A new article from the Society of Women Engineers has analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau to determine how the earnings gap between men and women engineers has changed over the past decade.
As of 2023, women are only 15.3 percent of the country’s engineering workforce. Within specific disciplines, women are most represented among environmental engineers (34 percent), industrial engineers (22 percent), chemical engineers (20 percent), and civil engineers (17 percent).
Although women are particularly underrepresented among mechanical engineers (10 percent), they earn 96 cents for every 1 dollar earned by their male peers – the smallest earnings gap of any engineering discipline as of 2023. Women’s earnings compared to their male peers is at or above 90 percent in the chemical, industrial, electrical, aerospace, and environmental disciplines. In civil engineering, the country’s largest discipline by total number of employed engineers, women earn 88 cents for every 1 dollar earned by their male peers. Petroleum engineering has the largest earnings gap of the report’s included disciplines, with women earning only 83 percent of their male counterparts’ earnings.
Notably, the engineering gender pay gap narrowed or stayed the same across nearly all analyzed disciplines since 2013. However, two areas – petroleum and environmental engineering – widened their gender pay gaps by 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively.