Michael Taraboulous Ms.

Leslie Wolcott English 1102 1 November 2013 Literature Review The demand for engineers keeps growing and is one of the highest paid careers right out of college. With the equal rights movement and the increase of women entering into the workforce you would think that the percent of women entering the field of engineering would increase, but it hasnt. In order to keep up with the demand for engineers, colleges, companies, and researchers have attempted to find a solution to the problem. Many studies have been conducted to determine just what the problem is as to why the ratio of men to women in the field is approximately 4:1. Most of the studies came up with the same conclusion that even though women seem to possess the math skills and testing requirements to pursue and engineering career, that it seems in college thy take another avenue of study. Schools, companies, and agencies, have come up with different plans to encourage females to consider pursuing a career engineering. Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day was created to encourage females that are interested in the field to be introduced to the different fields. Another Program called Girls Excited about Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer (GE2MCS) was created to encourage and support girls in high school and college in the field (Lawrence, Deborah). In Australia, they created a project called Attracting Girls to SET and created a website at http://www.stem.utas.edu.au (Little, Alison). The Society of Woman Engineers was founded in 1950 to encourage woman to pursue the field (Bi, Amy Sue).In all of these programs they had very little statics to show whether they the programs actually helped to increase the % of females going into the field.

In all of these programs designed to encourage females to enter the engineering field, none of the programs supplied sufficient statistical data to prove their effectiveness. Most of the statistic that was taken was in a small specific group. Most of the time the group was those females that had some interest in engineering. I think the gap in the research in all these articles is the lack of participants in the survey to get a clear picture of whether projects and programs are effective in encouraging females to pursue an engineering career. I think that when standardized testing is given each year that females that score high in math should be sent information on programs in engineering. That way whether a female has ever thought about it or not, they will be exposed to the possibility of entering the profession. Each year of testing in high school, they would complete survey questioning them about whether they participated or joined any organizations encouraging them to pursue engineering and then ask several questions whether and what they plan to pursue as a career. This way a good statistical history can be followed to see if programs encouraging females to pursue engineering careers have helped.

Gap/Project: All studies I have seen were on a fairly small scale and In all the articles there was not enough statistical info to know that it is helping. The only way is to use standardized testing nation/ worldwide and send out literature about engineering to women who test high in math and send them literature about it.