Abstract of Women Scientists and Engineers Employed in Industry: Why So Few?
The Representation of
Women Scientists and Engineers in Industry
Although women were 16% of the U.S. scientific and
engineering (S&E) labor force in 1988, they represented
only 12.3% (roughly 400,000 women) of the total number of
scientists and engineers employed in industry. Why were there
such low numbers? The percentage of women earning bachelor
degrees or higher has increased dramatically in the past few
decades. In 1966, women comprised less than 24% of the S&E
bachelor degree recipients, less than 14% of the S&E master
degree recipients, and 8% of the S&E doctorate recipients.
By 1989, these numbers had increased to 40% obtaining bachelor
degrees, 31% getting master's degrees, and 28% receiving
doctorates.
But female scientists and engineers remain underrepresented
in industry, due to their choice of S&E field and of the
employment sector. There is a tendency for female scientists
and engineers to choose careers in life sciences, behavioral
sciences, and social sciences, all fields where industry is a
less likely source of employment than academe or
government.
The fact that women tend to prefer jobs in other sections is
consistent with a perception that working conditions for women
are less favorable in industry. It may also be consistent with
a number of other hypotheses, some of which involve decisions
based on factors other than the nature of working conditions in
industry. Another fact consistent with the working conditions
explanation is the greater exit rate of women than men from
S&E positions in industry, although there may be other
factors contributing to this rate.
The following sections are a result of a conference called
"Women Scientists and Engineers Employed in Industry: Why so
Few?" This conference was sponsored by the Committee on Women
in Science and Engineering (CWSE) of the National Research
Council.
Barriers
for Women in Corporate Culture
The apparent preference of women scientists and engineers
for jobs outside the industrial sector and the higher exit rate
of women from industrial employment suggest that women perceive
the climate in industry as less than favorable for a scientific
or technical career. Barriers that inhibit progress for women
scientists and engineers in industry were found at every stage
of career development.
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Recruitment
and Hiring Practices that Create De Facto Entry
Barriers for Women
Recognizing the advantages of incorporating female
scientists and engineers in the corporate labor force, some
companies have developed aggressive programs and strategies to
recruit more women into these fields. Projections of the future
work force indicate that 80-85% of the net additions over the
next 10 years will be minorities and women. These companies
feel that they must recruit aggressively among these groups or
the best will go elsewhere.
The rapidly changing work environment in corporations today
and internal competition for full-time employment creates
pressures to fill jobs quickly. These factors can result in
positions not being advertised externally. Employers may resort
to traditional recruiting and hiring practices, using
well-established and often exclusive networks. Women are not
likely to be well represented in these networks, which include
internal and external personal contacts and linkages with
search firms.
In recent decades recruiting and hiring practices were not
consciously designed to exclude women, but those practices
tended to replicate the attributes of the existing work force.
Managers at one company answered the question "Why haven't you
hired more women?" with such responses as: "We choose the best
person," "The person must fit in with the rest of the group,"
"There weren't any women applicants," "We need a person who can
hit the ground running," and "The job requires long hours and
weekends."
The company has what is referred to as a "model applicant",
a stereotyped perception of the ideal candidate. If an
applicant fits this model and the perceived comfort level of
the group, the person is hired and the group reproduces itself.
Often candidates are found when employees call colleagues at
other companies, reducing access for women who usually are not
part of that network.
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The
Workplace Environment
Women will not feel comfortable in a workplace that is
hostile to women. However, subtle aspects of male-oriented
culture can be hard to change because they are deeply ingrained
and their impact is difficult to demonstrate.
Catalyst, a nonprofit organization that works with
businesses to effect change for women, conducted a 1991 study
of female engineers employed in 30 large corporations. The
following issues were found to inhibit female engineers'
productivity: paternalism, sexual harassment, and the pressure
associated with peers' allegations of reverse discrimination.
These issues and others, such as the perception of different
standards for judging men and women and misunderstandings due
to different styles of communication, create a negative
workplace environment for women.
Paternalism
Even though women may express the desire to be considered
for a particular assignment, which may be critical for their
professional development, certain work environments are often
deemed inappropriate for them because they are women. Sometimes
physical strength is assumed to be a necessary attribute for a
task when it is actually technological competence and
persistence which are important.
Despite the fact that women are willing to take the
necessary physical risks or make sacrifices to gain work
experience, they are often not offered the opportunity. A human
resource person told Catalyst that there is a tendency to put
women in staff projects because of the perception they cannot
handle themselves in the plant.
