[Steve27632]

While watching a show on the U.S. Space program the other night, I was struck by the fact that all of the engineers were white males. Recognizing that the time depicted was the 1960s, I did some research and found that the engineering field is still dominated by white males. Data showed that while there has been some increase in women and minorities in engineering, engineering graduates are still 80 percent white male. This contrasts to fields like medicine and law, where white males now make up less than half. Why aren’t more women and minorities drawn to engineering?
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Name : Steve27632, Gender : M, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 31, City : Houston, State : TX, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, 

[Chi-Chi]

hey

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Name : Chi-Chi, City : Sleepy Town, State : NA, Country : United States, 

[Larisa]

Well, in the past, women have not been encouraged to excel at mathematics or science in childhood, or even to entertain fantasies of a technical career. The idea that ‘women are good with people, and men are good with machinery’ has been a very pervasive one. Also, women who did manage to enter engineering programs in college faced quite a lot of prejudice. Fortunately, all of the above is changing. I think that in the next 10-20 years this particular gender gap will narrow significantly.

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Name : Larisa, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 24, City : San Jose, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : engineer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class, 

[Goose]

A primary reason is that many individuals of non-white races are excluded based on unsatisfactory results on deep background checks that sensitive programs like the space program or defense contractors routinely use. There is a possibility that ‘National Security’ is a blanket phrase used to preserve group homogeneity in such programs. As far as I have encountered Asians are often fully prepared or over qualified for such programs, but are routinely screened out to interact with these agencies in a more ‘secure’ manner by means of govt funded grants to college faculties.

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Name : Goose, Gender : M, Race : Asian, Age : 22, City : New York, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : former engineer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, 

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