The Status and Analysis of Chinese

Women Engineers

Tianshu Bi

North China Electric Power University

Outline

Significance of Women Professionals in Science and Tech

nology

The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers

Measures and Suggestions for encouraging Chinese Wome

n Engineers

The World Needs Science, Science Needs Women

Marie Sklodowska-Curie(1867-1934),the Polish scientist, has been honored twice with the Nobel Prize in Physics andin Chemistry

Wang Zhenyi(1768-1797)， Chinese astronomer ， physician and mathematician ， presented the theory of solar and lunar eclipses

Wu Chien-Shiung(1912-1997), "the Chinese Madame Curie", the leading and outstanding experimental physicist

Women are smart and resilient enough to become scientists

and engineers .They have made significant contributions to

science from the earliest times.

It's important and necessary to get more women involved i

n science and technology.

The World Needs Science, Science Needs Women

Fully exerting the function of present talents and exploring new scientific talent resources（ 1）

In China, it takes about 200 thousand yuan to cultivate an under-gradua

te and the cultivation cost of a master or doctoral student is higher.

More than one third of the scientific and technical staffs are women and

67% of them have at least undergraduate degrees and 6% have master d

egrees.

Fully exerting the function of present talents and exploring new scientific talent resources（ 2）

The severe international competition requires to continuously excavate t

he talent resources so as to provide the reserve force for scientific and tec

hnological innovation and development.

The attractiveness of scientific research for women should be enhanced b

y improving the status of women in the field of scientific research in orde

r to expand the scientific talent team.

Taking the full advantage of women's characteristic and promoting scientific and technological progress（ 1）

The thinking mode between men and women is different although ther

e is no difference in intelligence.

According to the research of psychology, men are better at logical thin

king and women more adept at image thinking.

Using the different thinking and research methods from men, women

make significant contributions for scientific and technological develop

ment.

It's believed that the important reason for her su

ccess is the research method she used different f

rom the traditional method based on male persp

ective.It reflects the feminine thought tendency a

nd advantages emphasizing on the intuition of s

tudy.

Barbara McClintock

the American scientist and cytogene

ticist with the Nobel Prize

Taking the full advantage of women's characteristic and promoting scientific and technological progress（ 2）

There is a great difference in the life experiences and personality traits

between men and women. It's shown that the innovation have benefited

from researchers' diversity including the gender balance.

There is a difference in the research interests between men and women.

For instance,women are more interested in environmental protection,

medical treatment, obstetrics and immunology.

Improving women's status and driving social development

The Beijing Declaration was passed in the UN 4th World Conference on

Women in 1995 and committed to empower women, develop women's a

bilities and promote women's status as far as possible.

The eight UN's Millenium Development Goals was passed by all membe

rs in the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 and one of the mos

t important contents is promoting gender equality and giving women m

ore empowerment.

Outline

Significance of Women Professionals in Science and Tech

nology

The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers

Measures and Suggestions for encouraging Chinese Wome

n Engineers

The Status of Women Engineers in the World

Although women have made great contributions in the development,

science is always regarded as a man's field, especially in Asia-Pacific.

NationThe Proportion of Fema

le （%）

Argentina 52.7

Romania 46.1

Spain 38.4

England 38.3

China 25.0

Japan 14.0

Sex Ratio of Researchers in Different Countries

Compared with the major cou

ntries in the world， there is l

ess number of women engineer

s in Asian countries.

In China, women accounted fo

r a quarter in the scientific an

d technical personnel.

The Status of Chinese Women Engineers

Women only accounts for 16% of the winners in National Natural Sc

ience Award, National Invention Awards and National Progress Awa

rds during 1997-2001.

Women only accounts for 5% of the academicians in Chinese Acade

my of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering as of 2009.

The structure of Chinese women engineers tends to be of pyramid.

The occupational status and achievement is higher, the proportion of wo

men is lower in the field of scientific research.

According to the survey of China Scientific Institution, there are 14.6

7 million women professionals in science and technology, accounting

for 33% of sci-tech human resource in China.

The Status of Chinese Women Engineers——Postgraduate Education

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

2013 2014 2015

MasterDocter

The Proportion of Female Postgraduates

in North China Electric Power niversity

There are 168 doctoral students

and 1738 masters at school, respe

ctively accounting for 26.88% an

d 41.63% of the total number.

The number of female postgraduates is obviously less than male.In particular,the proportion of women drops greatly as the educational background increases.

The proportion of female postgraduates is increasing slowly with the time passing.

