Women in Engineering
For long, the world had been under patriarchal control, with the men handling the steering wheel of worldly affairs while the women were mostly restricted to domestic ones. But as societies marched forward, more complex social structures evolved, an integrative approach needed to be taken to keep the wheels of the society running. World war, for example, created a huge shortage of skilled engineering professionals in the field because most of the men being sent to war. Initiatives started to take place since then to include women into engineering workforce. These integrative approaches to include women into professional arena weren’t due to sudden empathetical outburst or ethical concerns in policy makers but due to a need of talent regardless of gender to keep the companies running and the economy booming. In past times, the worth of a woman wasn’t anyway near than a man in terms of talent. A man was thought to be critical, reasonable, having higher IQ and capable of solving complex academic, professional and political issues while women were expected to be tender and emotional, devoid of critical thought processing. Simone de Beauvoir, the world’s one of the pioneering feminists, was told that she had a man’s intelligence by the visionary philosopher John Paul Sartre. This notion of women being inferior in terms of a man’s intelligence is what kept women from flourishing and nurture their talents and it was, it is still quite dominant everywhere. Back in the 19th century people used to say why a woman should enter the workforce and be an earning agent, because if so, then a boy loses his chance in livelihood, and its more important for a boy to earn than a girl because for a girl it’s a luxury while for a boy it’s deemed to be a necessity. This is a common scenario that almost a huge number of girls faced in academia, or in their respective professions. But the world marches forward, and archaic concepts such as these should be pushed to the museum for a better future for all.
UC Berkley was the first university to provide an engineering program at the Bachelors level for women, with Elizabeth Bragg becoming the first ever female engineer of the United States in the year 1876. Since then, the growth of female engineers only rose high. The stereotype around girls being lesser being started to brush off. The world got to see the remarkable results of integrating women into the workplace alongside with men. During the industrial revolution, Mary Walton devised ways to minimize noise pollution and air pollution in the industries. The construction of Brooklyn Bridge was completed by Emily Warren who took over the construction responsibilities after her husband, the chief engineer of the bridge, got sick. The first ever computer program was written by Ada Lovelace. Beoulah Louis Henry was given the title of “Lady Edison” as an honour to her 49 patents and 110 inventions in total. Hedy Lamarr who was an Australian actress, was a self-taught inventor. She devised a frequency hopping signal which could not be tracked or jammed during the times of World War II, which would be beneficiary for the Navy to radio control torpedoes. Kevlar which is five times stronger than Steele, and used as bulletproof vests, tires, combat helmets, ballistic face masks, was invented by Stephanie Kwolak. Edith Clarke, who was the first female electrical engineer of the world, developed Clarke calculator, which could solve line equations with voltage, current and impedance parameters involved. She showed that her device was capable of solving line equations with hyperbolic functions ten times faster than any of the state-of-the-art devices. Windshield wiper blade was invented by American inventor Mary Anderson. Martha Coston devised Coston flares, which is a device used for signalling at the seas. Margaret Hamilton developed the software required for the Apollo mission to launch. She is attributed as the first woman to coin the term “Software Engineering”. Thus, from seas to land, to computers, thousands of innovations and contributions have been led by woman. Now with women being more empowered than ever, we are seeing more participation of women in tech industries, as inventors, upper management officials etc. Some of the most popular tech leaders currently are women. The list is huge, with a huge number of women finding their ways to the top in the Forbes List.
Martha Sloan was the first ever female president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers back in 1993. Karen Bartleson was the second female IEEE president elected at 2017, who now serves as the president of IEEE Standards Association after retiring from her position. The president of the billion-dollar company SpaceX which launched the first reusable rocket and also responsible for launching Bangabandhu Satellite in its trajectory, is Gwen Shotwell. President of SAP technologies The Wojcicki sisters, Susan Wojcicki and Anne Wojcicki are both CEOs of two giant company, YouTube and 23 and Me. Ginny Rometty is the current CEO of IBM who has a net worth of 90 million. CEO of Quibi is Meg Whitman; CEO of lens technology is Zhou Quinfei; co-CEO of oracle is Safra Catz; HCL enterprise which is an India based billion-dollar information technology firm has a female executive director and CEO, Roshni Nadar Malhotra. CFO of Microsoft and Alphabet is Amy Hood and Ruth Porad. COO of Facebook is Sheryl Sandberg; Airbnb’s COO is Belinda Johnson. Apart from working as the big players in others companies, many women themselves are founders of many multibillion-dollar tech companies too. The founder of Forerunner Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Cowboy Ventures are all females. There are countless other examples in the world which show that females are no more the left behind and its time for us to take the lead in this era of technology.
In a study conducted at BRAC University of Bangladesh by Faraque Mohammad Anwar, He took the statistics of male and female participation in major engineering and saw a drastic rise in women entering engineering fields than before. The department of CSE of Brac had 11:1 male to female ratio back in 2001 from where the ratio turned into 155:94. In the year 2017. In ECE department, the male to female ratio was 34:24 from where it took a sharp turn to 8:12, with women outnumbering men, in pursuing this technical degree. In the department of EEE the ratio was 11:2 from where it jumped to 146:59. In the upcoming years a gender balance would definitely be reached if the goodwill of our government continues and the gender stereotypes are broken altogether. Our current govt. has taken numerous steps promoting women education in every sector, starting from primary to higher studies, incentivizing as much as needed to get the women up in front. Recently our govt. pressured the university, Islamic University of Technology to take in female students despite international pressures coming to them from OIC. This step alone explains how much goodwill our govt. holds in integrating women in all possible places, especially in tech. But workplace safety, safety in academic institutions now are one of the major impediments that are needed to be addressed to ensure more female participation in technical programs, careers. Sexism in such environment are a major setback which needs strict measures. Also, archaic stereotypes need to be rooted out from the society, promoting human rights, liberalism and an aspiration to move forward, towards a better, well developed society.
In this capitalist world, and as market forces are accelerating, the place for dumb stereotypes and superstitions are getting diminished. The market needs skilled labour to thrive and we are here to prove our capabilities, our potentials to the world, making them regret for the past, when we were being set back and oppressed. The world needs collaboration between the sexes, not ostracization of any sort, be it between sexes or races. The companies do realize that, because only through diversified program can they achieve maximum proficiency, unless not. The big companies, Google, Apple, Microsoft all have an inclusive environment and diverse workforce, and as a result they can utilize the maximum talent that they require and get on the top of the game. Others are following it too. There should be some certain plans making women feel less alone as they help us build a more inclusive engineering community which includes hosting female-focused engineering interest groups on campuses and in workplaces, and highlighting engineering role models who reflect the true diversity of our population. Perhaps the execution of these ideas may face some raucous reality but they are really effective specially for the neophyte members. Encouraging young girls also to develop their spatial skills, laying the foundation for further scientific exploration as they grow, can also drive ’em toward the field of engineering. I would like to conclude this piece of article with the great saying of Edith Clarke, the first ever Electrical Engineer, who observed the hostile atmosphere for women engineers in society back at her time and came up with this thought to share with her peers and to the engineers of the future, “There is no demand for women engineers, as such, as there are for women doctors; but there’s always a demand for anyone who can do a good piece of work.” — which is the simplest and most straightforward advice that would march us forward.
