Women in Engineering in Canada: The next Challenges

Monique Frize, P. Eng.

Chair Holder, Nortel/NSERC Women in Engineering Chair

and Professor of Electrical Engineering

University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5A3

Published: 1996 Canadian Conference on Electrial & Comput. Eng., (CCECE '96), May, Calgary: pp 365-368

ABSTRACT

Enrolments of women in engineering have increased steadily (at the rate of 1 percent per year) for the past five or six years. We may reach a plateau or see a decline if the obstacles, that are more systemic in nature, and embedded in the culture, the curriculum and the teaching style, are not removed. The workplace environment is also a major factor and issues such as accomodating career and family (for both sexes), the elimination of harassment, sexism, and discrimination will have a positive impact on the retention of women who have chosen to be engineers. Women must also participate actively in the governance of the profession if it is to reflect their perspectives and respond to their needs.

Introduction

In Canada, women represent fifty-two percent of the population, yet they are under-represented in some fields, most notably in Engineering. Some of the social barriers start as early as birth and continue at all levels of the education system to perpetuate the myth that the physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering, are fields of study for men. Thus, by the graduation year in high school, a small number of women are left in the pool of candidates qualified to enter into Engineering. Some progress can be noted between 1988 and 1994, where the average enrolment of women across Canada increased from 11 percent to just under 20 percent. The number of women graduate students has now also been increasing dramatically in the past four years, (19 percent in 1993/94 enrolments in Master's programs and 13.7 percent at the PhD level, compared to 10 and 6 percent in 1990 enrolments). The number of women faculty remains dismally low: an average of 5 percent in two-thirds of engineering schools and none in the remaining third. Other professions such as medicine, law, dentistry, and veterinary medicine have reached and maintained gender-balanced enrolments for years. This points clearly to the existence of more subtle and covert obstacles in Engineering and the Physical Sciences. The climate and environment, the culture, in these fields appears to be one of the factors limiting women's participation. In fact, it is possible that a ceiling will be reached in Engineering at around 25 percent, except where curriculum content, teaching style and culture issues have been addressed. One University in Canada has reached an enrolment of 46 percent of women in their Engineering program. The Engineering program at Guelph should become a case study to tell us more about how this can be achieved. Some of the unfortunate incidents relating to sexism in the workplace or in academia can also be a deterrent to younger women who would consider this career. A paradigm shift in the culture of engineering is needed.

In the process of studying the factors limiting women's participation in engineering, the Chair holder was greatly assisted by the creation of a national committee, in February 1990. The mandate of the CCWE (Canadian Committee on Women in Engineering) was to examine obstacles and identify successful strategies to increase the participation of women in Engineering. The study looked at issues at the various levels: The elementary and secondary education system, the universities, workplaces and the professional associations. The committee was composed of 19 members, representing the major organisations connected to these issues, with regional, bilingual and gender balance. The author Chaired the committee which released its report "More than Just Numbers" in April 1992 (CCWE, 1992). In the process of developing its report, the CCWE held six public forums across the country and received more than two hundred personal testimonies and briefs from individuals and groups. The CCWE contracted a research project on "best practises" carried-out in seven universities and six workplaces. Prior to releasing its report, the CCWE held a national conference in May 1991 to review a set of draft recommendations, with 250 participants, followed by an endorsement meeting in September of the same year, with the major stakeholders, to ensure a 'buy-in' approach . That last event concluded the committee's work. The major stakeholders agreed, at that time, to hold an update conference three years later (in 1995) to assess progress. Future directions would be guided by the discussions at the conference workshops and plenary sessions (Update Conference, 1995). In the interim, the Government of Canada, under the auspices of the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology, developed a second report extending the CCWE work to cover the fields of science and technology, released by the Prime Minister of Canada on March 8, 1993.

The Pre-University Level

Cultural influences and gender-role stereotyping continue to be a predominant obstacle to girls and young women considering the study of science and mathematics at the High School level. This closes their door to an engineering education. Another obstacle is the lack of women role models profiled in textbooks and teaching science and mathematics at junior and high school levels. For engineering, this lack is even more serious, as the few women science teachers are usually in biology or chemistry, and more rarely in physics. Faculties of Education responsible for training and educating the next generation of teachers could do much to provide gender sensitisation to future teachers so that they will be more aware of how to encourage both girls and boys to develop their full potential, by challenging them, supporting them and selecting textbooks that breakdown the stereotypes of gender roles. Guidance counsellors must provide broader career information to the students, free of gender bias. They should make a greater effort in identifying the skills and interest of these young people for non-traditional areas (as for example, nursing for boys and engineering for girls).

