Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Breakfast Series

What are you doing on Thursday, September 1st from 7:30-9 AM?  If you're in the Milwaukee area I hope you will consider attending the first meeting of a series of monthly breakfast meetings.

This breakfast series will focus on the attrition and resiliency of women engineers based on findings from a study conducted earlier this year.  This study, completed by the Center for the Study of the Workplace, found that most women leave the fields of engineering and science because of the workplace climate.  Not what I would have expected but I've been fortunate in where I work.

The theme of this month's meeting is "How to be Heard" and will be presented by Mindy Ochs, P.E., Western Lime Corporation.  The meeting will be held at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee's downtown facility located on the 7th floor of the Grand Avenue Mall.  You can park in the Grand Ave Mall parking structure and the parking will be validated at the 7th floor reception desk.  The meeting will be held on September 1st from 7:30 - 9:00 AM.




The breakfast meetings will be held on the first Thursday of each month.  The cost is $60 for professionals and $20 for students (click here to register).

I'm going to be in China for the first meeting but I plan to be at the future ones.  I hope to see you there!

Women Engineers

Example of a Woman Engineer.

Are you a woman engineer?  Did you know that women make up 20% of engineering school graduates but only 11% of practicing engineers are women?

A recent study from the Center for the Study of the Workplace about the retention of women engineers suggests that workplace climate is the largest reason for leaving engineering.  This endeavor, called Project on Women Engineer's Retention (POWER), surveyed women engineering alumnae from 230 universities across the United States totaling 3,700 women as of January 2011.  There was a brief blurb about the study that appeared in my ASCE Smart Brief and another short blurb in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the study.

Interestingly, the engineering majors with the greatest number of people to either never enter the workplace or left more than five years ago are Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.  I was hoping to relate this to the number of women in those majors but there doesn't appear to be any correlation.  Another interesting point is that almost half of that group had earned an additional degree, most often a master's of science (MS) or master's of business administration (MBA).  Turns out that some (try 70%) of the women who "left" are probably still at an engineering/technical company but in management or executive level positions with a third earning over $100,000.

 The key points from this study were (1) that almost half of the women respondents "left because of the working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary," (2) one-in-three respondents left because "they did not like the workplace climate, their boss, or the culture," and (3) one-in-four left "to spend time with family.  Another key finding was that those who had left still had the same interests, same confidence in their abilities, and expected the same positive outcomes from performing engineering related tasks as those who didn't leave. 

Some findings from the study I thought were rather obvious, such as "women engineers who were treated in a condescending, patronizing manner, and were belittled and undermined by their supervisors and co-workers were most likely to want to leave their organization."  I think anyone who experiences that would be interested in leaving!

To me, the most surprising finding from the study was that "women who considered leaving their companies were also very likely to consider leaving the field of engineering altogether."  The situation they were in was so bad that it warranted leaving the discipline?  What?  This part leaves me befuddled, but perhaps its because I've never worked in such an environment.  I've worked in two different industry jobs, one a consulting company the other a manufacturing company.  They were nothing like each other but at both places I was treated with respect, like I was intelligent, and I was given opportunities to interact professionally with high-level managers - mostly presenting my ideas to them.  True, my job title has been "intern" for most of the time but I've still gone through the cycle of promotions & performance reviews, and I've never felt like some of the respondents from the study have.  Maybe if I had been I would understand why it would cause someone to leave engineering altogether.

I think the longer you work, the more you get a better understanding of other companies out there one could work for.  I have a list of a dozen companies that do things similar to what I enjoy that I could work for if my current company doesn't work out.  My Plan B has been "if The Company doesn't work out I'll just apply at Company X and Company Y," not "if The Company doesn't work out I'm going to become a crazy cat lady and live under the bridge." 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that women are leaving engineering after working someplace rotten because it's more socially acceptable for them to do so.  I think it's safe to say that engineering is still considered a "manly" field despite efforts to reverse that stereotype, and that men who leave the field of engineering because it sucked would be highly ridiculed by their male peers.  Women on the other hand, would probably say to their female peers who leave engineering something like "I don't know how you did it for so long!" or "yeesh, that field sounds wretched, good thing you got out of there!"

This is just my uneducated guess, what do you think?  Have you ever worked someplace so horrendous that its caused you to consider leaving your field? 

Women Leaders

I ran across this article today (I think from a tweet by Felicia Day) and thought it was worth mentioning here.

The video is from a TED event for women and features Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.  In this talk she shares her experiences being a female leader and says there are three very important things women can do:

1. Sit at the table
2. Make your partner a real partner
3. Don't leave before you leave

I'm guilty of violating number one; last week I wrote about how I feel about what I'm doing and I did not give myself credit.  Lunch with the VP of my division today made me feel better and help me realize that I'm awesome. 

