Ratio of men: women studying engineering

[simba]

Hey there!

Fairly self explanatory question, I've just been wondering on average the amount of men in engineering courses at uni in comparison to the number of women? Thanks!

[Lolly]

I think it's 90% :10%.

Don't quote me.

[Phy124]

In my years cohort for the Bachelor of Engineering at Monash university there was around 25% females, I believe. (It was either 20% International students, 25% females or vice versa)

However, don't let this put you off the degree. I know that they have luncheons and such for female engineering students early on in first year, so that you can get to know other females in your course, as to make things easier.

A lot of the females in the course seem to have made quite close-knit relationships with other females in the course and seem more than comfortable in the degree despite being part of a minority.

Also, I just realised that I seem to be making out that the females in the course just stick with females and seclude themselves from males, which certainly isn't the case if I was giving that impression

I wish you all the best and hope that you don't let this be a determining factor in deciding your future, study what you are passionate about

[simba]

In my years cohort for the Bachelor of Engineering at Monash university there was around 25% females, I believe. (It was either 20% International students, 25% females or vice versa)

However, don't let this put you off the degree. I know that they have luncheons and such for female engineering students early on in first year, so that you can get to know other females in your course, as to make things easier.

A lot of the females in the course seem to have made quite close-knit relationships with other females in the course and seem more than comfortable in the degree despite being part of a minority.

Also, I just realised that I seem to be making out that the females in the course just stick with females and seclude themselves from males, which certainly isn't the case if I was giving that impression

I wish you all the best and hope that you don't let this be a determining factor in deciding your future, study what you are passionate about

Thanks for the insight

It's definitely not a deciding factor for me! I've just been quite curious for a while because I know the majority of eng students are male, and was just wondering how big that majority was! It would take something much larger than the main gender of the cohort to deter me from engineering

[Phy124]

Thanks for the insight

It's definitely not a deciding factor for me! I've just been quite curious for a while because I know the majority of eng students are male, and was just wondering how big that majority was! It would take something much larger than the main gender of the cohort to deter me from engineering

No worries, hopefully I'll see you down at Monash next year

Oh and I should also note that the male:female ratio will more than likely decrease after first year once you go into your discipline as the majority of females go into chemical/materials/civil (which from what I can recall was your preference) rather than mechanical/electrical, well, from what I have observed anyway.

[Kanon]

A lot of it comes down to discipline, I'm doing Electrical Engineering which seems to be really male-dominated, of a class of around 200-250 there are about 6 girls.  Whereas some fields of engineering such as Enviro tend to have a lot more females
CONGRATS ON THE ATAR BTW!

[BigAl]

there are around 10-15 girls out of ~90 students in aerospace engineering

[ninwa]

Also don't you get engineering scholarships just for being female?

[hobbitle]

Also don't you get engineering scholarships just for being female?

Yes but you also get Eng Scholarships just for being male sometimes, too.  At least UoM has two gender-specific ones.

I'm in first year and in my Engineering subject this year it was probably 20% female.

[ninwa]

Yes but you also get Eng Scholarships just for being male sometimes, too.  At least UoM has two gender-specific ones.

I'm in first year and in my Engineering subject this year it was probably 20% female.

Haha, I was referring to this which is quite literally a scholarship for being a woman

[slothpomba]

I can't answer for the BEng specifically because those stats are pretty hard to get. However, you can find the stats for each faculty. Below are the engineering ones. Keep in mind this covers multiple degrees and for some people it might be dubious what your home faculty is (if you do BEng/BA do you belong to the arts faculty or the engineering faculty? You must belong to only one of these, its important when submitting forms, getting approval, etc). Best i could tell it is very roughly 20/80, this assumes that the various rules of who your home faculty is doesn't show some distortion (i.e. females are more likely to choose BA/BEng, if you choose this degree, you belong to the arts faculty instead and arent counted here).