Once a scarcely noticed minority, more women are plowing through engineering programs - and their moves are turning heads nationwide.
The number of females majoring in sciences and engineering is going up, according to statistics released last week by the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that promotes the study of science.
The report, entitled "Women, Minorities and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering," is released every two years, and the recent data were collected from American universities between 1995 and 2005.
According to the nationwide study, 70,579 female undergraduates were enrolled in engineering programs in 2005 - an increase from the 67,286 reported a decade earlier.
And Penn is part of that trend, boasting similarly high enrollment rates.
From 1996 to 2006, the number of female undergraduates enrolled in the School of Engineering and Applied Science rose from 356 to 486.
To date, SEAS undergraduate women typically earn 27 percent of engineering degrees, said SEAS Associate Dean Sampath Kannan.
Still, according to the Penn Engineering Web site, engineering remains the most gender-segregated profession today - more so than dentistry and the clergy.
That segregation is also apparent from SEAS's faculty, which is comprised of 92 men and only nine women, as reported in 2006 by Penn's "Gender Equity: Fourth Annual Report."
But while they may be quantitatively dominated by their male colleagues and peers, female professors and students at SEAS say they do not feel overshadowed or intimidated.
"There are a lot of guys in the classes, but that doesn't really affect me," Engineering and Wharton junior Ayesha Hussain said. "In the labs, girls take charge and are actually better than the guys."
Engineering freshman Julie Williams said she is one of two female freshman in her major, Materials Science and Engineering.
Still, Williams pointed out, SEAS provides a "supportive atmosphere."
Others cited women's strides in the overall field.
"Within computer science, the retention rate of women is much higher than it has been in the past," said Computer and Information Science professor Susan Davidson.
And some SEAS academic programs even have more female students than male.
SEAS's Digital Media Design, for example, is over 50 percent women, and the Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering majors are fulfilled by "a fair share of women," Kannan said. The rest, in general, are predominantly male.
Also, clubs like the Society of Women Engineers and Women In Computer Science annually hold events, like a High School Shadowing Day and a Girls in Technology Day, to encourage members to explore engineering as a possible career.
"At Penn, it's totally natural and cool for women to be engineers, as it is for men," Kannan said. "That's what we believe, and that's the atmosphere we are trying to create."
