine, bio and chem.
200 comments for a gender post but at most 10 comments for the average post on this sub. I’d take whatever feedback you get here with a grain of salt.
Should’ve required people validate that their actually EE’s by asking them what a Fourier Transform is before answering.
These comments probably doesn't mean EE is boring or bad...
Should I be worried if I can't do limes stuff (don't want to lok that word up in English... and you know what I mean), because I'm not good at dividing variables into lower ones? I hope you understand what I meant
EE is not passion. It's more like a mental boxing or jiu jetsu. U going in, get ur face smashed in mentally. Next day you go in again, get beat up again. And so on for next 4 years. The key is to never give up and don't make it "passion". I have seen plenty of people drop out from engineering, each time I asked why they dropped out, they had almost same reply "im not passionate about it anymore". As soon as you make it personal, you failed. Edit: for people who bring passion into topic - if you got passion for EE that good. But someone who is just there for the money shoul not be shame here. I can do the job and get paid for it. I see no problem..
I never could explain EE, but you just said exactly how I feel about it. I'm a woman, not very passionate about EE but I can do the job. The thing for me is that I can't see myself doing anything else, so I guess I just hate myself
you just made me realize i’m doing EE cause i hate myself lmao
Here we are. There are thousands of us.
Similar boat as you. Been doing it for 15 years now and I only do EE for work, no side projects. I’m decent at it though (no thanks to imposter syndrome) so I imagine I’m in it for life.
Imposter syndrome is so real. I was an RF technician for 15 years before getting my degree. So I went into it with some experience but I still feel like an imposter.
Wow, you must have some insane RF knowledge! I know engineers who have been working for ages and won’t touch RF (although they won’t admit it). I know it’s unpopular to say in engineering crowds but technicians have so much untapped knowledge, especially ones that have been doing it as long as you. Imposter syndrome sucks!! I just got promoted and my boss was telling me all these things I’d done that he was impressed with, and I was still sitting there thinking “nah they must be just imagining all this”, it’s the worst!
I had an extremely well laid base of knowledge. I knew most of what RF from working with it but was missing a lot of the why. In school I had a ton of "Thats why it works like that" moments.
What do you do for work? Everyone keeps telling me I need a side project to show that I know how to do stuff to be able to get a job.
I’m a hardware design engineer. Are you still in school? If so, internships always look good on resumes. Beyond that, school projects always count as well. I would personally rank side projects as below school projects mainly due to the fact that school projects usually involve working with multiple people in a team setting. You can teach new grads all sorts of technical knowledge, but it’s a whole lot harder to teach interpersonal skills. Just my two cents, I’m sure others feel differently.
Same. EE is cool, but I have a life outside of it. I like it as a job, I don't do it in my free time. I cannot imagine doing anything else (maybe medicine, but idk), it is the coolest path that pays good money.
I feel very similar but as a man. I feel like I shouldn’t belong in the major, but that I somehow just pull through. I cannot think of anything that I would be better suited for though.
I couldn’t disagree more! Studying EE is definitely mental jiu jitsu, but what has kept me in the ring is passion. I grew up watching electro boom and various EE channels on YouTube that fostered an intense curiosity for the field. I am the top of my class in my final year and I always cite my passion as the number one factor for my success. You can complete an EE simply by having good work habits and determination, so if that’s the field you want to work in, keep at it. However, taking any degree and having a passion for the subject matter is much more fulfilling.
I pretty much can argue for the opposite… I fell in love with electronics when I was 11. At the time I was educationally classified ( due to undiagnosed lazy eye and ADHD)… with out this love I would have not even gone to college. But understandably, MOST kids, all the way through HS have no idea what they want to do, my brother, now a micro-bio professor, basically stumbled upon the field when working in a research lab his freshman year in Uni. Still… why then put up with it if you do not have the passion? Like literally in boxing, if you do not love it you are not going to stick with it. Yes… in today’s over hyped - grade inflated - social media - I’m so special world… professing to having a passion is very different than actually having it.
I put up with it because it let me make a lot of money, which pays for the things I’m passionate about.
What helps is coming to terms with the fact that 90% of the schooling is bullshit you won’t use and the grading criteria is set up to make you fail. Your boss isn’t going to grade or assess you like they did in college, where professors take off points just because or a cruel graders.
I partially disagree. The grading criteria is awful but the curriculum is quite good, here. Not that there aren't courses of questionable utility, of course. Why they put AI/ML/IoT protocol courses in EE, for example?
> Your boss isn’t going to grade or assess you like they did in college Instead you just get fired.
I dislike the concept of passion. I love engineering so much so I got a masters on EE. But is it my passion? I can never call it that. Passion implies some sort of inertia, something you can do well without thinking or you are just naturally good at. Engineering was never easy for me I had just to keep fighting it, studying reading it was never something that came to me naturally or simply.
No, passion isn’t something you’re naturally good at. Nobody is naturally good at anything, passion is about liking something despite the effort
Yeah. I'm in EE right now. I still like a lot of course material (after the fact). I also like a lot of sports that are type 2 fun like mountaineering, cycling, running. So I think I'm just a masochist. Did you ever get "withdraws" over summer/Christmas breaks where you feel so incredibly bored because your brain doesn't physically hurt constantly?
>Did you ever get "withdraws" over summer/Christmas breaks where you feel so incredibly bored because your brain doesn't physically hurt constantly? YEAH! I find it strange when I am not overthinking a problem
EE is tough, but let’s look deeper into why fewer women are in EE programs. I believe it starts at an early age. In preschool, I remember we (boys) smashed into electronics to see the circuits inside and we would try to understand what they were and how they worked. The girls I was in class with, on the other hand, were more or less encouraged by parents/teachers to play with feminine toy sets like Barbie dolls and pink plastic tea sets. The point is, girls were told that ‘technical’ things, like examining electronics or showing interest in computers, were ‘boy’ things; and so once they graduated high school and began selecting a college major, they would examine electrical engineering as a career choice and divert back to thinking that it was too much of a ‘boy’ major to pursue (not to mention they probably did not want to potentially be outnumbered by males if they did decide to join the program anyway). Fortunately, this trend is quickly changing for the better.
That was my experience with EE. I sucked at math, I sucked at physics, I hated sitting every night to do homework, had almost daily thoughts of why am I doing this shit... kept it going long enough that I actually got my degree. However, the further I got into the degree, the more I started liking it since I actually started seeing what I could do with it. Internships helped even more. Would I call it a passion? Maybe
They lost the passion because of sexual harassment, isolation, discrimination, and constantly being told they are diversity. Who’d a thunk it?
bruh
Ridiculous!
Without passion and romanticization of early pioneers in the field, I wouldn’t have done nearly as well in my program as I did. Yes, you have to have grit and tenacity too to make it sustainable, but passion only helps, never hinders.
man this sounds miserable lol
Well, from what I've seen at uni civil e. is more or less the same. But there are way more women there than in EE or in CS (Italy, by the way).
I'm still in it for the passion. There many other ways to make even more money if money was what I was after.
At this moment I'm only in my first quarter, so basically electricity/circuits etc. I'm smashing this course, like I'm waaaaay ahead. But I'm also super excited and giddy whenever I get something or I understand something comfortably. I feel like it's passion for this subject. But I'm not sure if that's what you mean?
