STATISTICS ABOUT WOMEN IN ENGINEERING
IN THE USA
Compiled by the Society of Women Engineers from NSF and Census Data

Undergraduate Enrollment in Engineering by Sex	Graph	Table
Earned Bachelor's Degrees in Engineering by Sex	Graph	Table
Graduate Enrollment in Engineering by Sex	Graph	Table
Earned Master's Degrees in Engineering by Sex	Graph	Table
Earned Doctoral Degrees in Engineering by Sex	Graph	Table
Number of Employed Engineers by Sex	Graph	Table
Disciplines of Employed Engineers by Sex	Graph	Table
Median Annual Engineering Salaries by Sex and Years Since Degree	Graph	Table

The information on these pages come from these sources:

1. National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators - 1998.
2. National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators - 2000.
3. Statistical Abstract of the United States-1995,1996,1997,1998,1999,2000

Other good sources of information are:

1. National Science Foundation, Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering:1998.
2. National Science Foundation, Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering:2000.

The data contained in these documents is free to the public. These publications are available on the world wide web as .pdf files at:

1. http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/stats.htm .
2. http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html .

Please be aware that the NSF summary data include a broad definition of Science that includes the Social Sciences, such as Political Science and Psychology.

In the SESTAT Data Base ( NSF's Scientist and Engineer Statistics Data System) located on the world wide web at http://srsstats.sbe.nsf.gov/ there is data collected in 1997. The site allows you to query the data. To learn more about the SESTAT Data Base please read: SESTAT: A Tool for Studying Scientists and Engineers in the United States, on the world wide web at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf99337/start.htm.

There are many published research articles about the engineering education of women. A good source for this research is ERIC, the world's largest source of education information. The ERIC website is located at: http://ericir.syr.edu/Eric/index.shtml. It has over 1,000 abstracts of documents and journal articles referencing women and engineering education research and practice from 1966 through 2001.

The Society of Women Engineers has also published research on women and engineering. The publication is A NATIONAL SURVEY OF WOMEN AND MEN ENGINEERS; A Study of the Members of 22 Engineering Societies; Copyright 1993. The summary is available at the following link: http://www.swe.org/Publications/NationalSurvey.doc

The American Association of Engineering Societies: Engineering Workforce Commission conducts several engineering surveys and has several publications. Publications can be purchased via their website:http://www.aaes.org/.

Why is this data so old? Collecting , summarizing, and publishing data takes a lot of time and money. The data published by the National Science Foundation in 2000 was based on surveys conducted in 1997 and 1998. An issue brief from Melissa Pollak at the NSF Division of Science Resources Studies discusses the complexity of counting the number of people working in engineering. A .pdf file of this brief titled Counting the S & E Workforce -- It's Not That Easy can be downloaded with this link.(You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the file.)