Women in engineering: The NAP report

The Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, a joint unit of the National Academies of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, issued a report on the status of women in academic science and engineering.

The good news is the format: the whole report is available for free on the web in a fairly easy to read format. There's a great "skim" view for, well, skimming. It provides selections from a chapter-sized chunk in about a page.  I wonder how that content is selected.

Start at: Three thousand free books from the National Academies Press. I love free books.

The bad news is the content:

In the last 30 years, the numbers and proportion of women obtaining science and engineering bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees have increased dramatically. ... Even in engineering, historically the field with the fewest female participants, women now constitute one-fifth of undergraduate and graduate students. In the top 50 engineering departments, women earn one-fourth of the PhDs granted in chemical engineering and 15% in engineering overall.

In counterpoint to that dramatic educational progress [sic], women, who constitute about half of the total workforce in the United States and half of the degree recipients in a number of scientific fields, still make up only one-fifth of the nation's scientific and technical workers.

... minority-group women doctorates are less likely to be in tenure positions than men of any racial group or white women.

Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering (2006). Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. The National Academies Press.

As good scientists/engineers should, the report attempts a root cause analysis. It's not biology. Difficulty integrating personal and professional responsibilities is a factor. And academia, a supposed meritocracy, continues to put structural barriers in the way.