Abstract
Engineering remains the least gender diverse of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Chemical engineering (ChE) and electrical engineering (EE) are exemplars of relatively high and low gender diversity, respectively. Here, we investigate departmental, institutional, and regional factors associated with gender diversity among BS graduates within the US, 2010-2016. For both fields, gender diversity was significantly higher at private institutions (p < 1x10-6) and at historically black institutions (p < 1x10-5). No significant association was observed with gender diversity among tenure-track faculty, PhD-granting status, and variations in departmental name beyond the standard "chemical engineering" or "electrical engineering". Gender diversity among EE graduates was significantly decreased (p = 8x10-5) when a distinct degree in computer engineering was available; no such association was observed between ChE gender diversity and the presence of biology-associated degrees. States with a highly gender diverse ChE workforce had a significantly higher degree of gender diversity among BS graduates (p = 3x10-5), but a significant association was not observed for EE. State variation in funding of support services for K-12 pupils significantly impacted gender diversity of graduates in both fields (p < 1x10-3), particularly in regards to instructional staff support (p < 5x10-4). Nationwide, gender diversity could not be concluded to be either significantly increasing or significantly decreasing for either field.
Highlights
The collective intelligence of a group has been found to correlate not with the average of maximum intelligence of individual group members, but with the group’s proportion of females [1, 2]
We have assessed variation in gender diversity among recent BS graduates in Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, two subfields that span the range of gender diversity in Engineering, the least gender-diverse STEM field
The most surprising and actionable finding of this work is that state support of K-12 education at the level of instructional staff support, which includes curriculum development, instructional staff training, is significantly associated with increased gender diversity in both Chemical engineering (ChE) and EE (Fig 5)
Summary
The collective intelligence of a group has been found to correlate not with the average of maximum intelligence of individual group members, but with the group’s proportion of females [1, 2]. The proportion of females within a group has been reported to increase the frequency of cooperative interactions [3]. Women accounted for less than 30% of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) American labor force in 2015 [4]. In 2018, a female chemical engineer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and two female engineers were elected to the US House of Representatives.
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