Why is the representation of women in engineering so less? Any explanatory answer?

Less kidhar dikh raha tumhe? 50/50 gender ratio hiring and admissions meh.

Oh you invited my rant. Where do I begin?

1. Parents don’t want to spend on education on daughters since they have to anyway be married and there’s no RoI on educating them. So fewer girls go to school and college.

2. Engineering is a 4 year degree vs arts - shorter course, but still “graduate” and can marry her off sooner.

3. Not enough women role models to believe women can do well in traditionally “male” oriented fields like engineering - think mechanical, civil, chemical engineering

4. Parents unwilling to send daughters to study in colleges far from home (or okay with hostels) for fear of safety / worried about girls falling into bad company / getting into a relationship

5. Daughters being asked to learn household work and less time / focus to study - so inability to crack exams / entrance tests

6. When a few women manage to get past all these, they still need permission from parents / in laws to be allowed to work.

7. When that hurdle gets crossed, offices / companies don’t hire them for reasons like - about to get married, won’t be serious about career, will take maternity leave etc.

8. The few who get past step 7 have to fight societal / familial expectations of being a stay at home mom and taking care of kids to get back to work.

9. And after all this, many men at workplace just flippantly say women get ahead cause they are women and have quota. This in turn makes women want to keep proving to themselves that they are good and deserving.

Should I go on? Change needs to start somewhere. Our own mindset is the first place. How many of us encourage / support the women in our lives to dream bigger and go for it?

That's the design of Indian society sadly 🥲. Lot of womens are still denied the opportunity of going to college and freedom to go out.

Because fewer women take up engineering in college. It’s just a preference women have

I want to comment but gv text box is not enough. Cost of engineering is high, many people why afford it on a girl.

Because of historical reasons (because in the past, many engineering institutions didn't allow entry for women), engineering has become a male-dominated / male-majority field.

So often the women who do try to join in that environment, face a lot of misogyny and discrimination as a minority.

So many quit, and others get discouraged from joining, because they don't want to deal with the toxicity of being a minority in a male-dominated environment.

It would be less in any higher education field, not only Engineering, you need to look out of your restricted area.

Skill issues

Why? Yeh raaz bhi inke saath chala jayega...

It isn't because they are in anyway inferior. It's just I guess their preference to go through engineering / not