Occupational sex segregation is estimated to account for a substantial portion of the sex gap in pay for full-time, year-round workers (England 1992). Although women's representation in many formerly male-dominated occupations has increased since 1972, women are still underrepresented in engineering. In 1993 women were awarded 14 percent of all engineering bachelors degrees and accounted for 8 percent of the U.S. engineering labor force. This study uses data from the 1980 senior sample of the High School and Beyond national longitudinal survey to model sex differences in the choice of engineering in college. Multinomial logit models of major choice are constructed as a function of individual-level attributes associated with high school preparation and gender role attitudes. Decomposition analysis indicates that average sex differences in these two areas explain between 8.8 and 33.4 percent of the sex gap. Policy implications are discussed.Despite substantial changes in women's labor force participation over the past twenty years, women remain disadvantaged relative to men. Women tend to be concentrated in relatively few occupations, are more likely to be in lower-paying specialties within occupations, and are still paid less than men (Reskin and Hartman 1986; Reskin and Roos 1990;England 1992). These factors are intimately related: occupational sex segregation as an explanation for the sex gap in pay is estimated to account for approximately 10-37 percent of the sex gap in pay for full-time, year-round workers (see England 1992 for a review of this literature). Hence, understanding the processes by which occupational sex segregation occurs is important in understanding the ways males' position of relative economic privilege is maintained.Women continue to be under represented in engineering. Although women account for 41.5 percent of executives, administrators and managers, 21.4 percent of all lawyers and 20.4 percent of all physicians in the United States, only 8.5 percent of all engineers in the U.S. are women and in 1990 women earned only 13.8 percent of all engineering bachelor's degrees in the United States a 4-5year postsecondary educational experience to attain a bachelors degree in one of many engineering disciplines. Time spent in postsecondary education is shorter than that for other professions such as law and medicine. Starting salaries for engineering graduates were higher than those for any other bachelor's degree field of study for both men and women throughout the 1970s and early 1980s (Babco 1988). Furthermore, among female graduates with bachelor's degrees, only women with engineering degrees were offered starting salaries consistent with those of their male counterparts. In every other field of study, including the sciences and business, female graduates' starting offers as reported by the College Placement Council (1981; 1987) were consistently lower than the offers made to their male peers with the same degrees during the 1980s. Furthermore, there is a good mapping between the study of engin...

This article examines how U.S. engineers constructed their profession within the context of changing structural conditions and hegemonic masculinity between 1893 and 1920. The professionalization of engineering and the linkages between engineering practitioners and colleges were forged during this period. At the same time, conditions for the construction of a powerful masculine self-identity in the workplace were also changing. Engineers'reflective and informative writings about their field in the professional publication Engineering News, the Proceedings of the annual conferences of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, and two career guidance books (all from the 1893-1920 period) document how engineers constructed their profession as a masculine one.

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This article discusses the results of a survey conducted to understand reasons why people give up engineering. The survey looked at engineers’ experiences in the workforce after they have graduated from college, including whether they have remained in engineering or not. The survey data show that there is not much difference in women’s and men’s retention in engineering when looking at new graduates. The results from the survey show that more than one in five of all engineers said that they are very satisfied with their job. The data show a complicated picture of job satisfaction that depends on gender, discipline, and whether they are still doing engineering work. The most satisfied men are chemical or electrical and computer engineers who are now in non-engineering jobs. The issue of equity in engineering is an important one for the Society of Women Engineers as an organization and for engineering as a discipline. There are larger differences in attrition across engineering disciplines. In addition, the data show that those who leave the job are not necessarily less satisfied with their jobs than those who stay.

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