The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers

1. TheStatusandAnalysisofChineseWomenEngineers Tianshu Bi North China Electric Power University

2. Outline • Significance of Women Professionals in Science and Technology • The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers • Measures and Suggestions for encouraging Chinese Women Engineers

3. 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

4. The World Needs Science, Science Needs Women • 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 in science and technology.

5. 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-graduate 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 degrees.

6. Fully exerting the function of present talents and exploring new scientific talent resources（2） • The severe international competition requires to continuously excavate the talent resources so as to provide the reserve force for scientific and technological innovation and development. • The attractiveness of scientific research for women should be enhanced by improving the status of women in the field of scientific research in order to expand the scientific talent team.

7. 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 there is no difference in intelligence. • According to the research of psychology, men are better at logical thinking and women more adept at image thinking. • Using the different thinking and research methods from men, women make significant contributions for scientific and technological development. It's believed that the important reason for her success is the research method she used different from the traditional method based on male perspective.It reflects the feminine thought tendency and advantages emphasizing on the intuition of study. Barbara McClintock the American scientist and cytogeneticist with the Nobel Prize

8. 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.

9. 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 abilities and promote women's status as far as possible. • The eight UN's Millenium Development Goals was passed by all members in the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 and one of the most important contents is promoting gender equality and giving women more empowerment.

10. Outline • Significance of Women Professionals in Science and Technology • The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers • Measures and Suggestions for encouraging Chinese Women Engineers

11. TheStatusofWomenEngineers 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. Sex Ratio of Researchersin Different Countries • Compared with the major countries in the world，there is less number of women engineers in Asian countries. • In China, women accounted for a quarter in the scientific and technical personnel.

12. TheStatusofChineseWomenEngineers • The structure of Chinese women engineers tends to be of pyramid. • The occupational status and achievement is higher, the proportion of women is lower in the field of scientific research. • According to the survey of China Scientific Institution, there are 14.67 million women professionals in science and technology, accounting for 33% of sci-tech human resource in China. • Women only accounts for 16% of the winners in National Natural Science Award, National Invention Awards and National Progress Awards during 1997-2001. • Women only accounts for 5% of the academicians in Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering as of 2009.

13. TheStatusofChineseWomenEngineers——Postgraduate Education The Proportion of Female Postgraduates in North China Electric Power niversity There are 168 doctoral students and 1738 masters at school, respectively accounting for 26.88% and 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.

14. TheStatusofChineseWomenEngineers——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. • The proportion of women drops sharply as rank rises. • The proportion of women drops as they ages.

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

16. 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 between men and women with age. • In the pursuit of ideals, men's goal gets higher with age while women's gets lower. • It leads to a decline of both women's scientific enthusiasm and effort, has an adverse effect on their scientific research outputs and limits their developments to a higher level.

17. Leading Talents Academic Leaders Backbone Personnels Basic talents The recessive gender discrimination leads to the phenomenon that women have a low participation in high positions • There is a gender discrimination inevitably in all aspects of the evaluation to research activities, including job classification, project's funding applications, journal article's reviewers, evaluation of research institutions and etc. • Women workers are lack of peer recognition in scientific research outputs.

18. Women engeneers are lack of motivation to research under the current system and the environment • A survey of Women Engineers' Motivation to Research in Universities of Beijing shown that 39.4% respondents selected "forced to job requirements". • Only 26% of the women engineer chose "interested" and 21.2% chose "to achieve value". • 5% of the women engineer chose doing research work in order to increase income.

19. Marriage and family affect women researchers’ investment in time and effort • According to the research,women's best age for scientific research output 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 discontinue 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.

20. Outline • Significance of Women Professionals in Science and Technology • The Status and Analysis of Chinese Women Engineers • Measures and Suggestions for Encouraging Chinese Women Engineers

21. Measures and Suggestions for encouragingChinese Women Engineers Encouraging women toparticipate in research work Creating an equitable environment for women’s career growth Givingthe priority to women under the same conditions in applying and replying of the project Enhancingthe support to young women scientists Creatingthe communication platform for women scientists Mitigating the conflict between the social role of women and the identity of engineers

22. How to encourage women to participate in research work？ • Women should be encouraged to participate in mathematics, physics and other natural sciences studies in school education. • The publicity of women scientists' success stories should be increased in order to provide more successful examples for young women and improve their confidence in the scientific research work.

23. 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 womenshould be consistent with that of men.

24. How to givethe 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 women. • The relevant departments should take somepreferential measures for womensuch as extending research time of projects for maternal female, or setting up special research funds for women.

25. How to enhance support to young women scientists ? • The highest award for young women scientists is China Youth Female Scientist Awardwhile 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.

26. How to create the communication platformfor women scientists? • The platform should be built for the contact between female scientists and 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 scientists to help them develop their own research work network by the same way.

27. 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 share the family responsibilities,thereby reducing the pressure on women from family. • It is another layer of protection mechanisms to strengthen social welfare and security of women，such as marriage leave, maternity leave.