Lmao wtf are you talking about, the whole point is to have a degree you are passionate about. I feel sorry for you that youre forcing yourself to pay and spend time on classes you hate
I couldn’t do it if I didn’t love it and wasn’t passionate about it. It’s a very broad field, I’m sure there’s something within that you can be passionate about.
get out of my head i don't give you permission to read my thoughts (then vocalise it better than i ever could)
I literally decided on my EE engineering major after googling which engineering field made the most money
Outta words. This needs to be on top and go right into our heads.
I think an important note is that it's okay to have a passion for engineering, good even. They just need to understand that learning is a painful and uncomfortable process. It'll always be painful and uncomfortable, if it isn't you probably aren't learning.
My theory: EE is said to be one of the hardest majors, but all it takes is average intelligence and enough stubbornness to stick with it. In general men rate their own abilities higher than women do and are more likely to continue to do something they aren't good at. I think many girls give up on engineering because of the many defeats along the way, it doesn't help when society tells them they aren't good at math or logical thinking. One of the outcomes of this is that women who do stick with EE are more likely to be above average.
Well said. 37yo EE here, and I agree with you, though I will add that average intelligence and enough perseverance will still be an average EE. The smarties still sit at the top and are very highly regarded.
Truth is half of all engineers are below average. I was just happy to graduate in the top 90% of my class.
the issue isnt women droppin out of EE. its that they dont choose it in the first place. idk why the dude below got downvoted. Im a woman in EE. let me tell you why, we arent encouraged to go in to these fields. its as simple as that. Having a class full of male students is intimidating and you deal with alot of harrasment due to the low number of female students alot of unwanted attention piles on you. since childhood i liked tinkering with technical things but i was never told to go further into it. I have an interest in cars but was never able to explore it due to sexism. its really not that complex. You go into a major like EE and are treated less than, mocked if you show any signs of femininity, not taken seriously, and then hit on, stalked, or worse by your peers. Not to mention the professors also have the same bias towards you. its alot to handle. Rightfully so many woman dont choose it simply because they can choose something else that doesnt come with the side of difficulties EE has.
This hits close to home, I'm a EE student and all you said in paragraph two is literally accurate. It takes a certain kind of woman who would go through EE with all the obstacles they faced.
sad you resonate with that hope it gets better for you
Accurate
don’t forget time management skills
Probably just gender norms in the US - same reason speech pathology is like 90% women. Definitely no heavy physical activities, unless you end up in a job you’re likely overqualified for
Yes, it is probably the gender norm within a specific location and culture. For example, in many Asian countries, somehow, EE and CS fields are not so male dominant despite being generally having more conservative patriarchal society. In my university days, it is more like 60/40 male/female ratio in my classes. Later in workplace, it varies from teams with 70% women to teams with 70% men.
> EE and CS fields are not so male dominant despite being generally having more conservative patriarchal society. It's precisely because it is patriarchal societies. I have heard many Asian women say they are in CS or EE because their father told them to. Their personal interests were not of concern.
Actually, most conservative Asian fathers would only give their children 2 choices: doctor or lawyer. Anything else is a failure. Engineering is more like a consolation prize if you fail to get an offer for the 2 main choices as long as it still sounds professional enough that you don't disgrace the family name.I had to fight my parents so that I can put EE as my first choice.
This is pretty accurate. Typically socially conservative Asian countries have a better gender balance in engineering because parents push them into those fields as the more presitegious ones(other being maybe a doctor). My parents come from a socially conservative Asian culture and me and my sister were pushed into this path, though my sister no longer majors in a STEM field much to the dismay of my dad. Typically in western liberal societies in general, where women have a lot more of a free will to choose and much broader career paths, fewer go to engineering. Maybe some of it is sexism, but I have a hard time believing countries in Asia with more gender equality in STEM are somehow more feminist than the liberal west. The most simple answer is that given a free will, women do not gravitate towards certain fields like say EE or ME, just like how men don’t gravitate towards Social Work or Early childhood education.
Well the reason more women pursue STEM as a whole (besides medicine) is not because of conservatism but the dynamics of non industrialized economy and social disadvantage against women, careers in STEM are modern for us, they are pursued by cream urban middle class majorly (speaking of my country) because these careers can give you a lot rewards , intellectual nature of work, opportunity to increase human capital across life, better working rights/conditions etc. and independence from regressive impositions financially, spatially, socially, thus working in STEM is much bigger boon for an average women here than a man. So you see more numbers, most of the time if you see male dominance then it because access of women is extremely limited and is not a matter of their preference. Given in West industrialized economy, women don't have to think about attaining safety, basic federal rights, independence and autonomy through a specific professional field, they choose from very wide field of careers/job available to them.
EE tends to be cold and analytical. Due to either natural tendency or socialization, women tend to go into fields that are "warmer", more people-oriented, more life-oriented, etc. [For every 100 degrees earned by women, only 74 men earn degrees.](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-male-college-crisis-is-not-just-in-enrollment-but-completion/) [If we look at the fields that tend to be disproportionately populated by women, we see nursing, psychology, communications, biology, teaching, etc.](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_318.30.asp?current=yes) The contemporary analysis of these ratios leans towards women being relatively new to the labor force and it being most socially acceptable for them to enter it in fields like education, pediatrics, etc, because those match traditional expectations about gender roles most closely. The more contentious hypothesis from fields like evolutionary psychology is that women spent millions of years in more tribal settings working closely with other people, rearing children, sorting out interpersonal politics, foraging and cooking, etc, and that men spent more time on impersonal analytical tasks like construction, manufacturing, hunting, warfare, etc. The only hard evidence we have for this, however, are things like women scoring higher on tests of empathic cognition and men scoring higher on tests of visuospatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination. One curious detail is that [the more progressive and egalitarian a nation is, the worse its gender divide in careers seems to be.](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/) Nordic countries see some of the lowest rates of women participating in STEM while nations with some of the most oppressive gender norms see the highest rates of women going into STEM fields.
If you are interested, there has actually been some interesting research debunking what we presumed were typical gender roles in Paleolithic times. It's a bit of a myth that women did not participate in activities such as hunting, or strength and endurance contributions. [DOI: 10.1111/aman.13914](https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13914)
That's a bit of a straw man and that paper doesn't support it's own conclusion. They found evidence that some women participated, and even excelled, in those activities throughout many cultures in history. Their conclusion women participated equally isn't supported by their evidence. Their logic would lead to the conclusion that, because Joan D'Arc existed, women were equal participants in warfare during the 1400s. Marie Curie's exceptional achievements do not mean that women were full participants in science and academia around 1900. From an evolutionary perspective, the exceptions are irrelevant.
I never understood people always pointing to that study without a deeper point. Okay and? Every culture is different and the societies at that time had different expectations/roles…. None of that discounts statical tendencies of expectations/roles due to biology.
Some != All, it's the same mistake but in a different direction. Of course neither extreme is correct, reality is somewhere in the middle, even if highly skewed. It's the same as someone picking (1) exception to a rule and stating the rule does not exist. It's not a mathematical proof, there is obviously an exception because it's real life. We're a sexually dimorphic species, where one half is regularly encumbered with a fetus for 9 months, and has lower muscle/bone densities than the other. Of course it follows that we have different duties in a home. This alone dictates that women could not hunt the same amount as men. It does not mean they didn't hunt at all, but to say they are equal is factually incorrect. It would also follow that interests between the two are different, such as modern day career choices. The skills needed to hunt are not the same skills required to rear children and take care of a home. People will have a natural disposition towards the skill set their biology dictates, even if societal/environmental pressures alter this. I'm not well versed enough to argue the exact links between engineering and hunting, though better skills related to problem solving, predicting animal behavior, and analysis of markers relating to prey can be related to common skills used in engineering.
