Conference turris::womannotes-v2

883.0. "Women in Engineering: NY Times Article" by RUSTIE::NALE () Tue Dec 05 1989 10:55

                  DIFFICULTIES FOR WOMEN ENGINEERS
                       Elizabeth M. Fowler
 		 The New York Times, April 18, 1989

"Things haven't changed much for women in engineering in recent year's"
according to Helen Hollein, a chemical engineering professor at Manhattan
College.  She made the comment as a panelist last week at a discussion
about women engineers at the Electro-89 convention in the Javits Convention
Center.

"It is still difficult for them," she said, offering this advice for women 
engineers who have children: "Don't take seven years off the job as I did.  
It is bad for the career path."  Dr. Hollein said the swift technological 
changes in the engineering field made it very difficult to re-enter the 
market.

Dr. Hollein, who is the wife of an engineer and has three children, gave 
up her career for seven years to live abroad with her husband, an engineer 
for the Exxon Corporation.  Later, Dr. Hollein, who graduated from the 
University of South Carolina, said she found it difficult to get back into 
the profession because of the changes in the industry.  So she chose to get 
a doctorate in chemical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of 
Technology in Newark.

Anna Longobardo, who has a bachelor of science and a master's degree in 
mechanical engineering from Columbia University and has been a practicing 
engineer for about 35 years, solved the problem of raising two children by 
taking short maternity leaves and hiring household help.

Mrs. Longobardo stressed the need for women engineers with children to 
employ household help.  Women engineers receive good starting salaries - 
about equal to men's - although later progress for women tends to be slow, 
she said.

In her case, her husband, who now works for the International Business 
Machines Corporation, was able to offer plenty of support.  Today Mrs. 
Longobardo is the director of field engineering for the Unisys Corporation. 
She directs a staff of 700, most whom are male engineers.

"There is a glass ceiling for women in engineering management because so 
few women have been in the pipeline like me for promotion," she said.  "I 
would hope this situation would change in the next decade."

"When our generation of children, raised in a more flexible way, is 
established in the work force, we will notice a change," she said, adding 
that questions raised at the meeting by young women engineers were "pretty 
much the same 30 years ago" as for as the impact of marriage and children 
on a career.

She listed some erroneous beliefs about women as engineers, namely that 
they lacked goals, gave up too easily and were not comfortable in their 
roles as engineers.  "We women need to develop our self-esteem," she said.

The group of panelist was led by Eleanor Baum, dean of the school of 
engineering at Cooper Union, in New York, who said she was the country's 
only female dean of an engineering school.  Eileen M. Burkhardt, an 
engineer at Grumman Aircraft Systems, was also on the panel.

Women engineers have good formal educations but need a master's degree, Dr. 
Baum said.  The panelists agreed that women enginees should take company 
training courses and volunteer for special projects, In addition, Dr. Baum 
said, women engineers should join committees, do more public speaking and 
attend more professional meetings, as well as take occasional courses to 
keep up to date.  Reading professional journals, perhaps working part time 
when children are young and visiting colleges and schools to encourage more 
young women to enter engineering were other suggestions made by the 
panalists.

The country needs more women engineers, Dr. Baum stressed, suggesting that 
without more "we are missing the creative force of a large part of the 
population."  So far only 6 percent of working engineers are women.

Furthermore, she pointed out, only 16.5 percent of undergraduates currently 
majoring in engineering are women, a percentage that has not changed much 
in five years.  Women represent more than 40 percent of enrollment in law 
schools and 35 percent in medical schools, according to the latest figures 
available form trade groups.

In a telephone interview, Susan Metz, the director of Women's Programs at 
the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., a leading engineering 
school, was somewhat more optimistic than the panelists.

"Women need more role models." she said, explaining that this situation 
could be helped when more women have doctorates or master's degrees in 
engineering so that they can teach at colleges or high schools.  "We have 
only two women professors at Stevens," she said, adding that other 
engineering schools also have few women professors.

"I think a bigger problem we have now is keeping women undergraduates in 
the engineering curriculum," she said.  "Some programs have management 
options and women often take them.

There is psychology involved, she said.  "Engineering is the most difficult 
undergraduate curriculum," she added.  She said a study of women in 
engineering concluded that women often would try another major if they did 
not get A's and B's.