Not all women leave: Reflections on a cohort of 'stayers' in civil engineering

Abstract

Several reports of the disappointing numbers of women who leave the engineering profession within 10 or so years after graduation in a range of western economies have been released in recent years. This paper reports on a recent study of the careers of all female graduates from civil engineering at an Australian technical university which found that a much higher proportion of them had remained in the profession than would be expected from these reports. It found that despite the cohort reporting higher rates of parental and other care responsibilities than typically found in engineering women, the group were more satisfied with their workplaces and jobs as a whole than the respondents of a comparative national survey of women engineers in Australia in 2007. The reasons for this satisfaction and retention are explored with the hope that these may provide inspiration for other women engineers and their employers. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.