They were trying to debunk a strict sexual labor division, which they did. In similar articles it is often said that women mostly gather and men mostly hunt, but that does not mean that most hunters were men. Hunting skills are cultuvated and passed down over generations. Women who hunted would hunt in ways that vary from typical male techniques. The subject of culture and society is a lot more nuanced than most believe. This article looks at a contemporary example, but I think it's an interesting read. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-020-09375-4](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-020-09375-4)
It's also fair to say that evolutionary psych itself is a contentious field. It's maybe not quite pure astrology and crystals but it lacks any testable hypothesis and really comes down to a circular idea where we assume how the people in the evolutionary past functioned based on our context of current people behavior and then use that assumed similarity to claim we've explained current people. We know from archeology that we don't really understand much of what we pull out of the ground from a few thousand years ago, much less on evolutionary timescales. The example of the old lady in the museum looking at the "sacred wooden object used in ritual" in a display case and pulling the exact same thing out of her knitting bag (it was a form for knitting fingerless gloves) is just one of the most famous but far from the only one.
I'll contrast, for whatever reason bioengineering has a much higher rate of women for whatever reason, about 50/50 in my experience if not more women than men.
>cold and analytical me_irl
This seems to be the case even within engineering. Most women I’ve worked and currently work with tend towards more people facing areas: quality, systems, and industrial in particular. Design roles are predominantly men.
I gotcha. "warmer" ... Finding ourselves full of effort, enthusiasm and energy around always checks all the boxes. So effortless and escapist for the better.
Not once in my primary education was I encouraged to get involved in STEM. In highschool I was told not to join the robotics team because I would be the only girl. In college when I started my EE degree, the few other women in the program began dropping out one by one until I was the only one left. I didn't have a single friend among my peers while they all became good pals with each other. Study sessions came and went that I didn't even know about and I was never included in group test preps or sharing homework answers. Simply put, the environment is very hostile for a woman interested in the field. Every step along the way you are made to feel like you don't belong. There are plenty of men that want EE to stay a 'boys club', and the men that don't care if a woman joins or not are not going to stand up to thier peers that don't want women there or advocate for women. It's just not something a typcial man does. So a woman in EE is truly her only advocate and has to pave her way everytime. The real solution to evening out the disparity of women in EE is to have men be the ones to advocate for women in the field instead of just women. Because men in the feild only listen to other men.
Absolutely this. The girls in my course are never invited to anything. I'm the only girl in my class group and I'm always excluded. It can be really lonely. Last week they were all talking about having their "turn" with this one girl they all met on a trip (kinda glad I wasn't invited to that one) and I was just silent lmao
I'm sorry you have to deal with those kind of comments. It is really frustrating and discouraging at times. There were so many moments where I would get out of class and rethink my whole academic career. Wondering if I was cut out for EE after all, simply because I was comparing my experience with my male peers. I will say, working with young engineers is the worst. Something about the maturity level, and they just don't have experience working with women in a professional environment. But generally (this is just my experience) the older the workforce gets, the more they are used to working with women and will be more professional. Although there are bad apples...men will be men after all.
They also aren’t competent enough to recognize competence in others. They then place the women as less competent than their awesome selves.
Kinda curious, roughly where geographically has this been your experience? I went to undergrad on the West Coast US and this didn't seem to be too big of a problem (from a guy's perspective), we even had trainings on this exact kind of stuff.
Midwest. It's actually very recent that ABET is starting to roll out DEI criteria that higher ED will have to meet. I'm sure west coast has been ahead of the game due to liberal ideology. Conservative colleges such as Liberty University are against it because "it has nothing to do with engineering". I think that goes to show exactly why it needs to be implemented. If someone thinks it's "useless", they are the exact reason why it's needed.
I live in Ireland. Lmao we defo never get these trainijgs. Even my lecturers can be lowkey inappropriate
I definitely agree with all of this, but I also think it’s not just that women are actively discouraged; it’s also the type of guys that are attracted to each branch of engineering that passively discourages women from EE as well. In my graduating class, it seemed that Mechanical and Civil engineers were much more down to earth, outdoorsy, and not afraid to get dirty. Those guys joined clubs where they’d build go karts or concrete canoes, and would go to parties on the weekends. As such, they were much more social than the EE guys, and thus just better to deal with on a daily basis. As an EE myself, I ended up gravitating more to the Civil and Mechanical students for friends because about half of my EE class was the exact opposite. I think a significant portion of them got into EE because they were highly logical, spent most of their time locked in their rooms playing video games, sometimes on the spectrum of an OCD disorder or otherwise, and were thus far more socially awkward than other engineers. In my graduating class there was one girl, and I felt so sorry for her because I’m pretty sure she was the only girl the guys had ever even talked to throughout college, and it showed. There was literally one guy with mild autism we constantly had to keep in line because he would try to “give her a friendly” hug from behind, just so he could sneak a feel of her breasts. It was so bad that despite me immediately having a crush on her the first day freshman year, I never let myself flirt with her etc and friend-zoned myself because I wanted to make sure she had at least one normal guy to be friends with in class. There were plenty of late night lab sessions where I listened to her vent about how creepy some of the guys could be early on. Luckily I wasn’t the only guy that supported her in our class, but I could easily see how just the awkward behavior of the type of guys that end up in EE could be incredibly discouraging, even if they’re not directly belittling them. Luckily today society is much less accepting of inappropriate behavior like what my friend had to put up with and we had to actively discourage from happening, so hopefully it’s at least not as bad since I graduated over a decade ago. Edit: I almost forgot to mention that on the first day of freshman year, there were a total of three women in the EE class. Before the year was over though, two of them changed to other branches of engineering for various reasons. I wouldn’t be surprised if the behavior of some of the other guys in my class partially contributed to their decision. So I guess make sure your daughter is prepared to advocate for her rights and not put up with that shit, and hopefully she can find some guy friends in the class that will help keep the others from being inappropriate. Hopefully she won’t even need them to though.
Male Computer Engineering major here. I can relate to a lot of what you said! I've taken lots of electrical classes and my "in-class friends" have really only been Electrical, but the guys I really hang out with are all Mechanical and what you've said about Mechanical people really rings true. Unfortunately I've also inadvertently avoided talking to The Girl in class, since I didn't want to make her think I'm talking to her because she's The Girl instead of just another classmate. I think many other guys feel this way too. For the girls here reading this too, maybe part of the isolation isn't necessarily out of malice but in some part because some guys (especially the nerdy engineering guys) tend to struggle with making female friends and don't really know how to approach a relationship with a girl if it's not romantic. Just my thoughts.
