After blogging, doing Engineering tours, and attending Fall Open House, I have noticed that many people are curious to know the female enrollment stats in the Faculty of Engineering for many reasons. Whatever the reason may be, here are some of the stats I have found and some thoughts on being a female in Engineering.
The Faculty Statistics page on the uWaterloo Engineering webpage currently show some of the stats from 2012. Keep in mind that these statistics do not include Architecture. The stats show that 18.5% of all Engineering undergrad students were female and 22.3% of all Engineering graduate students were female. There were 36 professors who were female, which means 13.4% of all Engineering professors were female. That includes our lovely Dean of Engineering, Pearl Sullivan who also once served as chair of the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Department. She is the first female Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo.
As a student who may be interested in entering the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, you’re probably curious to know the stats specific to first-year students. Well in 2012, it looked like this:
You can see in the table that it really depends on what engineering program you’re in and of course, it varies each year. Perhaps this is a surprise, but I’ve heard that uWaterloo has the largest percentage of females in engineering in Canada. I think that’s great! Being in the work force now, I can tell you that there are very few female engineers but we definitely exist! I personally work with just male engineers, but I know some bigger teams have a couple of female engineers.
I don’t personally think too much about the female to male ratio in engineering. In my opinion, it’s all about doing what you love. At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter as long as you are happy with what you are doing and you are getting along with your team.
What are your thoughts on women in engineering? Did you expect more or less of us? Do you think we need more female engineers?
Celina
1A Electrical Engineering
University of Waterloo
Engineering Girls at University of Waterloo 
Great post – It’s all about doing what you love! I studied math and I never stopped to look around and see how many other girls where in my class – I loved math too much to care!
I find that if you love what you do, you just do it and you’ll naturally fit into your environment.
Hi Celina – thanks for sharing all this great stuff on women in engineering and the co-op program. I’m actually working on a way to bring co-op like programs to U.S. schools, focused on tech and startups. Could I email you some questions? Or feel free to reach out to me directly…thanks in advance!
Hi Kevin,
Sure, I’ll try to answer what I can or direct you to the right people. Feel free to email me at celina.Chan[at]uwaterloo.ca
I’ve accepted into Mechatronics at Waterloo next year, and I agree, it is so important to love what you do. The lack of women in engineering and similar STEM fields is appalling though, and I intend to do as much as I can to encourage other girls to become interested in it simply because I want to give other girls the opportunity to discover something new!