The history of women in engineering predates
the development of the profession of engineering.
Before engineering was recognized as a formal
profession, women with engineering skills
often sought recognition as inventors, such
as Hypatia of Alexandria (350 or 370 – 415
AD), who is credited with the invention of
the hydrometer.
During the Islamic Golden Period from the
8th century until the 15th century there were
many Muslim women who were inventors and engineers,
such as the 10th-century astronomer Mariam
al-Asturlabi.In the 19th century, women who
performed engineering work often had academic
training in mathematics or science, although
many of them were still not eligible to graduate
with a degree in engineering, like Ada Lovelace
or Hertha Marks Ayrton.
Rita de Morais Sarmento was one of the first
women in Europe to be certified with an academic
degree in engineering in 1896.
In the U.S.A. at the University of California,
Berkeley, however, both Elizabeth Bragg (1876)
and Julia Morgan (1894) already had received
their bachelor's degree in that field.In the
early years of the 20th century, a few women
were admitted to engineering programs, but
they were generally looked upon as curiosities
by their male counterparts.
Alice Perry (1906) and Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu
(1912) were some of the first European to
graduate with a degree in engineering.
The entry of the United States into World
War II created a serious shortage of engineering
talent as men were drafted into the armed
forces.
The GE on-the-job engineering training for
women with degrees in mathematics and physics,
and the Curtiss-Wright Engineering Program
had "Curtiss-Wright Cadettes" ("Engineering
Cadettes", e.g., Rosella Fenton).
The company partnered with Cornell, Penn State,
Purdue, the University of Minnesota, the University
of Texas, RPI, and Iowa State University to
create an engineering curriculum that eventually
enrolled over 600 women.
The course lasted ten months and focused primarily
on aircraft design and production.Kathleen
McNulty (1921–2006), was selected to be
one of the original programmers of the ENIAC.
Georgia Tech began to admit women engineering
students in 1952.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) had graduated its first female student,
Ellen Swallow Richards (1842–1911), in 1873.
The École Polytechnique in Paris first began
to admit women students in 1972.
The number of BA/BS degrees in engineering
awarded to women in the U.S. increased by
45 percent between 1980 and 1994.
However, from 1984 to 1994, the number of
women graduating with a BA or BS degree in
computer science decreased by 23 percent.
== Terminology ==
Although the terms engineer and engineering
date from the Middle Ages, they acquired their
current meaning and usage only recently in
the nineteenth century.
Briefly, an engineer is one who uses the principles
of engineering – namely acquiring and applying
scientific, mathematical, economic, social,
and practical knowledge – in order to design
and build structures, machines, devices, systems,
materials and processes.
Some of the major branches of the engineering
profession include civil engineering, military
engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical
engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace
engineering, computer engineering, and biomedical
engineering.
== Inventors ==
Before engineering was recognized as a formal
profession, women with engineering skills
often sought recognition as inventors.
One of the earliest women inventors was Hypatia
of Alexandria (350?
370?–415), who is credited with the invention
of the hydrometer.
Tabitha Babbit (1784–1853?) was an American
toolmaker who invented the first circular
saw.
Sarah Guppy (1770–1852) was an Englishwoman
who patented a design for bridge foundations.
Mary Dixon Kies (1752–1837) was the first
American woman to receive a patent for her
method of weaving straw in 1809.
== 19th century: entry into technical professions
==
With the coming of the Industrial Revolution
in the 19th century, new technology-based
occupations opened up for both men and women.
Sarah Bagley (1806–?) is remembered not
only for her efforts to improved working conditions
for women mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts,
in the 1830s and 1840s, but also for being
one of the earliest women to work as a telegraph
operator.
Mathilde Fibiger (1830–1872), a Danish novelist
and advocate of women's rights, became a telegraph
operator for the Danish State Telegraph system
in the 1860s.
Engineering began to be taught as a formal
academic discipline in the late 18th and early
19th centuries.
The École Polytechnique in France was established
in 1794 to teach military and civil engineering;
West Point Military Academy in the United
States established a program modeled after
the École Polytechnique in 1819.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) began
to teach civil engineering in 1828.
However, none of these institutions admitted
women as students at the time of their founding.In
the 19th century, women who performed engineering
work often had academic training in mathematics
or science.
Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), Lord Byron's daughter,
was privately schooled in mathematics before
beginning the collaboration with Charles Babbage
on his analytical engine that would earn her
the designation of the "first computer programmer."
Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854–1923), a British
engineer and inventor who helped develop electric
arc lighting, studied mathematics at Cambridge
in 1880, but was denied a degree, as women
were only granted certificates of completion
at the time.
Therefore moving to the University of London,
which granted her a bachelor of Science degree
in 1881.
Similarly, Mary Engle Pennington (1872–1952),
an American chemist and refrigeration engineer,
completed the requirements for a BS degree
in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1892, but was given a certificate of proficiency
instead.