Current Endeavours at the Pre-University Level:

Workshops for parents and career counsellors, textbooks portraying women and men in active and sharing roles, books that profile women scientists, engineers, mathematicians, are all good strategies. Some schools are using a cooperative learning environment in their classes ; others have developed chemistry and physics classes for girls-only classes and a content and teaching style that incorporates experiences and interests of girls (Rogers, 1988; Booth and Brooks, 1988?). Videos have been created on careers in Engineering (Frize, 1992) and Science () showing how engineers and scientists apply their knowledge to the benefit of humankind, to solve problems, and design the world we live and work in. This should make these careers more visible and appealing to young women. Mentor programs where young women students meet women in non traditional occupations create a long-term support needed to eliminate the barriers.

Strategies for Change

Introducing the concepts and methods involved in problem-solving (engineering) into the existing science and mathematic courses at the secondary level and introducing early and basic notions that pertain to the various engineering fields would bring these fields closer to the students at a critical time when they are considering their options and their careers. It would be vital to ensure that the content and delivery of these courses create a positive experience for young women.

The University Level

Once women chose these fields of study, their experience can vary from being very positive to very negative. This will vary from class to class and from university to university.

Retention seems to be linked to access to women role models, mentoring, tutoring and a general atmosphere where there is respect and tolerance for diversity. Many women seem to enjoy multidisciplinary courses or fields, especially if they have a link to the real world and to societal realities. The myths that propagate a masculine view of excellence may be prejudicial to women's success and to their integration into these fields. This not only applies to myths concerning merit, awards and appointments, but to the value of intellectual work, success in seeking funding and recognition (Caplan, 1992). Humanizing the course content would certainly contribute to enhancing women's interest in these fields. In fact, this may be explain partly why women are so interested in a career in medicine.

The existence of double standards are another major issue. Stereotypes shape our perceptions about what each sex can and should do and what they cannot and should not be done. They can have a major impact on the career progression and success of many women. Generally, in their early socialisation (learning social skills), both women and men are imprinted with stereotypical images such as: Men are supposed to be objective, rational, independent, ambitious, and responsible; women are seen as subjective, intuitive, emotional, dependent, and accomodating (McKee and Sheriffs, 1957). Even though this reference is not recent, current research shows the perpetuation of these same stereotypes that are re-learned from one generation to the other. For example, Foschi's research (1994) in a study of women and men who are shown to have equal backgrounds and skills, males were viewed as "better qualified" by a majority of the male subjects making the selection. This, Foschi says, is more evident where the field is non-traditional. Women, Foschi shows, buy less into this stereotype by selecting slightly more than half of the women candidates as more qualified. This is in stark contrast to the 1968 study by Goldberg where both females and males looked at essays of identical value and selected the ones with male names as superior. The subjects said they had sincerely seen the content of essays with male names as more important, authoritative and convincing than those with female names. (Names had been interchanged for the purpose of the study). Strayer has done a similar experiment in 1985, with similar results. These stereotypes can affect the success rate of women in competitions for scholarships, fellowships, grants, jobs, promotions, research grants, and being nominated and selected to win prizes and awards. The systemic bias that exists against groups such as women and visible minorities can only be eradicated through education and sensitisation programs, and through a balanced representation in committees that select winners of scholarships, of awards; and committees that recommend the hiring, the promotion or tenure of faculty.

Another factor that contributes to the problem is the predominant culture which defines what is important and what is to be valued. For example, granting agencies have provided funding to researchers who work in areas defined by grant selection committees as 'mainstream and hard-core" topics. Even the journals where one publishes, are defined in a similar way, and influences the success of scholarly work. To date, the committees are mostly composed of senior men who continue to perpetuate the culture and to nominate similar individuals as replacements when their term is up. Multidisciplinary programs and research proposals are still looked upon by the most conservative factions of our profession as not mainstream and "soft" and as such, devalued by the "hard engineering" factions. Yet, it is the multidisciplinary approach that will allow engineering to crunch the larger, more difficult problems and a holistic approach to problem-solving will enrich the solutions and probably make them more societally relevant and financially successful as we need more complex solutions. These factors actually also work against some of the men whose research interests and methods lie outside the currently narrowly defined 'excellence in engineering scholarship', or what is called 'mainstream research'.

