IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 45

COMMENTARY

Rachel Dzombak

Khanjan Mehta

Engaging and
Retaining Women in
an Engineering and
Entrepreneurship
Program

n March 8th, 2016,
we celebrated the
102nd International
Women's Day - a
day intended to highlight women's accomplishments and
the strides towards gender equity
made by society. Despite an ongoing dialogue, a myriad of new programs, and significant corporate
investment, the fields of engineering
and entrepreneurship continue to
struggle with attracting and retaining women. The challenge pervades
academia as well as industry, with
key technology companies such as
Apple and Google having 30% (or
less) of their workforce comprised of
females. According to the American
Society for Engineering Education,
female students in the U.S. received
20% of all engineering bachelor's
degrees and 24% of all engineering
master's degrees in 2014. Unfortunately, degrees do not guarantee
diversity in professional engineering
fields. A 2011 report cited that "40
percent of women who earn engineering degrees quit the profession
or never enter the field at all [5]."
While the demographics are shifting positively over time, we need to
rethink our approach to accelerate
the march towards gender equity in
engineering and entrepreneurship.
Workplace and classroom culture, persistent stereotypes, and
gender-specific pressures have all
been suggested as reasons for the

MEHTA

O

gender discrepancy in engineering
[5]. Scholarly literature and popular press both present a view that
women participate in engineering

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2763452
Date of publication: 5 December 2017

DECEMBER 2017

∕

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

when the connection to societal
impact is clear [7], [11]. Is this true?
There is some evidence to this end -
sub-disciplines like biomedical and

45



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