SWE - Winter 2008 - (Page 26)

The lower rows report results of a question asked only of people who said that they were not employed as engineers or in a job where their engineering training was helpful. Most of these people indicated they were in other business professional occupations — jobs that tend to require a bachelor’s or master’s degree (e.g., accounting, finance, etc.). A fair number also reported a range of other jobs, which included art, the military, and so forth. We have defined a set of jobs we call “manual blue or pink collar” to capture the possible issue of “underemployment” among engineers. We included in this category people who reported jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree such as those in the trades, in food service, clerical employment, and the like. There have been some anecdotal accounts of engineers facing difficulties finding employment, with some reporting great concern over their prospects of finding good jobs and continued work in engineering. 1985-1992 Male Female 76.0% 83.5% 1993-2000 Male Female 81.4% 76.8% 2001-2005 Male Female 78.4% 73.3% neers, both male and female, experience agebased discrimination. The evidence shown here does not support these claims. It is important to note, however, that though these claims are not supported as major trends in these data, it does not mean there are not cases of discrimination based on gender or age or other worker characteristics. It should also be noted that we have examined outcomes for workers who had received degrees in 1985 (i.e., people who are in their 40s now), so it is likely that we underestimate the instance of age-based discrimination. T Job where engineering helpful Employed, but not in engineering Business professionals 36.1% Health, legal, religious, other science 18.6% Computer-IT 6.2% Manual blue or pink collar 8.2% Education 5.2% Other 25.8% Total 97 28.6% 14.3% 3.6% 7.1% 12.5% 33.9% 56 39.3% 17.9% 9.5% 7.1% 1.2% 25.0% 84 28.6% 19.0% 3.2% 7.9% 11.1% 30.2% 63 29.2% 12.5% 4.2% 16.7% 8.3% 29.2% 24 13.0% 8.7% 0.0% 21.7% 8.7% 47.8% 23 By including the “lower-level” jobs in one category, we hoped to see the extent to which these fears are borne out in the data. That is, the media often report “bad news” such as negative employment outcomes for those holding bachelor’s degrees. Here, of course, we do not see evidence of a vast pool of underemployed engineers among those who received their engineering degrees between 1985 and 2000, but we do see some possible problems for more-recent graduates. One in five females who graduated in the 20012005 period and 16.7 percent of their male peers report that they are employed in these low-level jobs. As one might expect, too, with graduation after the dot-com bust, these recent graduates are less likely than those from earlier cohorts to be employed in computer-IT jobs. Finally, although it is not a large employment area, women are more likely than men to be employed in education jobs, with those from earlier cohorts more likely to be so employed than those from later ones. In closing, we have shown that there are important differences in the outcomes for women and men who hold first bachelor’s degrees in engineering but that there are important similarities, too. Some observers have been concerned that women do not leave engineering so often as they are pushed out. Likewise, observers have been concerned that older engi26 SWE WINTER 2008 he data shown here indicate that women often move out of engineering as a result of changing career interests while men do so for better advancement or salary opportunities in other fields. It may be difficult for employers to increase salaries or promotional opportunities in engineering, but it may be possible for employers to determine ways to keep engineering interesting. That is, if women leave as a result of changing interests, companies may do well to determine how to work within their parameters to both retain women and to possibly improve the company’s competitive position. One may wonder why these survey data do not match some of the anecdotal evidence about women being pushed out of engineering. There may be several explanations. First, often bad news travels faster than good news, so that while we hear stories about someone who has left a position with a bad taste in his or her mouth, we do not usually hear about the hundreds of people who are satisfied with that same company. As a result, we may hear stories about discrimination but rarely do people tell stories about non-discrimination. Another interpretation is that women do not feel pushed out of the field so much as they experience a pull into other areas. Movement in careers is much like migration in a geographic sense: It is a balancing of push and pull factors. Perhaps people prefer to regard major life decisions such as a career change as positive actions rather than negative reactions. Because they operate within a strongly “masculine” culture, both male and female engineers may be reluctant to admit that anyone “pushed” them out of anywhere. So it could be the case that both push and pull forces operate, but given the manner in which the questions were framed, respondents tended to choose a more proactive answer. I Funding for this study was generously provided by SWE’s Corporate Partnership Council. Lisa M. Frehill, Ph.D., is the executive director of the Commission of Professionals in Science and Technology. Prior to joining CPST, she was an associate professor of sociology at New Mexico State University where she was the principal investigator and program director of that institution’s ADVANCE program. In a prior life, she was an industrial engineer at General Motors.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of SWE - Winter 2008

SWE - Winter 2008 Heritage Club President’s Note View from the Executive Suite Editor’s Page Readers’ Forum EWeek 2008 New Faces of Engineering The Leaky Science and Engineering Pipeline Why Do Women Leave the Engineering Work Force? A Greener America = New Growth Fields for Engineers The Off-On Ramp Revolution Recognizing the Historic Contributions of African-Americans Membership Information & Calendar A&B Women in Tune with Technology: SWE 2007 Conference Overview Keynote Address Achievement Award Region, Section, and Collegiate Awards SME Bowl and SWE Anniversaries Engineering World: Point of View: Why I Blog Career Toolbox Book Review SWE Smiles Opportunity Index SWE Scrapbook

SWE - Winter 2008

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