Solutions at the Post-Secondary Level: Climate/culture

Universities should encourage the use of gender-inclusive language and the creation of a non-threatening environment in the classroom. Teaching opinion survey questionnaires should ask students whether the professor made any racist or sexist remarks and whether the language used in class was inclusive. Universities could distribute a booklet on gender-inclusive language to each instructor (Ontario Women's Directorate) and provide gender-sensitivity training to faculty, staff and graduate assistants. Faculties of Engineering should track students on academic probation and develop a mentor program, especially for students in under-represented groups. Special efforts should be made to attract and fund women students in graduate programs; they form the pool for future women faculty. Letters can be sent to women students with high marks, asking them whether they have considered graduate school. Women faculty need to be proactively sought and hired. The goal should be based on the availability of women in the pool of doctoral students. It is frequent to observe that even where affirmative action policies exist, the policy is often ignored or paid lip service.

Institutions of higher learning will only successfully demontrate that they care about these issues when they identify and hire women in senior academic administrative positions. Institutions that hire women at those senior levels should benefit from a diverse perspective and leadership style. However, few institutions have learned yet to appeciate this difference and some of the women hired at those levels have a very difficult task. In many places, the effort on gender-balance is limited to the undergraduate level, where the increased number of students affect the funding level positively.

Curriculum and Teaching Style Issues Studies have shown that teaching style is important; according to these researchers (Booth and Brooks), only 5 percent of the population has a mentally-centred learning style, yet most of the teaching in science, mathematics and engineering is done in that style; 85 % of people (women and men) prefer a relationally-centred style of learning. This approach has been shown to be far more effective than the traditional method for both women and men students alike [15,17]. In addition, relating the topic to societal realities would be most effective [1,6,12]. The curriculum should develop multidisciplinary topics that are related to the quality of the environment and the quality of life; examples are: biophysics, environmental engineering, biomedical engineering, bio-resource and water resource engineering, etc.. Such programs in Canada have achieved gender-balanced enrolments. In contrast, topics which are narrowly-focused and classical in their approach find the lowest enrolment of women. When these courses are 'humanised' with some societal context, they will certainly be attended by greater numbers of women.

CONCLUSION

The current 'culture of science' originates from the middle-ages and from the industrial revolution [11]. One of the negative aspects of this culture passed down from these early times is 'man's domination and control of nature, of the planet and of its natural resources'. This image has deterred many talented women and men from considering the study of science[17]. The perception (or reality) of a masculine culture in science creates a systemic barrier for many women. But their absence deprives these fields of an enriching perspective. Strategies must be sought to successfully eradicate sexism and harassment in our universities. Aspects of the current culture that make some women feel uncomfortable must be identified and ways sought to integrate and value feminine perspectives, especially in the creation of new scholarly work. These changes will also make Engineering a more comfortable environment for men and for people of all races. Differences between feminine and masculine perspectives must be seen as an enrichment of scientific and technical work. These have more to do with 'culture' than with competence. Institutions that celebrate diversity should be the most successful ones in the turn of the century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Brooks C. (1986) "Instructor's Handbook: Working with Female Relational Learners in Technology and Trades Training." Fanshawe College and Ontario Ministry of Skills Development, Toronto, Canada.

2. Caplan, P. (1992) "Lifting a Ton of Feathers. A Woman's Guide to Surviving in the Academic World". (A project of the Council of Ontario Universities Committee on the Status of Women.), University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada.

3. CCWE (1992) "More Than Just Numbers". Report of the Canadian Committee on Women in Engineering. Copies can be obtained from M. Frize, UNB, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3.

4. Foschi, M., Lai, L., Sigerson, K. (1994) "Gender and Double Standards in the Assessment of Job Applicants". Sociol Psychology Quarterly, 17(4): 326-339.

5. Frize M., McGinn-Giberson, J., Shelton, C. (1992) "Engineering: Design Tomorrow's World". VHS Video, 22 min., Northern Telecom-NSERC Women in Engineering Chair, UNB, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 5A3.

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15. Rogers P. (1988) "Gender Differences in Mathematical Ability-Perceptions vs Performance." ICME-6, Budapest, July.

16. S.C.W.I.S.T. "What Do Scientists DO?". #140-515 W. Hastings St., Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6B 5K3.

17. Tobias S. (1990) "They're not dumb, they're different. Research Corporation, 6840 East Broadway Boulevard, Tucson, Arizona 85710-2815.

An earlier version of this paper was sent by the authors to the UNESCO "DELORS COMMISSION" on Education for the 21st Century.