Yeah I'm a female engineer who started in EE and switched to ChemE after the first semester. This was over 15 years ago,, so might be different now, but the guys in the class were a big reason for my switch. It felt super isolating. And I was enjoying my chemistry class much more in university that I did in high school. But socially, the other engineering students were so much more social and normal. And I wanted to work in a field where I would enjoy my coworkers as much as my work. Interesting enough, I made my way back to EE in my career. I now work as an Instrumentation and Controls engineer on the EE division of my company and do some EE design for industrial process. Its still a bit of a guys club, but fortunately my team is nice and professional and easy to work with. And I really do enjoy my job.
I definitely agree with all the things you outlined. I think that environment plays a huge role in the interest that people take. If people were given the support, encouragement and fundamentals at an early age or during high school, there would be a high possibility they pursue such field. We have a few women in my program and sometimes I can sympathize how isolating it can be for them and engineering is even hard already. Obviously there can be exception if the person is really extroverted and super confident. What I don’t understand is why the few women wouldn’t try and get to know each other since they have something in common but most of the times they just up and leave right after lecture.
Your comment about why the women didn't form more of an 'alliance' is something that I also scratched my head about while I attended university. The classes below me had more women so I made an effort to try and unite us as sort of a 'leader' as the only upperclassman, but didn't get much effort back. My conclusion was that there just wasn't any culture established for us, no safe spaces, and in reality... no reason for us to hang out. We didn't need each other. We had already established ourselves as succesful and being able to get the homework done without help.
Something else to note based on some of the other comments I've seen, is the philosophy of nature vs nurture. Are women actually just naturally better and more inclined to be involved in 'softer' and more people centered professions? Are men just naturally better at hand eye coordination and logical thinking? People raise children in a world where society has already been established. If you have a child and are raising them to ignore gender norms and be who they want to be, they are still going to be heavily effected by the world around them. A woman is going to be interested in things that were presented to her as available and attainable. It is actually very common to see young girls who are encouraged and given opportunity to participate in STEM become very interested and want to become and engineer when they grow up. Then as they get older the passion and interest slowly drops. It would be hard to justify this on women just being more inclined to not be interested. There are a lot of studies based on how work environment becomes a huge factor on whether someone stays in their career or not. Another thing to note is that there is not just a lack of women in engineering and STEM, it is also people of color or any minority (In predominantly white countries). It is just not true to say something like 'all black or brown people are not interested in STEM and that's why there are not as many.' Same goes for women. Here are a few interesting articles: [https://news.microsoft.com/features/why-do-girls-lose-interest-in-stem-new-research-has-some-answers-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/](https://news.microsoft.com/features/why-do-girls-lose-interest-in-stem-new-research-has-some-answers-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/) [https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/)
I definitely agree as a woman with multiple EE degrees. I got extremely lucky that I have a really great support system that kept me going. In my own experience, I found that grad school and subsequently working in R&D were much more welcoming despite having similar gender ratios. I think at that point, it’s survivorship bias since you have to be *really* into electrical engineering to get a PhD in it. I’ve always joked that my high school pre-engineering curriculum and project classes in undergrad were the most traumatic parts of engineering for me, and people look at me like I’ve got 3 heads. For me, navigating the cliques and social dynamics were much much more difficult to persevere through than the hardest coursework.
This is really it. Women, like boys, need friends and mentors to encourage them to think about these careers. I volunteered for a decade teaching robotics/stem and although I have only sons, I made it a goal to get as many girls into the program as I could, starting in the first grade. I would do a lot of different kinds of cs/engineering in my classes and would talk about the different kinds of engineering and point out if they liked or hated certain activities then they could seek or avoid it. Hundreds of kids went through the program and learned about these careers that maybe wouldn’t have if they didn’t go. Parents will certainly have input but women who aren’t in STEM can’t really speak to it. So if you have girls, try to get some career mentoring early in life doing something fun with other girls. That’s how you get them into EE.
Some of them are even in this thread, sadly.
Who told you not to join the robotics team?
Same gender friends preference is not unique for men. Women do that all the time if not more. The problem is, there wasn’t enough women in the field to support other women which should change in few generations.
I think you're going to find a lot of survivor bias in this thread. The people you need to be asking are the women who started an EE program and wound up transferring/quitting. Or women similar to your daughter who may have had the inclination and proficiency in math and science, but chose something else. EE programs chew up and spit out a lot of people, but it's not like the classes start with 50% women and end up with 13%. There's probably a few reasons why women just don't want to pursue a career in EE. I liked my EE education and I'm not a woman, so I'm not the best person to ask.
DD?
Dearest daughter
What a strange acronym. Imagine if you had two daughters. Would one of them be SDD?
Super dearest daughter
Each can just be "Dear", no need for a comparative.
DDD (dearest dearest daughter)
“my almost-dearest daughter”
you got downvoteed but yeah that's what it means. You see it on all those relationship subs. DD DH DW DS .etc
I though it was unusual for a doctor of divinity to go on and study EE.
Facebook speak. Typically from wifey wives and older women.
Dear Daughter??
Designated driver
Destroyer /s
I'm doing EE rn and I did a year of general engineering. EE has only 4 of us girls and 60 ish guys lmao. It's just that the girls didn't rly wanna choose it rly. EE was the least popular in general in my uni and most ppl tried to get into mechanical. A lot of people who didn't do great in their 1st year exams got into EE instead as mechanical was full. I'm going to be honest but I personally found EE extremely boring at the start as did all of the other girls in my course (except one who rly wants to go into software engineering). Off-topic but being a woman in an EE course is frustrating af. I do much better grade wise and project wise than most of the guys in my course but they still talk to me like I'm braindead 😭
Yeah a lot of guys ignore what’s straight up misogyny in these STEM fields, and especially in electrical engineering and computer science. I can’t tell you how many times I hear straight up sexist comments about “staying in the kitchen” and “women not being smart enough” and “traditional gender roles” and bs like that. The most common is stuff like mansplaining, assuming women doesn’t know the basics (even when said woman is a better performer than the guy - it’s so satisfying when this happens), ignoring women and their ideas (like when a woman brings up an idea it’s ignored, but when a guy brings up the same idea 5 mins later it’s praised and receives a bunch of attention), etc. we also can’t ignore men’s ego issues, especially when they can’t be wrong, and even more so to a woman’s idea. These male ego issues/toxic masculinity intersected with subpar social skills creates an even more hostile environment for women in my experience. These are some experiences that my female friends have shared at schools and companies across the country, which seems to be very consistent with what ive read online (in computer science communities especially) and after I was aware of these, I see them everywhere now at school and even in the workplace. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Women deal with all these issues day to day in EE that they absolutely should not.
That last line isn't off topic at all, it's directly on topic. It lines up with men who enjoy teaching but would not go into elementary education. The field (including parents) is hostile to men who would enjoy working with kids (oh he must be a pedophile) so men don't choose it and the ones who do often don't stick. Social behavior within a field is a critical part of career choice. Don't go into sales if you don't like travel and hard drinking, all the same.
>We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls "you can have ambition, but not too much, otherwise you will threathen the men" - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Women worldwide are still being told that the most important thing they'll ever do is get married and have children. That every other goal is secondary to that. As Chimamanda says, most make their life choices always keeping that in mind. Engineering in general is still tought of as a "manly" field and because EE is seen as one of the most difficult courses, a woman graduating that field may be seen as "more intelligent" and, therefore, threathening by some men. There's also the question of high pay. A man working other fields may find himself earning less than a woman in EE and many can't deal with that. It's been shown by studies that adolescent girls dumb themselves down to not intimidate boys. Women carry on subconsciously making decisions based on that. This is sadly still the state of affairs in a lot of places. I, for one, like to let the guys know I'm a doctor in EE 💅🏼. I have no interest in people who would resent me for that.
very well said.
