In Girls Coming to Tech! Professor Amy Bix develops the exciting story that fills the gap in the burgeoning literature focused on women in science of the overlooked and understudied history of women in engineering. Through in-depth case studies of Georgia Tech, Caltech, and MIT, she documents how both the women seeking degrees in engineering and each institution struggled with women's acceptance into the profession in unique ways that depended upon the particular region of the country, public or private status, decade in which the struggle reached its pinnacle, and the institution's leadership. This volume not only provides a good read, but also the background that will be key to solving the current problem of why the percentage of women majoring in engineering remains below 20 percent, and has even decreased slightly in the last few years.
Sue V. Rosser, Provost, San Francisco State University, and author of Breaking into the Lab: Engineering Progress for Women in Science
One of the greatest innovations in recent American engineering is nothing technical: it is the new awareness that women can and should participate in the enterprise. The book shows the power of cultural forces that have for so long kept women away from engineering—and the power of institutional and individual courage in challenging these forces. This long-needed study is a triumph in substance and tone.
Rosalind Williams, Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology, MIT
Bix has amply documented the attitudes and circumstances surrounding the coming of coeducation to American engineering, chiefly in the years after the Curtiss-Wright cadettes of World War II. In so doing she has broken new ground in the field of gender and technology. In particular she shows that while most trustees, deans, faculty members and their advisors came grudgingly to approve of the move to admit (a few) women students, the male students, individually and through their various fraternities and publications, were largely and vehemently opposed. Their stunted psychosocial responses, including ostracism, exclusion, ridicule, misogyny, voyeurism, pornography, stalking, and more, were out of all proportion to the actual threat. Engineering evidently needed women, and fortunately an intrepid few stayed to fight.
Margaret Rossiter, Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History of Science, Cornell University; author of Women Scientists in America trilogy; and MacArthur Prize Fellow (1989-1994)
In Girls Coming to Tech! Amy Sue Bix offers a fascinating account of how women's enrollment in American undergraduate engineering programs gradually rose and of the many challenges women encountered as students and then professionals.... As someone who has been the 'first female to hold my position' for more than 25 years, I appreciate the level of care and detail that Bix invests in Girls Coming to Tech! Despite the topic being an area of intense interest for me, I learned a great deal from her account.
Maria Klawe
Science
The book is a must-read for those interested in engineering history, women's history, and the history of education as well as for everyone seeking to improve the situation of women students, faculty, and administrators.
Technology and Culture
Winner, 2015 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize given by the History of Science Society
