Are Women Exiting Engineering Because Men Have All the Fun?

Researchers Caroll Serron at the University of California at Irvine, Susan S. Silbey at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Erin Cech (who performed the research at Rice University but is now at the University of Michigan), and Brian Rubineau at McGill University conducted the study to try to get a better idea of just why women who made it through years of STEM education start migrating out of tech. The effort, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, looked at 40 undergraduate engineering students, male and female, spread among the four schools. The students were asked to write in diaries twice a month, from freshman orientation through graduation, about anything of interest in their lives. The researchers also conducted interviews with 25 students at each school during years one and four.

Read full article: Spectrum, June 17, 2016