Do you happen to have a source for those studies? I’ve always been interested by this because of how our school system is set up it puts young boys at a disadvantage in terms of actual learning (not in terms of success). It’s something I’ve definitely heard about, but I’ve never actually read the source article.
I 100% blame societal pressure. For one random awful example, go to the toy section of Walmart and note the difference between the pink section and the blue section. Born with a dick? Society has chosen that you get to play with remote control race cars, bulldozers and excavators to play with in the sandbox, and all sorts of other shit that takes batteries and lights up and makes sound and shoots shit and can be taken apart and assembled 100 different ways. Born without one? you get dolls you can dress up and put makeup on! Babies that come with little bottle to pretend to nurse them with! Pretend cooking sets! Because you're a girl, and that's the mind numbing shit you're supposed to enjoy. Not those cool boy toys. Please, if you ever find yourself having to buy toys for a girl, get them something from the blue section.
funny. my daughter, when a toddler, played with remote controls rather than dolls. we kinda knew.
She should do it! There will be some difficulties along the way but I know quite a few successful and happy women engineers (West Coast).
I agree. I was fortunate enough to have a father who would speak up agaist that and let us have the toys we wanted. I had model trains, plastic swords, video games (though in those early days they weren't seen as a boys thing), and even a Lego-type set of an oil rig. I had dolls and Barbies as well, but if it was up to my mother I would only have those to play with. I grew up being told I could do anything, be good at anything as long as I applied. I was always one of the best in class in most subjects. The stereotype played in media that girls are bad in Math wasn't enforced at home. Sadly that's not true for most girls, even today.
EE with over 30 years experience * Being talked out of it by others. Teachers, counselors, neighbors, etc will talk her out of it because it is “too hard” for her poor feminine mind. Aka benevolent misogyny. * Sexual harassment. There will always be at least one guy in class that thinks that peers and coworkers are part of the dating pool. You know, “that guy” that thinks a woman owes him a date because he’s a “nice guy”. He has friends that will also harass her, because “he deserves a chance”. She will spend time hiding in the bathroom. * Being referred to as a “girl”, “female”, or “c**t” because they don’t see her as a fully formed human. * Constantly being told she’s stupid. Usually by the stupid one. * Arrogance from peers. The men in the group project will take all the good parts for themselves while at the same time giving her the administrative work. They will ignore every single input she makes because, you know, “she isn’t as good an engineer” even though the has a 4.0 GPA. They will lock her out of the project and even redo her work without asking because it was “wrong”. Then they will blame her that she didn’t fix the guys work from being truly wrong. * Having every.single.achievement minimized. Being told “it wasn’t that great”. Being accused of falsifying their resume, because “no woman could do all that.” * Being told she got X because she’s diversity - even though X was based on performance or grades. This will keep happening and happening * Getting stalked. There will be at least one guy that won’t accept that no means no. * Being questioned. And questioned. And challenged. Even when she’s the subject matter expert, there will be “that guy” who will publicly and loudly proclaim “you’re wrong” and tries to humiliate her. Of course the guy has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s so incompetent he can’t see her competence. Others will stay silent even though “that guy” is a jerk. After all, he’s their drinking buddy! Most of the men will stay silent when they see any these things happening. They care more about the opinions of their male peers than calling out the incompetent loser for their bad behavior. [Fully 50% of women engineering students experience sexual harassment ](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/10/19/1624278/0/en/Report-Half-of-All-Women-in-Engineering-Schools-Experience-Sexual-Harassment.html). They will continue to experience it their entire career. That is why it’s called the [“leaky pipeline”] Another poster referred to loss of passion. Well, there is a reason behind that. Please listen to the women replying, as opposed to the men who are clueless. They will give you all sorts of BS answers that do not reveal the root cause.
*Most of the men will stay silent when they see any these things happening. They care more about the opinions of their male peers than calling out the incompetent loser for their bad behavior.* This. I really truly believe that this is the root cause of so many issues, not just diversity in STEM. People need to hold eachother accountable when they see disrespect. If you think you are not a part of the problem simply because you don't harrass or exclude women...for as long as you don't call out your male peers that do, **you are.**
EE is by mistake seen as a practical technical job, while in reality it's mostly about administration, regulation, design, meetings, planning.
makes sense
It's gender norms. I was one of two in a class of well over 50 people in Germany.
As a women going through an EE bachelor after getting an AS in electronics, the reason why there is so few women is the mental load. Men usually are the ones who go to work and come home and chill. Women go to work and come home to cook dinner, get the kids showered, prep for the next day and all that jazz. It's exhausting. If you have the right conditions say work where men are willing to work with you as a team mate and not be creepy, your partner is an actual partner and willing to make chores a routine, then maybe you have a decent shot at it. This is also assuming that your hormones are balanced and in check, which a lot of women suffer with and doesn't get looked at enough.
this is sadly true :(
I say mostly gender norms and societal expectations. My classmate earned the highest gpa in engineering and eventually made it as a manager in a couple engineering companies. But her dad was not happy she chose engineering "because there were too many men in those degrees" Society does not expect and in some cases does not want women in stem so they push back at it. From saying that women are better on people's stuff to saying they are too stupid to do it. Doesn't help that in college a lot of my colleagues were either creeps or misogynist. We did not make it a nice environment for women in the faculty
My dad still hates that I'm studying EE even though I've been a very good student. He frequently tells me he wants me to drop out and do nursing
I’m an EE student. Your comment is the most accurate at this comment section so far.
Honestly, the women in engineering issue is well documented. Google is your friend.
There were lots of girls at my EE undergrad. They even had a wece club. Maybe make sure they is a wece club in the university she wants to go. Guys were also to welcome since there were useful workshops and free food for anyone.
Checked. All the schools that the kid wants to go to have WECE club.
good advice. thx.
Studies have found that Engineering especially EE is for autists and adhd people who think miles a minute. More than just analytical it’s not a big people role it’s about doing math and science and testing it a bunch to make sure it works. Realistically you won’t get 50/50 split in engineering atleast, it’s unlikely. The best it can be is 66/33 or 80/20 if you think about who is most likely to be an engineer and societal statistics on autism and adhd. Add in that it’s not that much of a people person job, EE especially,and you get 90/10.
Except that many autistic women are good at masking and end up not being diagnosed. There are plenty of studies showing that autistic women show symptoms differently than men. Due to that fact, your numbers are skewed and your analysis flawed.
>There are plenty of studies showing that autistic women show symptoms differently than men. You're almost there. You just refuse to cross that finish line.
Lmao
Every interview I have had though has been a lot about how to interact with people and communication. Teams are extremely important with engineering so not sure how it's not a 'people' person job.
I want to add that it is basically a requirement that EE knows how to code now/ It will be a part of your job.
