Why Are There So Few Women In Electronics Today?

IT is a wide field. Find another situation to rekindle your interest. Keep learning new stuff.

lohphat

Thanks for posting this vid, Fran. I've been enjoying your output (including your TG one) since Big Clive reawoke my interest in electronics last year. I also have a 13 yr old niece who is currently deciding who she will be, and more than half of that is male so far. I think I;m her only close relative who doesn't cringe at the idea. She knows nothing of electronics but I will show her this vid next time she visits, though she has always had an interest in the mechanical clocks my place is full of. At long last I signed up to yr cgannel. Cheers from the UK

Ymir the Frost Giant

The only reason I'm working in IT is because I'm transgender. My steps sister was raised with only girly stuff. My father would bring me all kinds of stuff without my asking. I have thought of switching to Electrical Engineering, I'm getting sick of IT. But I would take an insane pay cut if I switched careers. So until my wife starts making big bucks I'm stuck.

Jessica McIntosh

I've thought a lot about this very thing throughout my life. I was raised by a mom who was a NOW member back in the 70s and a dad who supported her going back to college to get a degree (both financially and by getting us off to school, making dinner, etc.). Then by a step mom who, as a European, was extremely independent in many ways that American women weren't. For the last 12 years I've been dad to a great, smart daughter who has never been forced into following gender specific games, toys, or roles like so many of her classmates seem to be. What's been most fascinating to watch (and frustrating to try and figure out) is how she reacts to my attempts to pass my knowledge on to her in our parent/child relationship. I'm a pretty technically oriented guy. I'm an electrician now (previously did a few other things), I make models, build computers, design and renovate things around the house, etc., so she's exposed to a lot of technical things that I could pass on, but there is almost ZERO interest in any of it, except a draw towards computers. We built her a new PC last fall and she (somewhat) willingly took part in that, but otherwise, she has no interest in any of the technical things I do. I've never met any girls in her circles of friends who showed any ideep nterest in or draw to technical pursuits, either. Boys, even really small ones, on the other hand, are way more interested which was really clear at some of the STEM workshops I took her to over the years. So as a parent I've had to look at this differently than I did as a single guy who was raised to accept that in a good world, women could do these things, too. What's different about the way I look at it now is this - as her dad, I want to support what she wants to do and is interested in (and by extension what other kids in her circles might want support for through school programs, etc.) and I don't want to force her into doing something "for dad," which I've learned is actually a really easy thing to do with kids if you're not careful. My daughter is smart, but her way of seeing the world is really, really different from the way I've ever seen it. What I have noticed over the last 50 years though is that there are certain women who do seem to think more like "typical" guys - they can parallel park with ease or back into a parking spot, they can grasp certian abstract concepts like imagining hidden framing in a building or how an electrical circuit works or they show an obvious comfort with using tools and making things, but these women have definitely been a very small minority of the women I've met. For the majority of women I've met, dealing with technical things produces the same reaction that accounting produces in me, i.e. I'd rather take a nap. So I think there's something about the way most men think and experience the world vs how most women think and experience the world that draws us to different pursuits even from a very young age. As a parent or mentor or educator, I think the most important thing is to perceive what it is that each child needs, wants or shows interest in and to support that regardless of gender or sex. WIth my daughter I've always tried to give her the space to explore without the pressure to follow through into an area she really feels no interest in. Well rounded exposure is as important to a young person trying to discover who they are as is support in what they choose to be or do. With all that being said, I have to say that American men on a whole are a lot more horrible towards women than men I've experienced in other cultures when it comes to 1) sexualizing women and 2) expecting women to "know their place." I lived abroad for 14 years and it's clear that a lot more American men have a hard time accepting a woman as their equal than men in other cultures do, whether it's at an office job, a contruction job, a university job, or whatever. I don't know what the answer is for that other than time and women demanding better treatment.

Peter Argyropoulos

I have been involved in engineering since 1984. I have seen many people quit the field because they believe it is a dead end. I think this is for 2 reasons: 1. Most corporations see engineering, computer software development, etc., as being an expense. It is something they have to do, like having an office telephone system. They want the quickest and cheapest solution and it is much cheaper to purchase these skills in the form of outsourcing than it is to hire and develop domestically. 2. Because of this, fewer and fewer young people are majoring in technical subjects. This includes both males and females! Career advancement (which translates into higher pay) is much better in non-technical business related fields such as sales, marketing, business and people management, etc. The employer who told you to leave when you requested a promotion may have been related to your gender, but most likely is was related to the fact that your job could be outsourced to someone who is willing to work for lower pay with the same, if not better, skill sets. The sad fact is that engineering (along with manufacturing) as a profession is on the decline in this country. Business management, marketing is where it is at. This is especially true when you consider that by the time you became experienced in your chosen technical field, your knowledge and skills are already obsolete. One last thing - Gender inequality is not just about females, it needs to includes males as well. Especially young teenage males who need just as much compassionate guidance and understanding as their female counter parts. Unfortunately “Male” is a dirty word in our contemporary society. This is unfortunate because if you want both males and females to be equal, then you need to start treating them both equally