Corporate managements sometimes have doubts over women's
willingness or ability to handle both work and family
responsibilities. This disbelief extends to doubting the future
reliability of single women. Women engineers and scientists
perceive that others doubt their ability and commitment, and
may lose self-esteem and career confidence. There is a need to
establish whether this perception reflects reality.
Similarly, some women at the conference felt they were
trapped in futile, patronizing relationships with their
companies, like a relationship graduate students sometimes have
with their advisors. These women felt unable to develop their
own identities and maturity in the work place.
Allegations
of Reverse Discrimination
Many women at the conference cited the importance of a
critical mass of women at the work site in order for individual
women to succeed and advance. However, men may feel threatened
by the growing number of women, and a backlash against women
can occur. Allegation of reverse discrimination - charges that
men are penalized because of special incentives and programs
for women - contribute to a hostile work environment for women.
These allegations can create or reinforce perceptions by some
men and women that women do not belong. A way of combating the
notion that women are getting all the advantages is to provide
data. Some companies publish statistics on how job
opportunities have been filled, including lateral transfers and
promotion.
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Sexual
Harassment
Women in non-traditional fields are especially vulnerable to
sexual harassment "because they may be perceived as barging
into an area where women don't belong and should not be in
competition with men for jobs. Catalyst found that sexual
harassment is demonstrated, for example, by the posting of
pin-ups in the workplace, nuances of language used by male
co-workers, and putting the only female engineer at a business
meeting on the spot by asking irrelevant, tangential,
gender-related questions.
Steps are being taken in companies to avoid sexual
harassment. The first class-action sexual harassment case in
U.S. federal courts was settled in May 1993 against a company
"liable for creating a hostile work environment by allowing
abusive graffiti and language." U.S. companies are hiring
ethics officers to develop ethics policies and investigate
ethical problems in the workplace.
Different Standards
A common theme among women interviewed by Anne Preston in "A
Study of Occupational Departure of Employees in the National
Sciences and Engineering" was their belief that they had to
work harder than men to prove themselves. Many women felt they
were judged by an entirely different set of standards. At the
conference, women felt that female managers tend to be
interrupted more frequently and their recommendations ignored
more than their male counterparts are. One woman felt that she
had to build a reputation so superior that men were ill-advised
not to listen. After gaining this reputation, she felt she
could never make a mistake. Corporate policies can work to
change cultural habits that negatively affect women, but they
cannot quickly uproot deeply embedded cultural norms.
Although most people at the conference felt that men are
often quick to challenge the findings of their female
colleagues, women may be more sensitive to challenges by their
colleagues than men are. According to Preston, few women exited
a technological field because of double standards alone. The
uphill battle for acceptance had become a way of life despite
its mental and emotional toll.
In the Catalyst study, women who were enthusiastic about the
nature of their work during the early stages of their careers
were disappointed after choosing management, a path they
considered to have the most rapid advancement. Women said that
as managers they must continue to prove themselves, that their
reputations are not as portable as those of their male peers,
and that it was more difficult for them than for men to recover
from management errors.
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Styles of
Communication
Misunderstandings between men and women can occur in the
workplace because of the different ways that men and women may
communicate or provide feedback. For example, when a manager
says "no objection," a man often interprets the phrase to mean
that he has the approval to proceed. A woman, by contrast, may
interpret the phrase to mean the boss has no positive feelings
about the issue: he is neither enthusiastic nor supportive, and
therefore she should not proceed.
Perceptions of the
Role of Women
Many ethnic groups have specific, sometimes limiting,
perceptions of the roles of women; and those learned roles may
prevent women, particularly minority women, from advancing in
the industrial work force. These women may not be seen as
breadwinners. There is a need to alter corporate cultures so
the values of non-traditional groups do not preclude
contributions of women.
Retention
The high attrition rate of women from S&E fields is a
critical factor which contributes to women's
underrepresentation in industry. In general, the exit rate of
women in industry is considerably higher than men's. Also,
women scientists and engineers in industry are both more likely
to leave technical occupations and more likely to leave the
labor force altogether than women employed in other sectors.
Sometimes, there exists an elitist corporate culture which
excludes women's views and causes them to be uncomfortable.
Opportunities
for Advancement
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The reigning model for women entering S&E fields has
been the pipeline model, which predicts that if more women
enter the education and training end of the pipeline, the
result will be more women emptying into the career field and
progressing up the career ladder. The model does not take into
account the possibility that both the pipeline and the "pond"
into which it empties may not be neutral. In industry it is
difficult to disprove the pipeline theory because a typical
career path from entry to senior executive may take 20 years,
and there have not yet been sufficient numbers of women at the
various levels to test the model.