Elizabeth Bragg and Julia Morgan became the
first women to receive a bachelor's degree
in engineering, by the University of California,
Berkeley - U.S.A, in civil engineering (1876)
and mechanical engineering (1894).
In the same year of Morgan's accomplish, Bertha
Lamme was also graduated from Ohio State University
in mechanical engineering.
Rita de Morais Sarmento (1872–1931) was
the first woman to obtain an Engineering degree
in Europe.
She has enrolled at the Academia Politécnica
do Porto to study Civil Engineers of Public
Works, which she concluded with various distinctions
in 1894.
Two years later, she was granted with the
"Civil Engineering certificate of capability"
to practise as a professional engineer, despite
she would never do it, which means she was
the first formally and fully recognised European
female engineer.
Other women in engineering in the same time
period include three Danish women: Agnes Klingberg,
Betzy Meyer, and Julie Arenholt, who graduated
from 1897 to 1901, at the Polyteknisk Læreanstalt,
today known as the Danmarks Tekniske UniversitetWomen
without formal engineering degrees were also
integral to great 19th century civil engineering
feats.
Emily Warren Roebling is recognized as managing
the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and
was the first person to cross the bridge at
its opening ceremony in 1883.
Roebling's husband, Washington Roebling, worked
as the chief engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge
project until he fell ill of decompression
sickness.
Upon her husband's illness, Emily Warren Roebling
assumed her husband's duties at the project
site, and taught herself about material properties,
cable construction, calculating catenary curves
and others subjects.
== 20th century: entry into engineering programs
==
In the early years of the twentieth century,
a few women were admitted to engineering programs,
but they were generally looked upon as curiosities
by their male counterparts.
Nora Stanton Blatch Barney (1883–1971),
daughter of Harriot Stanton Blatch and granddaughter
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was the first woman
to receive a degree in civil engineering from
Cornell University in 1905.
In the same year, she was accepted as a junior
member of the American Society of Civil Engineers;
however, twelve years later, after having
worked as an engineer, architect, and engineering
inspector, her request for an upgrade to associate
membership was denied.
Olive Dennis (1885–1957), who became the
second woman to graduate from Cornell with
a civil engineering degree in 1920, was initially
hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as
a draftsman; however, she later became the
first person to claim the title of Service
Engineer when this title was created.
Cleone Benest passed the City and Guilds of
London Institute's motor-engineering examination,
the Royal Automobile Club's mechanical test
in 1908 and took the Portsmouth Municipal
College examination for heat engines in 1910.
Using the professional name of C. Griff, she
joined several engineering organizations and
established a consultancy business in Mayfair.Alice
Perry s one of the first formally recognised
female engineers in Europe, graduated with
a degree in engineering in 1908 from Queen's
College, Galway.
Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (1887–1973), due
to prejudices against women in the sciences,
was rejected by the School of Bridges and
Roads in Bucharest, Romania.
However, in 1909, she was accepted at the
Royal Academy of Technology in Berlin.
She graduated from the university in 1912,
with a degree in engineering, specialising
in chemistry, possibly becoming one of the
first women engineers in the world.Edith Clarke,
the inventor of the graphical calculator,
was the first woman to earn a degree in MIT's
electrical engineering department in 1918.
Clarke also became the first woman admitted
to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers,
the precursor to the IEEE.
She taught at the University of Texas Austin,
where she was the only woman faculty member
in the engineering department.
== World War II engineering programs for women
==
The entry of the United States into World
War II created a serious shortage of engineering
talent as men were drafted into the armed
forces at the same time that industry ramped
up production of armaments, battleships, and
airplanes.
The U.S. Office of Education initiated a series
of courses in science and engineering that
were open to women as well as men.
Private programs for women included GE on-the-job
engineering training for women with degrees
in mathematics and physics, and the Curtiss-Wright
Engineering Program had Curtiss-Wright Cadettes
(e.g., Rosella Fenton).
The company partnered with Cornell, Penn State,
Purdue, the University of Minnesota, the University
of Texas, RPI, and Iowa State University to
create an engineering curriculum that eventually
enrolled over 600 women.
The course lasted ten months and focused primarily
on aircraft design and production.Thelma Estrin
(1924–2014 ), who would later become a pioneer
in the fields of computer science and biomedical
engineering, took a 1942 three-month engineering
assistant course at Stevens Institute of Technology
and earned University of Wisconsin BSc, MSc,
and PhD degrees.Through an accelerated program
brought on by the war, Lois Graham (1925-2013)
graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
in 1946 and was the first woman in the United
States to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering
from Illinois Institute of Technology (M.S.
ME ’49, Ph.D. ’59).
== Postwar era ==
In 1943, the United States Army authorized
a secret project at the University of Pennsylvania's
Moore School of Electrical Engineering to
develop an electronic computer to compute
artillery firing tables for the Army's Ballistic
Research Laboratory.
The project, which came to be known as ENIAC,
or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer,
was completed in 1946.