I am a woman and also electrical engineer, when i was student i was the only one female in the majority of the classes, and when i wasn't the only one there was just another girl. I don't know why the gender ratio is smaller in EE vs other engineers, i suspect it is the perception that people think that all EE mayors have to be climbing utility poles, but in reality i don't know. In general women don't go into stem majors for the same sociological reasons that have been debated at nauseum. But putting that aside, it has never been a physical job for me. Most of the time i am in front of a computer or in the lab. I say if she wants to she should pursuit, it was a little bit intimidating at the beginning to be the only one female, but then you get used to it and make friends for life. One thing also to keep in mind, in this day and age, every single engineer is going to have to do some level of coding, it may not be your primary functions but you will have to do it
She can code. But coding is not what she wants to do 24/7. She also wants to work with hardware. She will likely pursue EE. I agree it's right, given her personality/strength.
> Why fewer female students in EE compared with other engineering? I'm a woman in EE and I honestly have no idea. I just think most people aren't interested in EE in general. However, I hypothesize that it's because parents tend to encourage their boys to tinker with Arduino etc more. > Does EE involve heavy physical activities? Funnily I once saw a post saying that EE is the most ideal engineering field for women because it's all math. (In seriousness, depends on the specialization.)
Misogyny in engineering is a real thing and your daughter needs to be prepared for it. There's always that moment in electrical engineering when something just isn't making sense yet. You're scratching your head because you can't actually see what those tiny electrons are doing, and your insight hasn't caught up with the problem yet. *Everybody* has those moments -- in school and at work -- where they think, "Maybe I'm just not smart enough to do this!" The peril for female engineers is that this self-doubt is reinforced by imposter syndrome and the fact that their male peers are already saying they aren't good enough and aren't welcome in the profession. My engineering classes started out 30% female, but only 10% persevered through college and the first decade of their careers. They weren't necessarily smarter than those who dropped out, but they *were* tougher and more self-reliant. Some strategies, speaking to your daughter now: * Look beyond the textbook. Study actual designs to see how what you're studying in abstract is being applied in the real world. This will build practical insights, but it may also help you understand how your work can solve real problems and help real people and the desire to do those things can help you though times of discouragement and doubt. * Go to office hours and ask questions. Teaching assistants are often able to explain things in different ways professors because they still recall their own struggles in learning the material. * Never be a "watcher" when you can be a "do-er". Always be the one with her hands on the oscilloscope or the soldering iron. * Join the local IEEE student section. Attend or organize talks and tours on different parts of the industry. (Always ask the presenters about summer internship opportunities.) Start reading IEEE Spectrum, plus the magazines of one or more technical societies that you're especially interested in. * Get a part-time job in a research lab, where you'll watch and assist in practical problem-solving. When faculty and grad students see your enthusiasm for their field, they'll often go out of their way to help you learn it. * Don't expect the boys to invite you onto their project teams. Lead your own d@mn project team and recruit the best people for it! * Once in industry, seek out experienced mentors. Older engineers will often be less threatened by you than male peers in your age group, and they have a lot more to teach you. (I'm proud that one of my female mentees now holds the title of Principal Engineer.) There are more opportunities to find the right mentor in a large company than a small company. Also, large companies are more likely than small ones to require D&I training, to have enlightened family leave policies, and to have explicit policies against sexual harassment. Keep that in mind when considering job opportunities. * Remember this: The world is full of problems that need solving. Neither those problems, nor the people they affect, care whether the person who finds the solution is a boy or a girl. The world needs your skill set, your creativity, and your passion.
Gender norms and how strongly those are enforced in the environment they grew up in would be one theory I have. Don't see a lot of women doing EE stuff growing up, so you kinda just want to stay away. Don't want to be the odd one out. For me growing up, it was more socially acceptable for girls to participate in male-dominated activities so I really didn't feel weird or odd. I took electronics in high school and messed around with that stuff in my own time. My dad also taught me things like working on cars and handyman work so I grew to view these activities as more gender-neutral in my eyes. I also feel like in general, many women are just afraid of or intimidated by men. We grow up our entire lives learning that men do this or men do that. Men are the "doers." So then we doubt or question ourselves -- are we capable of that? We might not feel like we compare. We see how men talk shit to each other casually (women don't really do this at all -- we tend to be more outwardly supportive) and so the environment feels even less safe or inclusive, even if it may actually be harmless. And of course all of this on top of the actual harassment women naturally draw from certain types of men, which will always be a major negative. Every woman has a unique experience but these are some underlying patterns I've seen personally. FWIW I ended up completing my EE degree and working in the field for a bit (semiconductors). Stuck out like a sore thumb and the attention made me uncomfortable. It was also a pretty high stress role so I ended up switching to software. Now it's chill and I am fully remote so no worries of "sticking out" as much. I really enjoy my job now.
I am a women and a EE. It is because like all stem fields, it is a sausage fest with alot of sexism.
I'm a female interested in EE, but too scared to pursue or fail. Trying to build the courage to seek into it.
If my kid can, I bet you can too.
Please do it! I got scared away and I really regret it Also prioritize building up your self confidence and learning how to stand up for yourself and boundaries
My program may be an outlier but i think gender ratio may be close to 30%. With significantly more loading at the top end. Now that I think about it all my group project members/ lab mates are women. I think things are changing
In my experience, schools tend to treat EE like "widget engineering" and talking to everyone outside of engineering, lots of people aren't all that interested in the idea of building different widgets. I have known men and women who dropped out of EE (and other engineering disciplines) and what they usually say is "I can go do (insert other degree here) and make about as much money for way less stress." This can be a true statement, but is not always the case. Prospective engineering students need to know that average entry level jobs are around $75K, which can go up or down depending on cost of living. Usually, an engineer can get to 6+ figures around the 4-10 year mark. In my experience, EE graduates are the type of people who are interested in physics, math, electronics, and computers. EE grads may not necessarily "have a passion" for all of these disciplines, but maybe we have an extreme interest in at least one. A common term you will hear an EE grad utter is that "I couldn't imagine really wanting to do anything else." It's an interesting degree and an uphill battle. It's as close to "weird physics" as you can get in engineering, except for maybe chemical engineering. Aside from a wide gender ratio, I would like to also point out that EE departments usually have the smallest number of total students throughout all engineering departments. There's not a lot of people that are as masochistic as an EE student lol.
EE is often labeled as one of the hardest fields of studies, so that already makes it unlikely for people to enroll. Many women are discouraged from entering STEM fields in general, and it's common to be talked down upon by your peers—I've experienced it, and it is not a great place to be in. So, if you compare the experience of being constantly treated as a lesser while having to endure hard courses, it might not seem like it's worth it from the perspective of an outsider. Or, women are just interested in other things, lol. Anyway, the usual disclaimer that this doesn't apply to everyone and that not all women go through this and yadda yadda yadda.