The Status of Chinese Women Engineers——Full-time Teachers and Researchers

The Proportion of Female Full-time Teachers and Researchers

in North China Electric Power University

There are 391 female full-time teachers and researchers at school,accounting for 39.94% of the total number.

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

l ecturer Associate Professor Professor Doctoral Supervi sor

47.99%43.13%

24.47%

8.75%

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

30-39 40-49 ≥50

42.82% 41.99%

30.33%

Age(years)

The proportion of women drops sharply as rank rises.

The proportion of women drops as they ages.

Gender consciousness affects on women's motivation of development and target of achievement.

The recessive gender discrimination in peer review leads to the phenomenon that women have a low participation in high positions.

Women engineers are lack of motivation to research under the current system and the environment.

Marriage and family affect women engineers’ investment in time and effort.

The reason for shortage of women engineers and high-level scientific research output

Gender consciousness has an effect on women's motivation of development and target of achievement.

The gap has been widen in the proportion of pursuing high goals betwee

n men and women with age.

In the pursuit of ideals, men's goal gets higher with age while women's g

ets lower.

It leads to a decline of both women's scientific enthusiasm and effort, ha

s an adverse effect on their scientific research outputs and limits their de

velopments to a higher level.

The recessive gender discrimination leads to the phenomenon that women have a low participation in high positions

Academic LeadersLeading Talents

Backbone Personnels

Basic talents

There is a gender discrimination inevi

tably in all aspects of the evaluation t

o research activities, including job cla

ssification, project's funding applicati

ons, journal article's reviewers, evalu

ation of research institutions and etc.

Women workers are lack of peer reco

gnition in scientific research outputs.

Women engeneers are lack of motivation to research under the current system and the environment

A survey of Women Engineers' Mot

ivation to Research in Universities o

f Beijing shown that 39.4% respond

ents selected "forced to job require

ments". Only 26% of the women engineer c

hose "interested" and 21.2% chose

"to achieve value". 5% of the women engineer chose do

ing research work in order to increa

se income.

Marriage and family affect women researchers’ investment in time and effort

According to the research,women's best age for scientific research out

put is 25 to 45 years old.

Most women researchers enter the marriage and have children nearly

30 years old after obtaining masters,even doctorates.So they have to d

iscontinue the scientific research and spend times taking care of their

children.

In addition,nearly half of women spend more than two hours a day in

doing housework.

Outline

Significance of Women Professionals in Science and Tech

nology

The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers

Measures and Suggestions for Encouraging Chinese Wome

n Engineers

Measures and Suggestions for encouraging Chinese Women Engineers

Encouraging women to participate in research work

Creating an equitable environment for women’s career growth

Giving the priority to women under the same conditions in applying and replying of the project

Enhancing the support to young women scientists

Creating the communication platform for women scientists

Mitigating the conflict between the social role of women and the identity of engineers

How to encourage women to participate in research work？

Women should be encouraged to participate in mathematics, physics a

nd other natural sciences studies in school education.

The publicity of women scientists' success stories should be increased i

n order to provide more successful examples for young women and i

mprove their confidence in the scientific research work.

How to create an equitable environment forwomen’s career growth？ The government and relevant departments need to strengthen

supervision during the recruitment in order to eliminate gender-

based discrimination and inequality in the selection of staffs.

The goverment and relevant departments should take some measures

to help women to mitigate the effects of childbearing and

breastfeeding on research work.

The retirement age of women should be consistent with that of men.

How to give the priority to women under the same conditions in applying and replying of the project?

It is presented clearly that women have the priority to be subsidized

under the same conditions so as to improve the funding rate of wome

n.

The relevant departments should take some preferential measures for

women such as extending research time of projects for maternal

female, or setting up special research funds for women.

How to enhance support to young women scientists ?

The highest award for young women scientists is China Youth Female

Scientist Award while it's only awarded to five prize-winners each

year.

it's necessary to establish awards to praise outstanding young women

scientistst both in the Chinese Association for Science and local levels.

It's important to provide spiritual encouragement and support for the

development of young women scientists.

How to create the communication platform for women scientists?

The platform should be built for the contact between female scientists a

nd society to expand their social circle relying on the mass organizations

such as Association for Science and Women's Federations.

The platform should be built for the communication among female scien

tists to help them develop their own research work network by the same

way.

How to mitigate the conflict between the social role of women and the identity of engineers?

It should be advocated in society that both husband and wife should s

hare the family responsibilities,thereby reducing the pressure on wom

en from family.

It is another layer of protection mechanisms to strengthen social welfa

re and security of women ， such as marriage leave, maternity leave.