Participation of Women in Architectural Engineering: What Causes It?

Under-representation of women in engineering is of concern as the decreasing supply of qualified engineers continues to plague the nation’s advancement. Understanding what factors influence choices of engineering disciplines has the potential for altering education to accommodate a more diverse student body that can be successful in engineering. There are seventeen accredited architectural engineering programs in the nation and they are very different. They vary greatly in terms of the emphasis of curriculum, the length of the degree, the degree of inclusion of architecture studios, and whether they are collocated in a department of civil engineering. Despite these differences, architectural engineering programs graduate on average 30% women which is far higher that the percentages of women in other engineering programs. This paper compares the percentage of women in architectural engineering programs to those in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering programs nationwide and attempts to explain the difference. A survey of women in the Cal Poly architectural engineering department was administered to discover why these women personally chose AE as a major, why they persist in the major, and why they think women are so largely represented in the major. The results represent a competitive advantage that architectural engineering programs have and are of great interest to the Architectural Engineering Institute.