Wow, You are a Female Engineer! : Gender and the Chilly Climate of STEM Fields

Abstract

Monica was a sophomore biomedical engineering major at a large Midwestern university. Within the College of Engineering, the number of female students was around 18%—a figure similar to the national average. Her major had the highest proportion of female students, as roughly 50% of the students were female. Monica was very active within the college; she was on the executive board of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE—a national organization that “empowers women to achieve full potential in careers as engineers and leaders, expands the image of the engineering and technology professions as a positive force in improving the quality of life, and demonstrates the value of diversity and inclusion”1), served as an engineering ambassador where she talks to prospective students, and was active in the biomedical engineering student organization. She loved the challenge of her classes and just finished a prestigious biomedical engineering internship where she helped a company receive FDA approval on a new prosthetic arm. This semester, Monica was taking a gender communication class to fulfill a general education requirement, and she was realizing how many demeaning messages she received because
of her gender within her engineering experience. She went to an all-girls high school, so the idea of women’s empowerment had always been on her mind, but she never really noticed all of the small, snide comments she heard as part of her experience as an engineering student. While taking the gender course, she became more stressed about the situation and was starting to think about switching majors to physical therapy.