Society of Women Engineers

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is a worldwide group that helps and teaches women in engineering and technology. It started in 1950 and is based in the United States.^[1] SWE supports women in these fields and has more than 47,000 members. These members are part of about 100 professional groups, 300 college groups, and 60 groups in other countries.

The SWE archives have old letters from Elsie Eaves that show how SWE began. In 1919, some women at the University of Colorado started a small group called the American Society of Women Engineers and Architects.^[2] This group was only known on their campus but helped start the idea for SWE.^[3] Some women in this group were Lou Alta Melton, Hilda Counts, and Elsie Eaves. They wrote letters to engineering schools across the country asking about women students and graduates in engineering.^[4] They got answers from 139 women at 23 universities.^[5] Some schools said they did not allow women in their engineering programs. For example, a professor at the University of North Carolina said they had never had women students in engineering and did not expect to have any soon.^[6]

Some schools were okay with women in engineering but did not support a separate group for women. However, the Dean at North Carolina State University, Blake R Van Leer, supported women joining engineering. He encouraged Katharine Stinson, who later became SWE president, to join, and his daughter Maryly started a SWE branch.^[7][8]

Many women who answered the letters liked the idea of a group for women engineers. Alice Goff from Michigan said such a group would help all women, especially those new to the job.^[6] In Michigan, women started a group called the T-Square Society in 1914. It was a place where women could work together and share ideas safely, but it was not clear if it was a business or social group.^[9]

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) officially started in 1950, but its beginnings go back to the late 1940s. During World War II, many men were away fighting, so women had more chances to work in engineering. Female student groups at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, and at Cooper Union and City College of New York, began meeting and making connections. On April 3, 1949, seventy students from 19 universities met at Drexel to start organizing.^[10] Maryly Van Leer Peck, the national vice president, and her mother Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer, a women’s rights activist, helped a lot. They opened one of the first SWE branches at Georgia Tech after Maryly’s father, Blake R Van Leer, worked to allow women to attend. Blake also encouraged many women to join his engineering program at NC State. The Van Leer family supported SWE throughout their lives.^[11][12][13]

On May 27–28, 1950, about fifty women from the four original SWE districts — New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Boston — met for the first national meeting in New Jersey.^[14][15] They chose Beatrice Hicks as the first SWE president. The first official annual meeting was held in 1951 in New York City.^[16]

In 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, interest in technology grew. Many engineering schools started accepting women. SWE’s membership doubled to 1,200, and the group moved its headquarters to New York City.

In the next ten years, more young women became engineers, but few reached management jobs. ^[17] SWE started special meetings called the Henniker Conferences to talk about women’s place in engineering. In 1973, SWE made an agreement with the National Society of Professional Engineers to get more women and students involved.

At the same time, SWE joined the larger women’s movement. In 1972, SWE and other women’s science and tech groups met to form an alliance for fairness in science and engineering. This meeting helped start the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation.^[18] In 1973, SWE supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which aimed to give equal rights to women. SWE also decided not to hold meetings in states that did not approve the ERA. The ERA was first suggested in the 1920s but still has not been approved.

By 1982, SWE had 13,000 members in 250 groups across the U.S. The group’s leadership grew so big that SWE created a regional plan to better connect leaders and members. Today, SWE has over 47,000 student and professional members and continues as a nonprofit group that supports women in engineering.

SWE exists because there are still fewer women in engineering compared to men. The group encourages female students and promotes engineering as a good career for women. Engineering is mostly male because of social ideas about gender. Theories like the STEM pipeline study why some science and engineering fields have more men or women. The Van Leer family still supports SWE today.^[19][13][20]

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) wants to help women reach their full potential as engineers and leaders. SWE also works to show that engineering and technology help improve life and that diversity and inclusion are important.^[21] The group welcomes people of all genders and backgrounds to support diversity.^[22]

SWE gives many scholarships every year to women studying science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in college and graduate school.^[23] In 2019, SWE gave out about 260 scholarships worth more than $810,000.^[24] Because SWE is a nonprofit, these scholarships come from donations and support from companies. SWE’s CEO, Karen Horting,^[25] said the scholarships are possible thanks to generous donors and partners. She hopes to grow the program to help more students studying engineering and technology.^[26]

When SWE was starting, the organizers collected a lot of information and created archives. A group to manage these archives was formed in 1953. The archives officially began in 1957 and are kept at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.^[27] The archives include information about an early group of women architects and engineers from 1920. They also tell the story of SWE’s history and women’s roles in engineering. These records show that many women helped with important projects like the Space Race, which is often seen as mostly men’s work.^[28] In 1993, SWE made the Walter P. Reuther Library its official place for historical materials.

In Houston, the Houston Area Section of SWE has its own collection of letters, records, photos, and publications. These are kept in the Carey C. Shuart Women’s Archive and Research Collection.^[29]

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) helps women at all stages, from young students in kindergarten through high school, to college students, and working professionals. SWE has programs that help college and professional members connect with their local communities.

In 1952, the Society of Women Engineers gave its first and highest honor, the Achievement Award, to Dr. Mária Telkes. She received it for her important work using solar energy. Since then, the Achievement Award has been given every year to a woman engineer who has made great contributions in any area of engineering over a long time.^[33]

In 1951, just one year after SWE started, the society began publishing the Journal of the Society of Women Engineers. This journal had technical articles and news about the society. In 1954, the journal was replaced by the SWE Newsletter, a magazine that mainly shared news about SWE and the engineering industry. In 1980, the magazine’s name changed to US Woman Engineer. Then in 1993, the name changed again to SWE, which is still the name today. The full title is 'SWE, magazine of the Society of Women Engineers.^[34]

In 2011, SWE published the fifth volume of the magazine to celebrate its 60th anniversary. This issue looked more closely at SWE’s history using old records. Today, SWE Magazine is published five times a year.^[35]