Women in engineering

Once again I have no clue what possessed me to look this stuff up, but I guess I got curious. I’ve always known that women in engineering, much less mechanical and aerospace were few, but since I’ve worked with some of them they haven’t seemed as much of a rarity as the numbers say. So I looked at the 2004 census report and here are the numbers I came up with.

In 2004
For all engineering
23% female
77% male
*Not really surprising since I know that less than half of the engineers I work with are women*

Freshman undergraduate students enrolled at a 4 year accredited university
17.2% female
82.8% male
*I think at UAH this is a little higher.*

Number of women that held the engineering title 2004 at thier jobs
563- mechanical
149- aerospace
*Now this was the number that shocked me*

Percentage of women with husband not working 7.9%
*Oddly enough this wasn’t a shock.*


So there are the stats. In some respects I know they are old and that more women are getting into engineering but still the numbers seem low. I’ve been around this business for a couple of years now and I guess because I’m in a town with more where just about everyone you meet is an engineer of some kind.

Ok this ended up as a random mess of a blog. Hopefully my next one will make more sense.