Why I quit engineering

By Karen Field , VP Content Marketing, Avnet

The theme of International Women's Day, innovation and technology for gender equality, got me thinking about the gains women have made in engineering, and all the work yet to be done to achieve—and retain—more diversity in the field.

When I graduated from college in the 1980s, I was one of the roughly 11,000 women in the US to earn a bachelor's in engineering—roughly 12% of the total engineering degrees awarded. It's a statistic I've kept my eye on through the years, anticipating that we'd eventually achieve gender parity.

It's clear that with many of the STEM initiatives like FIRST and Girls Who Code , we've made progress: Over the years, that number has nudged up (albeit slowly), with women now earning about 24% of the undergraduate degrees in engineering in the US.

But that's only one side of the equation. While women do now account for close to a quarter of engineering undergrads, they account for only 11% of the engineering workforce. That's according to the Project on Women Engineers Retention (POWER), an initiative of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee funded by the National Science Foundation.

Why the big drop-off? Well, let me start by considering why I dropped out of engineering.

Four years into my career, I left my job as a design engineer to become a technical journalist, creating content for an engineering audience. I used to explain my decision to quit engineering by saying that I was more passionate about writing than thermodynamics. But, lately, I've been wondering how much the engineering culture might have influenced by decision to leave the field. There were very few women engineers at my company—most were recent college grads like me—and virtually no female role models to show any of us what a successful career path for a woman in engineering could look like.

The sparseness of we women in tech made for some awkward interactions. I once attended a professional dinner put on by the IEEE, a professional association for engineers with a male engineering pal, and a man at my table—clearly assuming I was attending as a spouse—leaned over and asked me, "Do you work?"

Women Need Support

In the end, I'm proud of my career and I love what I'm doing. But a strong female role model might have encouraged me to stick with engineering, who knows?

I think my experience as a woman engineer is fairly typical. In fact, in key findings from the POWER initiative, one-third of the respondents said they left the profession because they perceived engineering to be inflexible or the workplace culture to not be supportive of women. Approximately one in five women left because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture.

The POWER study points out a simple fact: Women engineers who work in companies that value and recognize their contributions and invest in their training and professional development expressed the highest levels of satisfaction with their jobs and careers.

Isn't that the case for all of us, female or male? To genuinely flourish in our careers, we need the support of people in the organization who recognize the value we bring to the team, provide positive reinforcement and are willing to advocate for us. Women in male-dominated professions often simply get less of this

If we really want to achieve diversity in the workplace, it's up to all of us to make a difference and work to impact change. Wherever you are in your career, think about how you can make a positive influence and be an advocate for the next generation of engineers coming up behind you. It may well be one of the most powerful contributions you will make.