Women with engineering degrees are leaving the field, not for family reasons but because of an uncomfortable work environment, a U.S. study says.
In a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee survey, nearly half of women who left an engineering career indicated they did so because of negative working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary.
Despite successful programs to increase the numbers of women earning degrees in engineering, the field now faces the problem of retaining those female engineers, a UWM release said Thursday.
The survey found one in three respondents left engineering because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture, while only one in four left engineering to start or spend more time with a family.
"Some women are leaving because of family issues, but that's not the majority of women who responded to our survey," Nadya Fouad, a UWM professor of educational psychology, said.
The survey also found that women who wanted to leave their companies were also very likely eventually to leave the field of engineering altogether, she said.
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