"... you and I can't be equal." A letter from mech. eng. senior to female classmates.

[NewJeffCT]

20. I don't blame you for being a skeptic

I started off as an engineering major back in the Dark Ages, and women in the field were more rare back then. I think my specific engineering major started off with around 85 men and 12 women in the group as first year students. The sophomore group that had been through a year had seen every woman but three drop out. I think they had started off with a similar number of women.

While it was a tough major that had attrition every year (like me after 1 year), it obviously wasn't a 75% rate for guys like it was for women. I'm sure some of the women left because they were made to feel unwelcome by a group of the guys and maybe some of the professors. (Note - most of the guys were probably thrilled they had women in their engineering and engineering related classes, but there was likely a group of men that turned them off to engineering, or at least that major)

It's definitely gotten better since the 1980s, but there is still a long ways to go in fields that have been traditionally male dominated.