I was the same as you Fran in that even from a very young age I wanted to know how things worked. Toys and other things got taken apart. For a long time growing up, even as an adult right up to before the Internet and YouTube I kind of thought I was unusual, as I would buy something and sometimes even before turning something on, I would take it apart first and have a look inside. Growing up I had to hide this interest from my parents as they didn’t approve of me taking things apart and potentially (okay actually) breaking something. Now we have the Internet and YouTube I can see I wasn’t strange, as there are thousands of channels and people dedicated to teardowns and making things and hearing people such as yourself having a similar story, I don’t feel I was a strange child anymore. No one encouraged me to take things apart or try and figure out how things worked, so I think we are mostly born this way or some experience when we are very young gets us interested and wires our brain from early on.

Leigh

Hi Fran, I was watching a recent SpaceX video, which was hosted by a young lady who was a LEAD Engineer at SpaceX- and at the time, I remember thinking to myself, that such a thing would have never happened when I was an Apprentice in the Royal Navy ( women were called Wrens, and had menial jobs back in the 70's) Nowadays women are Fighter pilots, frontline soldiers, and Engineers, both Electrical and Mechanical- and I believe the workplaces are a better environment because of the positive input of women. Onwards and Upwards!!

Mike Hughes

This video covers a topic which really annoys me, the whole hender gap issue in all it's facets just annoys me. Thank you for this well structured video, I hope it will be part of the growing change to change all this!

Dr Andy Hill

I bet that boss turned around and replaced Fran with a male engineer that he paid 3x the salary for...rather than simply paying that same salary to Fran.

Philip Stephens

I was blissfully unaware of gender issues when I started studying Computer Engineering in 1981. After getting top scores in Freshman Physics and in the Physics Labs (a separate class for enrollment and grading), I was offered a job as a "Lab Proctor", where I was a "Peer Advisor" to students in the class behind me. My duties involved a 50-50 mix of in-class proctoring and "office hours" tutoring. My success at proctoring (using a Socratic approach, where students soon learned to get themselves unstuck) lead to a steady stream of tutoring clients, often in preference to talking with their TAs or professors. Before long, 75% of the students I tutored were women. I became the "tutor of choice" for nearly ALL the women taking the Physics labs (and, no, I never dated any of them). I always asked why they were taking undergrad Physics, and I was surprised by the range of responses. So many were "forced" into majors requiring undergrad Physics because their parents insisted they pursue a "worthwhile" major (meaning "other than Liberal Arts") in order to be supported in their studies, and they pretty much hated being forced to make that commitment. I made it my mission to encourage them to love Physics as much as I did. I did not succeed. While none of my proctoring or tutoring clients failed (yay!), many still decided to leave the science/engineering track. A fellow proctor was so confused by this that he joined SWE (the Society of Women Engineers, which welcomes men) to learn more about was was going on. My path was to try to get more women to join ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery), which was working hard on gender and race issues. We proctors did make a statistical difference! The number of women leaving the Physics sequence before completion was nearly halved. But it was such a small number to start with that the difference was visible only in the stats. We were also part of the problem: All but one of the proctors and all but one of the TAs were male. As a group, we advocated for more of the lab TAs and proctors to be female, to provide role models and mentoring in addition to proctoring and tutoring. The undergrad Physics sequence had the highest loss rate for women, many times that of the parallel Calculus sequence. We all agreed the best use of our time would be to mentor more female proctors. After graduation I always advocated for hiring diversity, but it seemed I was working in groups of white men that pretty much stayed groups of white men. I do have a couple of great stories to the contrary, but they are anecdotal, not indicators of trends or change at scale. I recently "retired" from 35 years of engineering, and I'm transitioning to becoming a high school STEM teacher. Teaching is a woman-dominated field, and I'm so looking forward to joining their ranks. I'm hoping that engaging women at younger ages will help make a difference. Schools and governments are working extremely hard to get experienced tech professionals into the classroom. If you have any thoughts in this direction, PLEASE contact EnCorps at https://www.encorps.org to learn more and get lots of guidance through the process.

BobC

Sixty years ago I got a PhD in Engineering Physics. Why? So I could get a job that paid better than a secretary. I was still paid 1/2 what a male was paid.....so I became a patent attorney and made them pay through the nose for my services. (Highly technically qualified Patent Attorneys are rare, so I was in a position of strength. ) Oh yes, I was raised with 5 brothers and learned to be pretty tough, a characteristic which served me well in the engineering environment. All American women seem to know how to do these days is "shake tail and grin".

Carol K Stouffer