Why do you think there are not that many women in engineering, specially electrical engineering?

The percentage of women in engineering general speaking is low not only in electrical department. I want to add something more that percentage of women is low in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) studies. According to an article I read it on IEEE Spectrum august edition: that the problem is a physiological matter that there is a conflict between romantic feelings and STEM studies.

The Article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/education/do-romantic-thoughts-reduce-womens-interest-in-engineering

In all honesty, look at the preceeding answers to see what they have to deal with.

I'm actually seeing more women in engineering, but the fields I am primarily involved with, namely nuclear engineering and environmental engineering.  Not sure why EE doesn't appeal to women.  But the geek answer might be on to something.  The State and Federal governments are more favorable environments too, they would not tolerate some of the things that go on in the private sector.

-- John

I think it has deal with them not being encouraged and often backhandedly discouraged.  I know I have been, and often paired up with the worst students in a class for class projects where I couldn't make up for their lack of work (hard to do the work of 3 people).

To change this I am currently working on little projects to teach Junior to High School kids electronics.  I'm hoping to introduce them to Girl's camps, such as the Girl Scouts, or Camps that are for girls.  My hope is the making of these projects, things they would actually use, they would be come more interested and maybe enter into one of the engineering fields.  I'm also going as green as possiable in the designs to show that it is possiable to go green and not give up the things you love.

Ohh just so you know the first computer programmer was a woman Ada Lovelace, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper lead the change from machine level coding and to complier languages such as COBOL and many others, it is only in the last 30 years that programming was taken over by men.  Until it became profitiable it was considered a woman's science since it was easy work (ie like typing/seceritary work) and maybe because they had to work together to make sure each part of the program worked with the other, men tend to like bein lone wolves.  Programing wasn't as phycially demanding as electrial design like crawling around in a room sized Computer that used vacum tubes.

In the interests of full disclousure, I am 1 year from a BA in History but burnt out and now  about 2 semesters from an AAS or AS in Computer Engineering, and I have to say I love both the learning about the past and the sloving of a problem.  Thing is there is no support network in place for women interested in Engineering at my school and even the female instructors are unapproachable for mentoring.