This study, by interviewing 20 women having engineering degrees, was to investigate how women
had entered in engineering field and what they had experienced during their educational and
occupational career. It was found that parents and teachers were the most significant others to the
girl students in deciding college major. Teachers, however, sometimes kept the girls from choosing
the engineering major. Those who had to choose engineering because of the low scores of college
entrance examination tended to transfer other careers after graduation. The women engineering
students had difficulties in using and in being familiar with the machineries and/or technologies, as
well as a male-dominated culture of college of engineering. While the women students were more
likely protected and considered as minorities than not, they were less encouraged and less supported
by their professors with the academic achievements. Even though most of the women engineers were
proud of their current work, they were suspicious with their long-term careers because of the
difficulty of survival in the highly competitive and sex-discriminatory work place, which were
exemplified with maternity health problem, family-work balance, and/or company's pressure to transfer
duties from engineers to managers. The ‘leaking pipeline’ phenomena in this field seemed not to be
eradicated soon but to last for a time being.