Education is the key to success for women

The participation of women in engineering, in spite of some increases in the last two decades, continues to be anemic. Between 1983 and 2000 the percentage of female engineers in the U.S. workforce rose from 5.8% to just 10.9%. The percentage of women receiving bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering has hovered at around 20% for several years. No matter how we look at these numbers and at related statistics, the conclusion is that we are not moving toward parity; by and large, we are not moving at all. The efforts to understand why young women do not choose engineering as a career path and the various programs designed to reverse the course are numerous. Between 1993 and 2003, the U.S. National Science Foundation awarded 211 grants under the Diversity in Science and Education Program. Most of the grants addressed the disinclination of young women to choose engineering.