Previous to the development of the ENIAC,
the U.S. Army had employed women trained in
mathematics to calculate artillery trajectories,
at first using mechanical desk calculators
and later the differential analyzer developed
by Vannevar Bush, at the Moore School.
In 1945, one of these "computers", Kathleen
McNulty (1921–2006), was selected to be
one of the original programmers of the ENIAC,
together with Frances Spence (1922– ), Betty
Holberton (1917–2001), Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth
Lichterman (1924–1986), and Betty Jean Jennings
(1924–2011).
McNulty, Holberton, and Jennings would later
work on the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer
developed by the Remington Rand Corporation
in the early 1950s.
In 1946, Hattie Scott Peterson gained a degree
in civil engineering, believed to be the first
African-American woman to do so.
== Resistance to coeducation in engineering
schools, 1950s–1970s ==
The Cold War and the space race between the
United States and the Soviet Union created
additional demands for trained engineering
talent in the 1950s and 1960s.
Many engineering schools in the U.S. that
had previously admitted only male students
began to tentatively adopt coeducation.
After 116 years as an all-male institution,
RPI began to admit small numbers of female
students in the 1940s.
Georgia Tech began to admit women engineering
students in 1952, but only in programs not
available in other state universities.
It would be 1968 before women were admitted
to all courses offered by Georgia Tech.The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
had graduated its first female student, Ellen
Swallow Richards (1842–1911) in 1873; she
later became an instructor at MIT.
However, until the 1960s, MIT enrolled few
female engineering students, due in part to
a lack of housing for women students.
After the completion of the first women's
dormitory on campus, McCormick Hall, in 1964,
the number of women enrolled increased greatly.
Influenced in part by the second wave feminism
movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, female
faculty members at MIT, including Mildred
Dresselhaus and Sheila Widnall, began to actively
promote the cause of women's engineering education.The
École Polytechnique in Paris first began
to admit women students in 1972.
Margaret Hamilton is also notable for her
contributions to computer and aerospace engineering
in the 1970s.
Hamilton, the director of the Software Engineering
Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory
at the time, is famous for her work in writing
the on-board guidance code for the Apollo
11 mission.
== 1980s–1990s ==
As more engineering programs were opened to
women, the number of women enrolled in engineering
programs increased dramatically.
The number of BA/BS degrees in engineering
awarded to women in the U.S. increased by
45 percent between 1980 and 1994.
However, during the period of 1984–1994,
the number of women graduating with a BA/BS
degree in computer science decreased by 23
percent (from 37 percent of graduates in 1984
to 28 percent in 1994).
This phenomenon became known as "The incredible
shrinking pipeline," from the title of a 1997
paper on the subject by Dr. Tracy Camp, a
professor in the Department of Mathematical
and Computer Sciences at the Colorado School
of Mines.Some of the reasons for the decline
cited in the paper included:
The development of computer games designed
and marketed for males only;
A perception that computer science was the
domain of "hacker/nerd/antisocial" personality
types;
Gender discrimination in computing;
Lack of role models at the university level.
== Statistics ==
=== 
United States ===
According to studies by the National Science
Foundation, the percentage of BA/BS degrees
in engineering awarded to women in the U.S.
increased steadily from 0.4 percent in 1966
to a peak of 20.9 percent in 2002, and then
dropped off slightly to 18.5 percent in 2008.
However, the trend identified in "The incredible
shrinking pipeline" has continued; the percentage
of BA/BS degrees in mathematics and computer
science awarded to women peaked in 1985 at
39.5 percent, and declined steadily to 25.3
percent in 2008.
The percentage of master's degrees in engineering
awarded to women increased steadily from 0.6
percent in 1966 to 22.9 percent in 2008.
The percentage of doctoral degrees in engineering
awarded to women during the same period increased
from 0.3 percent to 21.5 percent.
=== Australia ===
Only 9.6% of engineers in Australia are women,
and the rate of women in engineering degree
courses has remained around 14% since the
1990s.
=== United Kingdom ===
The percentage of female and technology engineering
graduates rose from 7 percent in 1984 to 14.6
percent in 2018.
The proportion of engineers in industry who
are women is, on the other hand, still very
low at around 11.8% – the lowest percentage
in the EU.
== Initiatives to promote engineering to women
==
Women in Engineering ProActive Network
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
Robogals
Women in SET
Women in Technology International
The Society of Women Engineers
Women's Engineering Society
Alpha Omega Epsilon
WISE – Women into Science, Engineering,
and Construction
WEPAN – Women in Engineering ProActive Network
Inc.
WIE – Women in Engineering Network
== 
See also ==
Women in engineering
List of prizes, medals, and awards for women
in engineering
Category:Women in technology
Women in computing
Women in science
Women in the workforce
Joyce Currie Little, "The Role of Women in
the History of Computing."
Proceedings, Women and Technology: Historical,
Societal, and Professional Perspectives.
IEEE International Symposium on Technology
and Society, New Brunswick, NJ, July 1999,
202–05
