ABSTRACT

Negligible increases have been observed in the number of women undergraduates from engineering programs in twenty first century United States. For comparison, physical or biological science programs graduate at least double the percentage of undergraduate women in engineering. Those with a birds-eye look at engineering, very often advocate for increasing the percentage of women engineers as a way of heightening the competitive edge. Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has begun to document that girls and boys have similar cognitive abilities in mathematics and science assessments within their respective countries. 1