I want to comment on this statistic brought forward by Stephanie Slocum.
• 100% of female engineering principals in AEC have considered leaving the industry, as compared to 49% of men.
I read the article by Zweig group. That article has an example that the author made a big deal about, but I think as a male, she may be taking the compliment out of context. The comment I think may be out of context, and probably not taken the way it was given was "My wife would like your shoes." This is comment on liking her style, not that "I like your women style". When a man compliments another man on, "I like your boots" it is never given or taken as "I like your man boots," and should be taken as a compliment. When a man says "my wife would like your shoes," it is a complement on your style, and should not "throw you off your game as you try to figure out how to respond." Thank you is always an appropriate response.
I think the reason why more female engineering principals in AEC companies have considered leaving comes from 3 pressures, only 2 of which are related to AEC.
1. Women are smarter than men when it comes to work-life balance. When AEC companies start being more flexible in their thinking regarding that, we will have fewer women stating they thought about leaving. This comes back to the number of hours engineering-leaders expect our employees to work, and the number of hours we expect our employees to bill. This also comes back to face-hours engineering-leaders expect from employees. I have interviewed people transferring companies, and many have said that they were leaving because the company was asking them to work 20 hours of under-the-table, overtime every week, and not charge it. They felt this was unethical, and unmanageable if you wanted a work-life balance. The people I interviewed were both men and women. To most of the men, this was a job change. To the women, this was an opportunity to determine if AEC was really what they wanted long-term."
2. AEC companies in general are not very flexible employers. When I started working in the industry, the standard was "We work 6am to 8pm five to six days a week, and we are not allowed to work from home, or from alternative locations without a lot of paper work which I am not going to process." In the almost 30 years since I started work, this has changed a little bit, but not a whole bunch. As engineering companies, we need to start looking at work sharing (two people sharing jobs), having less than full time employees, and allowing unusual working environments (work at home, work at 3 in the morning, etc.), or we are going to remain uncompetitive as a long-term employment option. These alternatives need to include healthcare, disability and retirement benefits.
3. I think that women are more honest when they answer the question, about "have they ever thought about leaving," than men. Women are more likely to look at a question like that, and remember the time that they were on the way home at midnight and wondered what life would be like without this job. The men I know would not remember this as a time that they "thought about leaving the industry." To us, it is blowing off steam. I think that if the question was changed to "have you ever seriously looked at a job outside the industry," you would get about the same percentage from men, and a very different percentage from women.
Back to the article from Zweig, I can see the author's point on the other two examples she gives. As men, in a men dominated business, (but not for long based on the percentage of women graduating compared to men) we are foolish when we assume that the only reason a women is present is for some menial task, or as someone's assistant. It is never good to go into a meeting with any assumptions about the people, and shows how small we are if we do so.
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Dwayne Culp, Ph.D., Ph.D.,P.E.,M.ASCE
Culp Engineering, LLC
Rosenberg TX
(713)898-1977
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-23-2019 09:47
From: Heidi Wallace
Subject: Startling statistics about female leaders in engineering
Stephanie,
Thank you for starting this thread. As a female engineering early in my career (a little under a year out from PE licensure), I'm interested to see what feedback others have. Those statistics are not what I would have guessed. It makes me thankful that I have started my career out at a firm in which we have females in our ownership. If fact, our owner with the most shares is one of the women that joined the firm in its earliest years.
For any women beyond my experience level, are there specific things that led you to consider leaving the industry? If you didn't leave, why did you decide to stay? Perhaps the reasons will help shed a little light on where we, as an industry, are falling short so far on mitigating this situation.
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Heidi Wallace EI,A.M.ASCE
Engineer Intern
Tulsa OK
(918)720-8664
Original Message:
Sent: 07-22-2019 07:34
From: Stephanie Slocum
Subject: Startling statistics about female leaders in engineering
I came across this article by Zweig group that cites the following statistics based on their survey of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction professionals:
- 100% of female engineering principals in AEC have considered leaving the industry, as compared to 49% of men.
- 0% of female engineering principals in AEC were given any portion of their ownership for free. In contrast, 1 in 3 men (33%) reported that they had been given some portion of ownership for free.
There's been a number of women in engineering threads on this forum, but none that specifically discuss the lack of female engineers in leadership. Yes, things are improving, and some companies are ahead of the curve. But, the above are recent statistics, which makes them especially concerning.
What do you think about these statistics? Can you give any examples of corporate policies others might be able to model that successfully mitigate what many refer to as the "leaky pipeline" for women (and minorities also) in engineering?
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Stephanie Slocum P.E.,M.ASCE
Founder
Engineers Rising LLC
www.engineersrising.com
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