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We asked 100 female engineers to answer some simple questions: are they happy as engineers, would they recommend engineering to younger women who want to do engineering, and which field would they recommend the most? The results were shocking, which reveals how much women love engineering.
In an online survey, we asked 100 female engineers if they were happy in their careers; 24% said they were happy, while 58% had a neutral feeling about their careers as engineers. However, only 18% expressed that they are not happy as engineers. There are many reasons why women hate engineering; however, the main reason could be long work hours and having to be working in a dominant male industry.
If you are more interested to learn why women might hate engineering, check out our post on Why Women Leave Engineering? Is It Men, Difficulty Or Both?
In this study, we tried our best to gather females from different disciplines and backgrounds in engineering. However, it was impossible to get an equal amount of female engineers from the major engineering fields to participate in our online study.
This is the disruption of the female who participated in this study:
The Number of Female Engineers In The Survey
| Engineering Field | Female Engineers In The survey |
|---|---|
| Civil Engineering | 22 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 18 |
| Electrical Engineering | 14 |
| Chemical Engineering | 8 |
| Software Engineering | 38 |
Here at the Young Hero Engineer, we do a lot of surveys to find out how engineers engage with their careers. We run online surveys where we ask engineers specific questions about their jobs. One of our famous studies is when We Asked 1000 Engineers If They Are Happy. The study included an equal amount of engineering from the major 5 engineering fields; link to the full article here.
In this study, we were also able to gather the results of which type of women engineers are most happy with their career; see results below:
Which Women In Engineering Are Actually Happy?
Based on our results, we found that software engineers are the happiest engineers, followed by Mechanical, Electrical and Civil Engineers. Chemical engineers were the least happy engineers, with only 13% happiness (1 happy out of 8 who participated in this study).
Which Women In Engineering Are Actually Happy?
| Engineering Field | Happy | Neutral | Not Happy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Civil Engineering | 4 | 16 | 2 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 4 | 13 | 1 |
| Electrical Engineering | 3 | 7 | 4 |
| Chemical Engineering | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| Software Engineering | 17 | 18 | 3 |
While the results might not be very accurate because the distribution of the women who participated was not equal, the results align with our previous surveys that show software engineering has not only become the most famous type of engineering but also generally have higher levels of satisfaction.
This has to do with the tremendous number of career opportunities software engineers have and their salary as software engineers are among the highest paid engineers; see how the Average Software Engineer Salary compares to other types of engineers’ salaries.
Would Women In Engineering Recommend Engineering To Other Women Who Want To Do Engineering?
On average, 58% of the female engineers who participated in our study said they would recommend engineering to younger female engineers who want to do engineering. At the same time, 42% did not recommend engineering.
But which type of engineering did female engineers not recommend? Find out below.
What Type of Engineering Female Engineers Would Not Recommend?
In our survey, we found that Chemical engineering was the least recommended engineering field by female chemical engineers (Only 3 female chemical engineers recommended the field out of 8). The most recommended field in terms of percentage was Civil Engineering, followed by Software Engineering.
What Type of Engineering Female Engineers Would Not Recommend?
| Engineering Field | Recommend | DO NOT Recommend |
|---|---|---|
| Civil Engineering | 15 | 7 |
| Mechanical Engineering | 10 | 8 |
| Electrical Engineering | 9 | 5 |
| Chemical Engineering | 3 | 5 |
| Software Engineering | 25 | 13 |
The easy explanation for these results is the career options and opportunities. Civil Engineering is one of the oldest and biggest engineering fields in terms of career options. While Software Engineering also has huge career opportunities as it is still growing as a field.
Unfortunately, chemical engineering has the least career options, as it is very hard to find work in this field, making it the least favourable in this study. In addition, The female Chemical Engineers who participated in this survey were the minority, only 8 Chemical Engineers compared to 22 in Civil Engineering and 38 in Software Engineering, which means that the results obtained for chemical engineering might not be what is actually the case for this field.
As for Mechanical and Electrical engineering, it seems that female engineers were experiencing a high level of satisfaction. Most would recommend the field to a younger female audience thinking of doing engineering.
If you want to study engineering, you should not base your decision on the results above. Instead, you should do more thorough research to determine the best engineering field for you. Because of that, we made a detailed guide to help young people choose the best engineering course for them; you can check our guide here: What Engineering Degree Should I Do? Make A Choice Now.
If you found our survey interesting, below are some of our other surveys:
