IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018 - 14

Renée M. Blackburn

Girls Coming to Tech
Girls Coming to Tech! A History of American Engineering Education for Women.
By Amy Sue Bix. M.I.T. Press, 2014.

istories of Science
and Technology in
the twentieth century
often deal with important figures, almost
certainly male, and their contributions to their field and to society.
These histories detail the significance of their education and the
ways in which they used their skills
to start major companies, create new
technologies, or contribute to patriotic efforts in wartime. In Girls Coming to Tech!: A History of American
Engineering Education for Women,
Amy Sue Bix expands on the growing
literature of women in STEM. Specifically, the book explores engineering
education through the lens of gender
from the late 1800s through most of
the twentieth century.
The text comprises seven chapters, each highlighting the measures
taken by institutions and individuals to eventually reach engineering
coeducation. Chapter 1 focuses on
the few women who first entered
institutions in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Chapters 2 and 3 indicate the important
role that World War II played in shifting social and institutional norms
around women's engineering education. Not only did universities accept
more women into engineering, so

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2018.2839220
Date of publication: 31 May 2018

did the federal government and
industry, particularly through partnerships that blurred gender boundaries temporarily for the war effort.
Chapters four through six offer case
studies of post-World War II women's engineering life at Georgia
Tech, Caltech, and M.I.T., respectively. Each university approached coeducation from a different angle, with
varying cultural norms attached to
women's femininity and how those
views fit into the heavily masculine traditions already in place at
each institution. And finally, chapter seven details the ways in which
campus culture and views around
coeducation changed in the late twentieth century.
Bix, Professor of History at Iowa
State University, uses the larger narratives of American history, mostly
in the twentieth century, to explain
the way in which engineering education for women was viewed and
decided by universities, industry,
and the federal government. In one
of the more prominent examples,
Bix, at various points, details the
impact of World War II on expanding women's entrance into engineering programs and women's general
acceptance at technical institutions
and in male-dominated environments. She describes the stereotypes that plagued women who
wished to pursue engineering: they
only wanted to find a husband, they
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would quit work once they were married or had children, they were not
smart enough to grasp the science
or math, or they were only suited to
engineering programs that already
possessed feminine qualities.
Bix expertly draws out the threads
of masculinity and femininity that
guided many of the actions taken by
actors throughout the story. Not only
were engineering programs averse
to women entering the "masculine"
field of engineering, but when they
did, programs often sought to play
on what they saw as women's inherent feminine characteristics. In one
example, Purdue created a new program called "Housing" for women
after World War II, which married
the already feminine Home Economics with Engineering, "based
on assumptions that female students were natural authorities on
the home." This worked both ways,
of course, as Purdue hoped not only
to appeal to women interested in
engineering and who did not wish
to enter the engineering school, but
also appealed to a growing number of men who were interested in
majoring in home economics.
Throughout the text, Bix also
draws on the "invasion" metaphor,
wherein male students, faculty, and
administration saw female students
as "invading" campuses when they
first arrived. This metaphor is particularly effective to convey the way
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june 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2018