Margaret Bailey is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering within the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, USA. She teaches courses and conducts research related to Thermodynamics, engineering and public policy, engineering education, and gender in engineering and science.
What is the biggest challenge you face as a woman in STEM?
Isolation, cultural/climate related issues can make isolation feel worse. There’s also challenges around work-life integration. In the academic fields, because of the timing of our careers and when we’re going for tenure occurring at the same time, we’re having children, and the responsibilities that you have when you’re creating a family, this can be the same for men if they’re the primary care giver, but most women continue to serve in that role. Vital that there is shared household responsibility to allow both to thrive in their careers.
Another challenge is that in some fields, it’s still very male dominated, so that causes a lack of role models. For both students and faculty, this has impacts. We may not see as many women in leadership roles. You may see fewer women professors in fields like engineering or physics.
What have you seen as changes that have happened among women in STEM?
When I was an undergrad at Penn. State, I didn’t have any women faculty teaching me in my STEM classes. SWE (The Society of Women Engineers) had recently started at Penn State and the programming was minimal and my friends and I did not participate in it. We thought it was odd that they’d have programs for us. We didn’t really understand why. Back then, people didn’t talk about it, so we didn’t realize why it was important. But, I did often wonder, “Where are all the women faculty? The women in my major tend to be at the top of our class and yet we don’t have any women teaching us.” There just wasn’t the kind of conversations that there are today about these issues. Currently 25% of faculty are women in my department of mechanical engineering. Most, if not all students in Mechanical Engineering would be able to be taught by women and men. So, women and men students benefit from having that in their educational experience.
The numbers have changed dramatically, so have programs and initiatives focused on work-life integration as well as programs to help reduce isolation, and help support building community networks. All those types of initiatives have grown tremendously helpful.
What is one change that, in your opinion, would hugely benefit aspiring women scientists?
In order to ensure that women continue to enter STEM education and careers, efforts need to continue focused on reducing isolation and promoting growth of networks and cultural change for all members of the campus community - students, staff and faculty. I’d say out of all of those, cultural change is the most important and the most difficult as, it challenges current norms and behaviors that are acceptable within an organization. Cultural change efforts often challenge people to be reflective, sometimes a bit vulnerable, and open to the possibility of alternative models of behavior. So, this type of organizational development is challenging to create, and administer; however the results can be well worth the effort.
