International Women in Engineering Day

Happy International Women in Engineering Day! Today we celebrate the brilliant achievements of women engineers around the world! This day is celebrated around the world as an international campaign for the awareness of women in engineering and all that they achieve.

History of Women in Engineering

Struggles and Roadblocks

For centuries, women have faced roadblocks in their pursuit of STEM. Many foremothers of STEM received little to no recognition of their contributions, research, discoveries, or achievements. For women who wanted to pursue engineering, even getting into a physics class in high school had its roadblocks. Take Valeria Blakey for instance, the first woman to graduate from the University of Queensland with an engineering degree in 1950. Her school, Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School, did not consider physics to be a subject that was suitable for girls, so Blakey took physics at a different school nearby. Even with a degree in engineering, women had to undergo sexist responses towards their applications for jobs in the engineering field from shock of a women seeking employment to a company not having female toilets.

Valeria Blakey (https://www.orangepeel.com.au/post/http-www-orangepeel-com-au-single-post-2018-06-06-qld-s-pioneering-women-in-stem-valeria-blakey)

Pioneering Women Engineers

In honor of International Women's Day, we will list just a pinch of women who shaped the engineering world and proved that women were capable and excel in the field of engineering.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)

At 17, Lovelace met Charles Babbage, a mathematician and inventor, and became his mentee. Whilst Babbage was developing the Analytical Engine, Lovelace translated Sketch of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine from French to English. Babbage asked her to add her own notes to the translated article. Her added notes were three times the length of the original and she signed them "A.A.L." Her notes included what is considered the world's first published computer program, making her often cited as the world's first computer programmer. Lovelace understood that what could be converted into numbers, like the alphabet or music, could be controlled by computer algorithms.

Ada Lovelace (https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/ada-lovelace-the-first-tech-visionary)

Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923)

Whilst helping her husband replicate his experiments on the electric arc, Aryton developed the theory connecting the length of arc with the pressure and voltage, and traced the hissing noise to oxidation rather than evaporation of the electrode material. Her work was published in in 1895 in The Electrician and in 1899, she was the first woman to read her paper for the Institution of Electrical Engineers. She was also the first woman elected to membership and receive one of their prizes. She also spoke at the 1900 International Electrical Congress in Paris which led to the British Association for the Advancement of Science to allow women to serve on general and sectional committees. In 1906, she won the Hughes Medal for her work on sand and water ripples which was then used to create fans that fought against chemical agents in World War I.

Hertha Ayrton 1854–1923: A Memoir, by Evelyn Sharp (London: 1926)

Edith Clarke (1883-1959)

Orphaned before the age of 13, Clarke used her inheritance to go to college when she turned 18. In 1908, she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and astronomy from Vassar College. As she continued she studies and learned about civil engineering, Clarke worked as "human computer" for AT&T. During World War I, she led a a group of women who did calculations for the Transmission and Protection Department. At the end of the war, she enrolled in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1919, she became the first woman to receive a master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT. In 1925, Clarke's most famous contribution the "Clarke Calculator," a graphical device that simplified equations used by electrical engineers to determine characteristics of power lines, was patented. In 1926, she became the first woman to deliver a paper before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the precursor to the IEEE. Clarke later worked on the development of the hydroelectric dams in the West Hoover Dam with her contributions towards the development of the turbines used to generate hydropower. In 1947, Clarke became the first woman electrical engineering professor in the U.S. after taking the post at the University of Texas, Austin.

Edith Clarke (Photo courtesy of the National Inventors Hall of Fame)

Mary. Jackson (1921-2005)

Jackson lived in a time where segregation was still around in the US. In 1951, Jackson began working as a "human computer" at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the predecessor of NASA) in the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory's segregated West Area Computing section. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry) in 1941, Virginia law supported segregation forcing Jackson to use separate bathrooms and dining facilities. In 1953, Jackson worked with Kazimierz Czarnecki on conducting high-speed wind-tunnel experiments. Czarnecki saw Jackson's potential and encourage her to become an engineer. Jackson obtained special permission to take classes with her white peers and 1958, she became the first African-American female engineer at NASA, and perhaps the only black female aeronautical engineer in the field at the time. She worked as an aerospace engineer for nearly two decades and focused on the behavior of the boundary layer of air around airplanes. After being unable to break the glass ceiling as it was "the rule rather than the exception for the center's female professionals" (https://www.nasa.gov/content/mary-w-jackson-biography), Jackson left engineering to become Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Manager where she worked to impact the hiring and promotion of NASA's female mathematicians, engineers and scientists.

Present Day Women in Engineering

Today, the presence of women in engineering is still low with only 14% of women in the engineering field as of 2019. Many of these issues stem from gender stereotypes, work environments, and lack of other female engineers and women mentors. In order to increase the amount of women in engineering, we must nurture young girls' interests and confidence in the STEM field, fight gender stereotypes, and create better work environments that help women achieve their full capabilities and treat them as equals.