Does Adding “Helping Disciplines” to Engineering Schools Contribute to Gender Parity?

Agnes Germaine d'Entremont; Kerry Greer; Katherine A. Lyon

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: Women in Engineering Division Technical Session 6
Tagged Division: Women in Engineering
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 14
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--34474
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/34474
Download Count: 557

Paper Authors

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Agnes Germaine d'Entremont P.Eng. University of British Columbia, Vancouver orcid.org/0000-0002-9736-119X

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Dr. Agnes d’Entremont, P.Eng., is a Senior Instructor and the Mech 2 Coordinator in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UBC. Her teaching-related interests include student mental wellbeing, open educational materials, and educating non-engineers about engineering, as well as diversity and climate issues in engineering education. Her technical research in Orthopaedic Biomechanics is in the area of human joint motion and cartilage health, with a particular focus on imaging and pediatric hip disorders.

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Kerry Greer University of British Columbia

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Kerry Greer is a Senior Instructor in the Department of Sociology, at the University of British Columbia. She is part of a research group that studies the experience of women student in engineering, focusing on how students perceptions of engineering affect their recruitment and persistence in the field.

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Katherine A. Lyon University of British Columbia, Vancouver

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Katherine Lyon is an Instructor in Sociology at the University of British Columbia with an interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning, sociology of education, and gender. Katherine's recent work has been published in Teaching Sociology, the Family Science Review special issue on “Innovative Strategies for Teaching Family Theories,” and the Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology.

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Abstract

There is persistent gender disparity in engineering, with women making up only about 26% of engineering undergraduate students in the United States. However, there are dramatic differences by discipline in the participation of women, with some traditional engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical) having relatively low numbers (single digits at some institutions), while other, often newer, programs like biomedical (BME) and environmental (ENV) reach near parity in some schools. BME and ENV are often seen as “helping” disciplines, which suggests why they may be more appealing to women students. Anecdotal evidence from one institution suggests adding a helping discipline may be associated with a decline the proportion of women in a related traditional discipline (that is, the new disciplines may attract women already in the engineering pipeline, rather than attracting women to engineering who would not otherwise be enrolled). Our research question is: what is the impact of adding women-associated disciplines on the percentage of women students at an engineering school as a whole and within traditional disciplines at that school?

We collected data on enrollment by discipline and gender for US engineering schools from the ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) College Profiles from 2005-2017. We determined the addition of a program at a school by enrollment data appearing for that program. We excluded schools that did not add BME or ENV (the highest female enrollment disciplines nationally) between 2006 and 2014 (to allow for pre/post comparison). We also excluded schools with fewer than 500 students, and those without at least one of four traditional disciplines we examined (mechanical, electrical, civil, and chemical). To determine the impact of adding disciplines, we examined the percentage of women in the school as a whole and in each traditional discipline in the year before and three years after the new discipline was added.

32 schools introduced BME and 16 introduced ENV during the time period examined. Results show that the introduction of both BME (p < 0.001) and ENV (p < 0.001) are associated with statistically significant increases in the percentage of women students in the engineering school overall. Also, adding BME (p = 0.037) and ENV (p = 0.009) were associated with an increase in the absolute percentage of women in mechanical engineering at those schools, but no statistically significant change in the other traditional disciplines examined. When considered relative to background increases in women, adding BME resulted in a decrease in percent women in electrical engineering (p = 0.024).

The results support the theory that "helping disciplines" may poach women from traditional disciplines, but both may draw women into engineering schools.

Citation
Format

d'Entremont, A. G., & Greer, K., & Lyon, K. A. (2020, June), Does Adding “Helping Disciplines” to Engineering Schools Contribute to Gender Parity? Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34474

TY - CPAPER
AB - There is persistent gender disparity in engineering, with women making up only about 26% of engineering undergraduate students in the United States. However, there are dramatic differences by discipline in the participation of women, with some traditional engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical) having relatively low numbers (single digits at some institutions), while other, often newer, programs like biomedical (BME) and environmental (ENV) reach near parity in some schools. BME and ENV are often seen as “helping” disciplines, which suggests why they may be more appealing to women students. Anecdotal evidence from one institution suggests adding a helping discipline may be associated with a decline the proportion of women in a related traditional discipline (that is, the new disciplines may attract women already in the engineering pipeline, rather than attracting women to engineering who would not otherwise be enrolled). Our research question is: what is the impact of adding women-associated disciplines on the percentage of women students at an engineering school as a whole and within traditional disciplines at that school?

We collected data on enrollment by discipline and gender for US engineering schools from the ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) College Profiles from 2005-2017. We determined the addition of a program at a school by enrollment data appearing for that program. We excluded schools that did not add BME or ENV (the highest female enrollment disciplines nationally) between 2006 and 2014 (to allow for pre/post comparison). We also excluded schools with fewer than 500 students, and those without at least one of four traditional disciplines we examined (mechanical, electrical, civil, and chemical). To determine the impact of adding disciplines, we examined the percentage of women in the school as a whole and in each traditional discipline in the year before and three years after the new discipline was added.

32 schools introduced BME and 16 introduced ENV during the time period examined. Results show that the introduction of both BME (p &amp;lt; 0.001) and ENV (p &amp;lt; 0.001) are associated with statistically significant increases in the percentage of women students in the engineering school overall. Also, adding BME (p = 0.037) and ENV (p = 0.009) were associated with an increase in the absolute percentage of women in mechanical engineering at those schools, but no statistically significant change in the other traditional disciplines examined. When considered relative to background increases in women, adding BME resulted in a decrease in percent women in electrical engineering (p = 0.024).

The results support the theory that &quot;helping disciplines&quot; may poach women from traditional disciplines, but both may draw women into engineering schools.
AU - Agnes Germaine d'Entremont P.Eng.
AU - Kerry Greer
AU - Katherine A. Lyon
CY - Virtual On line
DA - 2020/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Does Adding “Helping Disciplines” to Engineering Schools Contribute to Gender Parity?
UR - https://peer.asee.org/34474
DO - 10.18260/1-2--34474
ER -