The American Woman Engineer: Breaking the Mold

Cowan, Neil M, Glen Cove NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES 99-10970 - Neil M. Cowan (Independent Scholar) "The American Woman Engineer: Breaking the Mold" This project is designed to build on and extend the Principal Investigator's earlier study, carried out between 1993 and 1995, under a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Foundation. As part of that study, the PI and his collaborator interviewed 75 American women engineers and consulted several archival collections with the intention of writing a history of American women engineers. These interviews included questions about early memories of schooling and of mentorship; of parent and peer reactions to interests in math, science and engineering; of the pleasures and difficulties of engineering work; of the pleasures and difficulties of maintaining social and familial relations. When the interviewees recalled experiencing discrimination the PI and his collaborator explored this subject in depth as well. This earlier study led the PI and his collaborator to the view of women engineers as people who shattered multiple sets of stereotypes in several historical periods: stereotypes about feminine behavior, stereotypes about feminists and stereotypes about the nature of engineering as a profession and about technology as a part of culture. The current project comprises a series of interviews with two groups of women that were underrepresented in the earlier series of interview subjects: women currently over the age of 60 and women who are currently engineering students or who have just taken their first jobs. The PI and his collaborator will also visit several archival collections which containing materials about women who entered engineering work between the two World Wars and about the inclusion or exclusion of women from engineering education. During the grant period the PI also intends to begin writing the manuscript.