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Women in engineering in the United States - Explanations for low participation rates (POTENTIAL EDITS)
Recently, greater emphasis has been given to women’s socialization throughout their childhood and adolescence years. Socialized early in their childhoods, girls are said to be raised in societies where science, engineering, and mathematical fields are largely promoted as being “male professions”. The media has also been criticized for giving little representation of females within the industry. Instead, some scholars feel that the media is guilty of perpetuating gender stereotypes by representing women in traditional “female occupations” such as nurses, school teachers, and housewives. Men help feed into this because they feel as if women aren't cut out for traditional engineering roles but rather one's where they don't have as much responsibility associated directly with the job itself. This idea is supported by a study where STEM field applicants were given a first and second choice on their majors. The results showed that women were more likely to pick male dominated fields in their second choice rather than in their first. This study found that orientations toward certain fields of study were less segregated than actual behaviors, suggesting that cultural perception toward certain fields curbs the aspirations of women that are the most competent. One of the many reasons behind this is that it stems from the treatment that women face from their male peers during collaboration. Women have reported that the males in their groups assign the women routine managerial and secretarial work to complete, leaving the women to be excluded from the hands on engineering work. The overall idea that women are underrepresented in the field has paved a way for these barrier to be raised against women becoming successful members within the field themselves.

Christina Hoff Sommers has suggested that subjects such as engineering may be less popular among women because they do not accommodate some of their typical interests with the interaction between living beings being one example. This is not necessarily to suggest, with Lawrence Summers, that women are incapable or less fundamentally capable than men at engineering, but rather that they tend to be less interested in the subject in general. The principle strength of this argument is that it explains the phenomenon without drawing tenuous links with difficult-to-measure influences such as 'culture' and 'role-models', but it is also to some degree reinforced by academic consensus, which was identified in the 'Social and Political views of American Professors' paper as 75% in favor of the claim that differing interests between men and women caused the disparity, rather than discrimination.

The presence of role models, and especially female role models, has also been emphasized as a means of increasing women’s numbers in engineering. Women with one or two engineering parents are said to be moderately more likely to major in such a field themselves. Women also choose to look up to women who are already in the field as role models and mentors for their future career aspirations because they begin to think that they too can accomplish what they had once done themselves. Additionally, encouragement from teachers, counselors, and administrators. are all said to have a positive impact on a women's chances at moving into engineering. Better high school preparation in mathematics, biology, and chemistry were also said to better a women's success in an engineering career. However, according to some scholars, the above factors do not occur in a great enough number to compensate for women's current disadvantages. Thus, generally speaking, it is said that hopeful women engineers will remain largely discriminated against and have inadequate resources at improving their outlook unless substantial social changes are made to society.