Anyway, watch the video, it's really good.

Women in Power

Friday I ran across an article about an interesting woman in power.  Technically it was just a brief interview with Diana Tremblay, the VP of Manufacturing and Labor Relations at General Motors, but one thing she said really stuck with me; which also happened to be the main point the article seems to be drawing attention to as well.  Diana said:

I have never felt that I was given an opportunity solely because I was a woman, but I also know that it helped at times because it made me unique. 

I don't know if I can say the same for myself.  It's a question I was wondering a lot last year as I was trying to figure out what to do after graduation.  I was finishing my bachelor's and master's at the same time, working on my master's thesis, looking for a job, and working 24-32 hours a week.

My undergraduate degree is closely tied to the construction industry, an industry that was not doing so hot last year, and I wasn't getting a lot of call backs for interviews.  I finally asked the company I worked for about a job and originally they mentioned relocation to an operating unit in the Carolinas to do renewables.  The boyfriend was upset ("why can't you find a job here where I am?")  so I kept looking around.  Another month later my company asked me if I'd ever considered going to school for my Ph.D.  It wasn't something I'd ever considered before, Dr. KB?  I don't know.  But I didn't seem to have a whole lot of other options.  Fast forward a couple of months and I am looking around universities for a research group to work with for my doctorate.

Many days that summer I wondered if the opportunity I was given was because I was a female.  My company has mostly undergraduate co-op students and they have a strict policy about only hiring those with at least a master's degree, though everyone they'd hired in the last four years had their doctorate.  I was an intern (not a co-op) who was just supposed to be there for one summer.  On my last day one of my projects wasn't done and my project team asked the director if I could stay.  The director talked to the VP of the division and my internship was extended indefinitely.  Why did they let me stay?  Maybe because I was providing support for a lot of projects, maybe because I was cheap to pay (who needs money when you're in school?), or maybe it was because I was close-by compared to the other co-ops from Madison.

It's a question I've never voiced out loud, perhaps because I'm scared of what the answer will be.  Some days at work I feel on top of the world: I'm accomplishing mini-projects left and right, I feel helpful, I feel like I'm contributing, I'm pulling my own weight.  It's those days where I feel like anything I've achieved is because of my own merit, not because another female engineer was needed.  Then there are the days where my stuff deforms, my coating fails, I spend too much time on a task because I can't figure out something simple. It's those days where I question why I am where I am.  It also makes me wonder, am I the only one who feels this way?

I wonder if young engineers (male or female) who are just starting their careers feel the same way occasionally.  A combination of "I don't know enough!" and "I taught my co-workers something new!"

I think I'm going to put "work on self-esteem" for my New Year's Resolutions list.

WANTED: Mentor

I need a mentor, or at least someone I can ask a lot of questions to! I have so many questions that I don't know the answer to such as:

• How do you manage publishing papers under one name (maiden name) and then another name (married name) later on?
• How do you balance school life, work life, and family life?
• How easy is it to have children and still work on a doctorate?
• What do you do when you propose to someone and they laugh at you?
• If your "husband" gets a job in a new city/state would it be better to quit everything & move or stay and finish out the doctorate?
• How do you go about publishing something on your own?
• How far should one downplay their achievements to their potential in-laws so as not to overshadow what their son has done?

I haven't found a good source for these types of questions yet. I've asked what questions I know my co-workers will know the answer to, such as the publishing on your own question, but I really don't know anyone else in the same type of situation as myself. There are two other female engineers where I work at: one is a austere older women who I do not socialize with while the other is a younger women who is very nice and willing to answer all sorts of questions that I throw her way. The problem is that she got married right out of high school, had children, and then did her mechanical engineering BS & MS degrees. No one else I know is pursuing a doctorate in engineering (or anything else for that matter) and I don't really know who to turn to. My other source of information is my sorority, Alpha Omega Epsilon, but I haven't come across anyone there I know who is in the same / was in the same situation either.

My boyfriend suggested trying to find a forum or blog or other internet source where I can read and learn what others have gone through. That lead me to the blog by Young Female Scientist (YFS) and How to be a Good Graduate Student (because the author is a female and wanted to focus on women's issues...but didn't). YFS is a good blog and is very interesting for me to read because it highlights issues I may eventually encounter while working in academia but doesn't answer all of my questions and it doesn't appear to be exactly what I am looking for. I've gone through all my latest Society of Women Engineers magazines looking for information but have come up short there as well.

Where else do I turn to? Any one have any good sources of information or should I just hope I eventually ask enough people that I find good answers? Also, if anyone has answers to any of my questions or wants to volunteer to be my mentor let me know! I need help.