A few thoughts on the need for more women in engineering

It’s widely understood that we need more women in engineering roles and I couldn’t agree more. I’m encouraged when I read about organizations like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and how they are putting their best foot forward to become more diverse.

Now I’m not writing this post to come up with a solution on how to get more women in engineering roles or even keep them in these roles, but to share my perspective from what I’ve seen having an 11 year old daughter with an interest in engineering.

My daughter is passionate about science and math. She also enjoys reading, art, sports, and many other things. She currently wants to go to MIT for her undergrad and Carnegie Mellon for an advanced degree and become a robotics engineer. I’m amazed that she already has an idea of where she wants go to college and what she wants to do, however I do realize that it will probably change 100 times. At her age, I think my future plans involved working at Dunkin Donuts so I could eat as many donuts as I wanted.

For my daughter, her passion for robotics and engineering wasn’t started by something she did at school or even a club she joined — however these could have played a part . It was introduced and fueled by her grandfather. He didn’t push this on her, or any of my other children, but simply introduced the possibilities of engineering and programming. This, in my opinion, is such an invaluable step in the process to get more women in engineering roles. Having someone willing to take the time to teach, guide, mentor our children, and girls in particular, is HUGE. Now not every child is wired this way but as long as there is an interest, it can be enriched or nurshised with the right guidance and teaching. I do realize that not everyone has a family member with the skill, knowledge, or even patience to teach so I am extremely grateful for the time my daughter gets to spend with her grandfather.

When not being taught by a family member or mentor, there are many great programs worth checking out — from Girls Who Code to First Lego League (FLL) and smaller, more regional programs like Maker Kidz.

And when they are bored at home, there are a variety of things they can do. From toys such as GoldieBlox and Roominate; applications such as Sid’s Science Fair and TinkerBox; and online programming sites such as Codecademy and Code.org.

Now if they aren’t doing something on a regular basis, they can lose interest fast. The more they do something and see improvements, the greater the interest/passion. That is why it’s so important to get them involved in a program(s) and continue to feed that hunger for learning while at home.

For me, engineering and programming is like a foreign language. Since it’s not something I’m necessarily comfortable with, it’s easy to just dismiss it but this is completely opposite of what my attitude should be. I’m my daughters #1 fan when it comes to her passions. She is part of a FLL team, has taken “classes” on Codecademy, and works with her grandfather on a regular basis in his “science lab” on programming (she knows javascript, html, others), building robots (Lego Mindstorm), and performing science experiments. If you can’t tell, I’m pretty proud of her (and yes, I do realize I’m bragging a bit — isn’t that father’s do?).

So why do I bring all of this up? Hiring women engineers is as much on us as parents as it is on the organizations looking to hire. It’s fantastic that organizations and educational institutions realize we need more women in engineering and we need to keep them there but it’s on us (parents, mentors) to make sure these organizations have the strongest pool to select from.