Hello SWEster!
“Women are less likely than men to stay in engineering majors and to become engineers because they want to have families and are more insecure about their math abilities, right? Not necessarily.”
These are the opening lines to an article recently published by the American Sociological Association about women in Engineering. The article continues by stating that women tend to lack professional role confidence, which is the belief that they can go out and be successful professional engineers, and they lack the belief that engineering fits their beliefs and values. “Women engineering students go to the same classes, take the same tests, and get the same GPAs as men, sometimes even higher. But, what we found is that the women in (the) study developed less confidence in their engineering expertise than men did and they also developed less confidence that engineering is the career that fits them best, even though they went through the same preparation process as men.”
What are the reasons behind this feeling of incompetence? The subtle differences in the way that men and women are treated in engineering programs and from cultural ideologies about what it means to be a competent engineer are to blame. Several recommendations were given to help alleviate this problem. Firstly, they recommended bringing practicing engineers into the classroom. They even suggested that some of these engineers could come from women in engineering organizations (like SWE! 
). It was also recommended that engineering programs offer more directed internship opportunities that place students with working engineers on real-world engineering projects.
Make sure to check out the article for more information!
On another note, in an effort to promote membership in SWE, specifically C2C (Collegiate to Career) I am posting a great promotional tool to be distributed out to your sections!