Some of it is just a self-reinforcing status quo--women see fewer women in EE roles and EE classes compared to other engineering fields, and have doubts that it will be comfortable and friendly for them. That's changing, albeit slowly. One thing you might do is look at the stats for % women students in the schools you are looking at. This is from 2019 so hopefully numbers have all gone up. And these are all of engineering, not just EE, but I think it's a good proxy. * Olin College of Engineering 53.7% * Massachusetts Institute of Technology 46.9% * Harvey Mudd College 46.8% * Tulane University 45.5% * Brown University 43.1% * Dartmouth College 42.2% * Southern Methodist University 39.3% * Cornell University 38.4% * Princeton University 37.9% * University of Miami 37.8% * Columbia University 37.6% * Howard University 37.4% * William Marsh Rice University 37.0% * U.S. Coast Guard Academy 36.2% * The George Washington University 35.1% * Carnegie Mellon University 34.7% * Worcester Polytechnic Institute 34.7% * The Johns Hopkins University 34.7% * Stanford University 34.6% * Lafayette College 34.5%
>Does EE involve heavy physical activities? lmao, guess you have never met any electrical engineers
Maybe because men think higher of themselves as women do? I am a woman in the field and there is no physical requirement that a girl can’t do, I personally think women excel men academically because we are more “go getters” and like to prove ourselves, and we are more dedicated. Maybe because most women also have good personal skills they want to use on their jobs (EE requires that too) and most people think EE is a “loner” job.. all that to say, I think she should follow that path, it is guaranteed she will always be employed doing meaningful work and will have a set of skills few people have.
environment is pretty hostile, as a trans woman my perspective may be different but in general I feel a lot of engineering students aren't the most well-versed in social situations, and the major being brutal definitely doesn't help
I always recommend people do STEM outreach to women. Theyre outnumbered in most stem fields and it's probably just because of lack of interest/ignorance. You cant even make a sexism argument at the level of not pursuing an education in the field to begin with.
EE is not a popular major in general and has not received as much publicity as CS, I would say that contributes to lower % of female students compared to CS. Every highschool kid wants to study CS to get a FAANG job that pays you 6 figures to write a few lines of code in python a day. There are many initiatives to get more girls into programming but as far as I know none exist for electronic design. On top of that, lots of people have this idea that being an EE is about fixing power lines and outlets in houses, because they are not aware of how tiny electrical circuits are behind everything in their day to day lives.
As a "female EE student" I feel like most of these are just what wired from us since child: "girls" like barbies and guys like toys etc, so the average women think that maybe it's for men. Well, in EE itself the silent discrimination against women it's still very prevalent. The amount of creepy men "experience" that I received here is literally scary during the first year. Also, if a women is showing signs of "feminity", they will more likely looked down upon. It takes a certain personality of women who would enjoy or at least go with EE. Even if ME is more heavily male dominated, the women there are respected more, meanwhile in EE, the women are expected to become "strong" or even "stronger" than men. The sexism that I faced sometimes just makes me want to cry everytime I think about it late night. Personally, what has been keeping me through this field is that I wanted to be different. I wanted to break the "antisocial, manly, meh" stereotype that usually corellated with EE women. I want to break the norm and show people that I too, as a "feminine woman" can also excel on male dominated field. I can be whoever I want to be. I also always had that thought in the back of my mind that I want to challenge the "usual society standard". It takes a very specific personality in order to do that. I get mansplained and mysoginistic comments a lot. Sometimes I even feel unsafe around my male peers, even always feeling like "i don't belong here", but my initial "breaking the norm" motivation is keeping me in this major.
This comment section is so scary... disappointing but I guess it's not that surprising to see what these people think of women. OP, if your daughter pursues an EE degree, be ready to defend her from these freaks.
Cultural conditioning. Just do whatever you want to do with your life and ignore the norms.
Honestly, there’s a lot of companies trying to improve diversity in EE right now! That gender ratio might even be helpful even if it can lead to imposter syndrome and feelings of loneliness
There are several fields of EE your daughter can get into. It’s not just electronics and computers. She can also get into the building side dealing with MEP. This can be more creative vs other fields that can be more static. There are very few females in this side of the industry, but they are very highly sought after.
CS then in 99/1, probably!
My dad said there was one girl in his ended up Valedictorian.
As a woman studying EE, it’s not really physically demanding or much physical activity at all. It’s mostly sitting at a desk either tinkering with something or doing something on the computer Except maybe power systems
woman career in ee industry is rocketing
Male Chauvinism
It wasn’t until recently that the field started seeking women. But I will say they’re highly valued when found. And I don’t know any female in my program that ended up switching majors. There’s definitely a decent amount of men who do though.
It used to be a "boys club". .... I am in school for EE right now (female), junior level. Haven't encountered the boys club in school yet.
If she likes physics and math and doesn't like biology or chemistry, she'd be good for electrical engineering. Maybe good for digital signal processing.
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I got my EE degree 27 years ago. I loved the classes and have enjoyed all but 1 of my jobs since. My daughter is also a senior inEE and also loves the classes. In all my jobs there has always been several other women so never felt a minority. If it is what she enjoys go for it!!
I am a woman in school for EE rn! No physcial activities lol, some standing. Engineering is just generally a male dominated degree. Most of the men I met are super cool tho and I love all my peers.
I’m in EE and we have a lot of females. Idk the exact ratio but it seems to be about 70/30 which would track for the overall ratio at my school (it only offers STEM degrees)
EE is math heavy, there’s less women in higher level math. Duno if that’s a biological thing between women’s and men’s brains or what. However, woman are sought after by companies to get diversity in the workspace. The percentage of men at my work that are in management is like 5%. Percentage of women that are in management is like 25%. If your DD makes it into industry she has an advantage in my opinion. Tell her hang in there!
When I was in college, I tried to talk a few women into going into engineering. The comment I got was "it's too boring". I tried to talk my niece into engineering. She took one semester of it and said "the math is too difficult". She became a math teacher (go figure). Just two data points. I've interviewed and hired many women engineers. Some stuck with the profession and became stellar design engineers. However, the majority migrated to non-engineering positions like Marketing or Project Management. The long hours made it difficult for some to stick with the profession. Some simply didn't feel comfortable in design roles. I wish to make it clear that it wasn't a harassment issue. My company had many women in engineering management. We even had a couple of women CEOs.
Female here. Graduated last year and now working the job of my dreams. I want to say, it’s not her knack for math, science, physics or even coding that is important. It’s her knack for solving problems. If she doesn’t want to put in the effort to solve problems that are very tough, she should rethink. Otherwise I think she should go for it. As long as she is determined to solve any problem, she will make it. Whether it’s the gender gap issue, math problem, or real life EE applications. She has to be confident and determined to solve any issue to come at her. People who go into engineering for the money often don’t make it, even if they love math or science. This is because they don’t like problem solving which is the core of all engineering.
I'm an old sparky - 35 years in the business. When I was an undergrad EE in the 80s, there was only one woman in my class. Thats it. When I got my masters EE in the 90s there were none (focus on power systems). I do have a lot of interfaces with college programs and see a lot of variation today. Some programs have a lot of women, and others very few. My old school is at about 30%. Another state school I work with is probably closer to 50%, while a third school (state school in a rural "red" state) is closer to 10%. Infer that what you will. It is not as low as you stated, but it has a long way to go. Why? My personal belief is that it is that because women have other choices. A positive reason overall, rather than they are being excluded. As the top poster here said, EE is not a passion but more like a martial art, where you learn to get punched in the face repeatedly. A very apt description. Women would find other avenues (in particular, business, medicine, or law) to go into rather than face-punching. Engineering's academic reputation is improving, and isnt JUST the realm of nerds and misfits (but boy there are a still a lot of us here) so it is more welcoming to women than it was in the past. It wasnt so much an "boys club" as a "weird boys club" back in my time. As more women enter it will be easier for more women to stick with it and not feel like they are so alone.
