Professions of a Silicon Valley Double-E: Are We behaving Well? Why Women leave STEM at 40.

Professions of a Silicon Valley Double-E

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Are We behaving Well? Why Women leave STEM at 40.

thanks to David Brin (the SCIENCE fiction author, and a champion for civilization) I'm made aware of a study that finds that nearly half of the women that START a career in the STEM arenas the IEEE tries to encourage (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Leave the field between the ages of 35-40. And the top reason is apparently related to gender discrimination and sexual harassment. The study found that 63% of these women had experience sexual harassment in the work place.

The IEEE ethics statement points 8 and 9 can be interpreted to addresses this.

to treat fairly all persons regardless of such factors as race, religion, gender, disability, age, or national origin;

to avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or malicious action;

As IEEE volunteers we ALSO need to be extremely careful in our behavior towards other volunteers. What would you consider to be "bad behavior" on the part of IEEE volunteers?

Labels: career, IEEE, women_in_engineering

¶ Permanent Link to This Post 11:34 AM

Comments:

One of my coworkers (thanks Arezou!) mentioned an interesting video of John Cohn's keynote from ISCAS 2008 ( available at http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/icss/IEEE-ISCAS-08-Tue-Keynote-JC/IEEE-ISCAS-08-Tue-Keynote-JC.HTML

Some of the stats are about women.. but he addresses getting kids interested in STEM careers..

jbd

# posted by

Jonathan David, PACE Volunteer : 2:47 PM

Lets try to make a clickable link for that IEEE-ISCAS 08 Tue Keynote
jbd

# posted by

Jonathan David, PACE Volunteer : 2:54 PM

Thanks Jon and David for raising the issue of women leaving STEM. A related study was released earlier this month by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Climbing the Technical Ladder: Obstacles and Solutions for Mid-Level Women in Technology proposes data-driven, systematic solutions for the retention and advancement of technical women.

# posted by

BJ Wishinsky : 2:56 PM

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Ruminations about the Electrical Engineering profession as practiced in Silicon Valley by an IEEE Senior Member. Disclaimer: All Posts here are official IEEE business in that they are messages about IEEE activities from an IEEE volunteer. These messages do not constitute official records of R6-PACE activities, nor official IEEE or IEEE-USA policy statements. Website: http://www.ieee.org/scv/pace

: Name: Jonathan David, PACE Volunteer; Location: San Jose, California, United States

When he is not working on IEEE stuff, Jonathan does Mixed Signal Design Verification at Qualcomm. Senior Member IEEE. Founder IEEE-SCV-SSC (the first Solid State Circuits chapter). Past Section Chair, Santa Clara Valley Section - the Largest Section. Co-founder IEEE-SCV-CAS. IEEE-SSCS Membership chair 2001-2003. IEEE SSCS chapters Committee member. IEEE-SCV-PACE committee member 2001- IEEE-SCV-PACE Chair 2006-2007. IEEE R6 PACE coordinator.

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