Corporate Initiatives to Recruit and Retain
Women Scientists and Engineers
Some incentives to ensure the professional progress of women
scientists and engineers in industry include establishing
fellowship programs at colleges, clarifying the criteria to be
met by a person seeking a promotion, and creating women's
committees or networks in addition to mentoring. These networks
are useful for women to learn from each other, and do not have
to exclude male members. Structured family leave programs are
useful for retaining both men and women who desire families.
There is a need for more accurate data on the status of women
in science and engineering employed in industry on both an
individual-company and industry-wide basis; this is critical to
policy formulation.
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Attributes and Strategies for Successful Employment in
Industry
Five attributes appear to be common to women who have earned
S&E degrees and successfully pursued industrial
employment.
-
S&E
Expertise and Competence
A strong technical or scientific background and thorough
hands-on experience early in one's career are equally
important for women and men in advancing their industrial
careers. Lateral moves are important because they challenge
employees to take risks by moving into new areas of the
business and learning new skills. More needs to be done to
make lateral development assignments available to women at
all stages of their careers and to communicate to women the
importance of accepting these sometimes risky
assignments.
Technical competence is also the foundation for good
management, and it includes not only a woman's own
technical competence but also being respectful of the
competence of others. A women in a technical field needs to
continue learning all her life, both how to excel in her
specialty and how to be a manager if she goes into
management. But even if a corporation encourages a woman to
become a manager, she should do it only if she is willing
to spend her time and derive her satisfaction from
management. It is important that a woman keep her
expectations and abilities aligned and inform her
supervisors, at any given stage, what she thinks she is
capable of doing and would like to do next, in the context
of serving the company.
-
Ability to
Establish Goals and to Take Risks
Many conference participants felt that successful women
scientists and engineers in industry have the personal
inner strength that is necessary to combat the pressures
they may encounter in their careers. In general, from a
young age, women in the United States are trained to follow
the rules. Women who overcome the many cultural barriers to
pursuing a technical career in industry often display a
strength of character and willingness to take risks,
despite outside pressure.
Risk taking may continue throughout a career in
industry. One who chooses employment in industry must be
both flexible and willing to change career direction.
Setting goals, both realistic and ambitious, takes
practice. Learning how to set goals that are important to
one's company may require discussing possible goals with
peers and supervisors.
-
Strong
Communication Skills
Communication skills are important in all work settings,
but especially in industry where there is a strong team
ethic. Both research scientists and managers must be able
to express themselves clearly and succinctly to supervisors
as well as subordinates. Developing strong communication
skills is essential for obtaining recognition and respect
for one's work. Too often, women assume that somehow upper
management should know what they want. Communication with
one's subordinates also is important, and managers can
never give enough positive feedback.
A communication skill that is important to master from
the beginning, and even more so as a woman advances up the
management ladder, is dealing with difficult people. Some
may be sexist, some are territorially protective, some
believe that promotions are based on how many people they
supervise. Often these people are in powerful positions,
but one can hope to control them with strong management and
communication skills.
-
Self-confidence
Women are sometimes less confident in their
technological performance and their abilities than are men
at comparable levels. In addition, women scientists and
engineers are more likely to take direction rather than to
set direction. Successful scientists and managers grow in
self-confidence as they learn how to tackle increasingly
difficult problems and as others recognize and reward their
skills. An accumulation of successful outcomes makes
self-confidence grow. Self-confidence enables the
successful scientist or engineer to take risks, to be a
leader, to defend her subordinates, and take the flak if
necessary.
-
Openness
to Change
Another factor in one's success as a scientist or an
engineer is a willingness to change or relocate if
necessary. Women need to be open to change and not hold on
to the idea that they will always be doing the kind of work
they did early in their careers. Relocating a spouse and
children may exact both a high emotional and monetary
price. Traditionally, men have accepted their own
relocation and its cost to families as the price of
advancement. For women the problem is often more difficult,
largely because custom does not expect husbands to follow
wives.
References
- Women Scientists and Engineers Employed in Industry - Why
so Few? A Report based on a Conference by the Committee on
Women in Science and Engineering. Washington D.C.: National
Academy Press. 1994.
- Catalyst, "Findings from a Study of Women in
Engineering," CATALYST, Perspective, May 1992.
- Anne Preston, "A Study of Occupational Departure of
Employees in the Natural Sciences and Engineering,"
presentation at the CWSE conference, Irvine, CA, January 17,
1993.
abstract by Deborah J. Wan
"The Committee on Women in Science and Engineering (CWSE) of the National Research Council"
National Academy Press
(1994):