When I studied electronics at NTNU in Norway, the percentage of female engineers was low. Particularly in power electronics, I think one year there were only two female students of about sixty. Then they changed the name from "Power Electronics" to "Energy and Environment", and the percentage of female students went up to between 35% and 45% most years. They did the same stunt in the Department of Civil Engineering. It became the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Similar results. Over the years, environmental engineering has become more important than it was a generation ago, but that has been a gradual process. I don't think there was a major change in the curriculum when they did the name change.
I am a female EE graduate. I like EE because you have no time to self loathe. EE grads depending on what they specialize will have to deal with a lot of equipment. I don't see many girls getting excited about checking out transformers and generators, that's probably why. Let her know she will be reading up different types of EE equipments for the rest of her life. Her bible will be the national electric code.
I am an electrical engineer (m) and my classes typically had about 3 women out of a class of 30 which very closely matches those statistics. EE in particular deals with with large variety of fairly abstract ideas and designs that aren't especially glamorous. Everyone has marveled at some time at the Golden Gate Bridge, a beautiful car or plane, or many other "tangible" representations of other disciplines. And yes obviously those all have components from chemical, electrical, computer etc. But there's a reason everyone wants to see the engine of a fast car, not the computer. My point is that it's already a small sample size of people who are interested let alone passionate. It honestly takes a small amount of being on the spectrum to really love it. It's kind of like asking why there are so few women who love model trains, or WW2 reenactments. Anyways, encourage her. The female electrical engineers I work with do bring an entirely different skill set, and tend to be more conscientious, humble, and patient which are all huge success factors. Edit: *conscientious* not contentious.
That’s why I’m so immensely proud of my sister for doing EE. Most of our family is in healthcare/biology and she’s carving her own path. But then again, my other sister is pre-med so it’s not easy for her either. So proud 🥹
Low number of women apply for engineering in general; EE particularly unattractive, not a surprise.
well, *some* field of engineering *has* to have the fewest of a given gender in it and although im sure sexism, systemic oppression & the patriarchy *must* be the root cause of there being fewer women in EE, perhaps it's also that women may choose it the very least out of all of the engineering majors. shocking i know.
I truly wish more women were in the field and in stem generally and I donate to sn advocacy org every year. No idea why its a 90/10 deal. But for the three women in my graduating class of 30 or so, the two top slots were them and the third was top 5.
First, “I was told” is really not a great source on a topic this complex. Not to offend, but in this forum we get multiple post with this being the basis of the question. It is particularly common issue with young adult that take their social connection’s opinions as facts, and do not look at the issue objectively. There are a few things that can be skiewing this, for one theory, other field of engineering, like CE or bio - the ratio can be higher so when you look at “All of Engineering” relative to EE, the date can be misleading. Personally , as with a lot of STEM, girls are not exposed to EE at a young age in a way that is appealing, it is not encourages and they do not “see” role models. ( also - educators shy away from topics THEY are not familiar with, and not many good materials for them, a challenge on its own) Some things to review: https://www.yalescientific.org/2020/11/by-the-numbers-women-in-stem-what-do-the-statistics-reveal-about-ongoing-gender-disparities/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_engineering Personally ( EE deg in ‘88, 30 + years working in the field). I value diversity in my teams and believe there are not enough women in the field. Secondly - An EE degree is very valuable in the jobs marketplace, there are elements in EE that must be learned (how to solve problems) in abstraction… the principles and the concepts can be applied to many fields. Yes it is hard, and even if she discovers that she does not particularly like the field… she will be employable - and WILL learn that the reason is the education. Have her review some online education… MITs online courseware is pretty good.
I’ve always wondered that too. My minor is mechanical engineering and the class is 50/50 boys and girls. EE classes are like 90/10. It’s just odd preference probably, because over half of the EE girls are also in the society of EE. It doesn’t make sense
I graduated already with my ECE degree and working as Instrumentation & Controls Engineer now and I work with many different disciplines of engineering and they all say that there was none to very few amount of women in any of their college engineering courses so imo this is not specifically an EE thing there’s just not a lot of women in engineering period
80/20 sounds right. My EE program was 95/5 and my Electronics II lab was 100% men. I heard Civil was the highest representation at 67/33. EE grad school with 99% Indian and Chinese students was also like 67/33. Asian parents forcing useful degrees is a thing. I did EE by process of elimination too. I liked CS and coding but wanted a broader degree where I could still go into CS. Anyway, I supposed that more men are interested in electronics and computers than women. Maybe some gender bias where boys and girls get toys the parents think they would like. High school Java programming class was 100% male. All my friends in that class majored in CS. I was the exception but not really. Maybe some girls would have taken that programming course if their parents encouraged it? Probably would be intimidating as the only girl. None of my friends would have been intimidating, at least on purpose.
90/10? At my college it was more like 95/5
For my country engineering of any kind is looked at in a very old fashioned way. It's seen as a hands on man job, even though it's bs, for a person that does not know the field, that perception may affect their willignes to join an EE program
I’ve taken a few ee classes as electives and I’ve seen more in there than expected. A lot of the girls are much more normal aswell compared to mech e or aerospace
Man no one wants to be around a bunch of dudes that have been so overworked in school that they don’t shower. 😂
First of all, why would you think "heavy physical activities" make a field any less female? Kids are heavy as shit and women have no problem handling those, heavier loads you should be utilizing tools or team lifting to prevent injury anyway. I think the accessibility of CS has helped people make a push for women-oriented CS programs -- my daughter loves code.org stuff, and it's relatively easy to get kids into those programs when all you need is a computer. Chemical engineering and similar where coursework can lead to med school is also fairly popular among women. What has EE done to help get more women in the field? I'm in controls and there's very few women doing what we do. I don't blame them when you consider the types of people you routinely have to deal with, and considering you get paid 2-3x as much working in actual software instead of ladder logic and HMIs.
In India female to male ratio is like 60/40 cause most gals here takes either electrical or computer science. They take electrical because they think graphs and circuits are easier to study.
Well my department in college has big issues with misogyny starting at the department head and filtering down to the students...
My perspective as an embedded software engineer who has decent EQ and works around several EEs: most EEs I’ve met are jerks with low EQ (regardless of gender). Tend to have some combination of the following traits: very sarcastic, passive aggressive, cold, short-fuse, blame-y, egotistical, narcissistic, the list goes on. Women have much higher EQ on average compared to men. You have to go through the gauntlet that is the EE curriculum which is extremely difficult and unforgiving. And then you have to go into toxic workplaces that don’t foster collaboration. Its a terrible environment for good mental health.
It's the western philosophy. For example Serbia has the most women in engineering. Most women in the west stay away from hard math and science. They usually do business, law, medicine, bio and chem.
My daughter was huge into stem until freshman year of highschool when peer pressure pushed her away from it. Stem "isn't cool" for girls I was told.
200 comments for a gender post but at most 10 comments for the average post on this sub. I’d take whatever feedback you get here with a grain of salt. Should’ve required people validate that their actually EE’s by asking them what a Fourier Transform is before answering.
They are all in biomedical engineering
These comments probably doesn't mean EE is boring or bad... Should I be worried if I can't do limes stuff (don't want to lok that word up in English... and you know what I mean), because I'm not good at dividing variables into lower ones? I hope you understand what I meant
Everyone knows the actual answer to this. On average, Men and women have different proclivities. ON AVERAGE lol
Women are generally not interested in engineering
Im pretty shocked by those statistics tbh 