past couple of decades in response to political and social pressures. In addition to their engineering expertise, women engineers are said to bring unique caring and non-technical problem solving skills along with an enlarged customer support base. Typically preceding these management changes were other policy shifts such as: 1) a company move from heavy to light manufacturing; 2) a greater emphasis on service and professional jobs; 3) improved working conditions, and 4) a general improvement of women’s status on the job. Overall, however, engineering is said to remain a highly gender-stratified occupation. Among the engineers currently employed, men substantially outnumber women. On average, men are also said to hold higher supervisory and management positions than females, whose promotion prospects are usually more limited. This reason, family and child obligations, and layoffs combined to account for a drop-out rate of approximately 20% among all female engineers from 1982 to 1990—a statistic over twice of that of men. It has been suggested by Crompton and Sanderson that discrimination in high-level technical jobs is actually decreasing on the whole. Moreover, they suggest that equal-opportunities legislation ensures that men and women with appropriate human capital are treated equally in recruitment chances. Direct and indirect forms of exclusion were no longer said to be significant in sustaining gender segregation in engineering positions. Statistically, gender pay gaps in engineering are actually lower than the national average. In STEM jobs, female wages are approximately 84% of men’s, compared to 71% in non-STEM jobs. Moreover, it has also been stated that traditionally stereotypical images of engineering as “dirty”, “rugged”, or “manly” jobs are gradually being eroded—opening employment opportunities for prospective women nationwide. However, recent evidence suggests that gender discrimination is still a significant issue affecting women’s confidence and performance in STEM careers. According to Logel, interacting with sexist men may trigger a stressed-induced phenomenon called “social identity threat” in women. Women engineers who faced regular exposure to sexist men on the job were said perform worse on aptitude tests than women who weren't exposed to such individuals. While women who worked in low-stress environments reported higher levels of confidence and self-fulfillment, discriminated women were reportedly more likely to suppress their feelings and/or let their problems go unannounced. Such behavior is said to be detrimental to both the women engineers themselves and the workplace, where sexist behavior is likely to persist. Initiatives to promote engineering to women As science