Women in engineering speak on struggles in male-dominated majors

Maddie Gehring
Thu, 05 Mar 2020 03:04:49 +0000
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Women make up about 23 percent of the total enrollment in the College of Engineering at Ohio State. Credit: Amal Saeed | Photo Editor

Women make up about 23 percent of the total enrollment in engineering at Ohio State, according to the College of Engineering’s 2019 report.

Some students said that despite the challenges, being a woman in a male-dominated major motivates them to work harder and form a stronger bond with their female peers.

Allison Towner, a second-year in chemical engineering, said low representation can challenge women in engineering to work harder. When the number of men gets higher in her groups, Towner said she feels like her ideas are taken less seriously.

“You have to really assert yourself and speak out in order to get your ideas across,” she said.

Chemical engineering has one of the largest female enrollments out of other engineering majors with 27.7 percent, according to the report.

Towner said the lack of women in her major motivates her.

“It might be more expected for girls to switch majors, so it feels like I have something to prove,” Towner said.

Allison Whitney, a fourth-year in material science and engineering and president of the Society of Women in Engineering, said she had low confidence when she first started out in engineering.

“I know my first year I started under an imposter syndrome,” Whitney said. “My freshman year I had this fear of like, ‘Oh, they’re going to find out that I don’t belong here.’”

Whitney said being a part of an all-women group helped her find a sense of belonging by meeting upperclassmen who were also women in engineering.

In February, Ohio State responded to a complaint filed against the university by Mark Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, citing “illegal sex discrimination” in nine university scholarships and programs for women. These programs ranged from an engineering camp for girls to a scholarship for women who have had their education interrupted due to unforeseen obstacles such as family obligations or financial difficulties, according to previous Lantern reporting.

“It fits in with kind of the current social justice narrative that women are victims and so they need extra help and attention and resources as if they’re somehow inferior to men when I don’t think that’s the case,” Perry said of the programs.

Whitney said Perry’s complaint against Ohio State is an attack on all minorities within engineering, including women.

“Someone trying to take away the only people that can’t support us emotionally — at least they can support us financially, and he’s trying to take away any of that financial support that women in STEM are trying to get,” Whitney said.

Emma Brunst, a second-year in welding engineering, can also attest to these challenges.

Brunst graduated from an all-girls high school and is now in a major in which only 12.4 percent are women, according to the report. Brunst said that in her welding engineering graduating class of 2022, there are six women out of 53 people.

“Coming from an all-girls high school to mostly a male-dominated field has been a pretty big change for me,” Brunst said.

Towner said the cultural expectations of men and women come into play in the classroom as well, such as the thought that women aren’t expected to feel confident in newly learned concepts.

Brunst said being a minority in welding engineering doesn’t intimidate her, but it forced her to change the way she thinks in order to excel during class because she believes women and men think differently. Brunst said she the lack of women can be an advantage in the workforce.

“Since we are a minority, there is kind of more of a demand for female engineers,” she said.

Towner and Brunst said they are proud to represent women in a male-dominated major, and Towner said the few women in the engineering majors have developed relationships.

“There’s a special bond,” Towner said. “I feel like the girls all just really try to stick together and that’s been a really cool experience.”