Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Welding and Machining Day: Women’s Confidence with Individual Hands-On Manufacturing

Many studies suggest that teamwork in hands-on manufacturing is beneficial to learning soft skills and manufacturing minded thinking for college level engineering students. Studies also show that a confidence gap exists between men and women in engineering in hands-on and “tinkering” abilities. In classroom exercises involving hands-on tasks, men often step up in groups to perform tasks such as machining and, due to a lack of ability and/or lack of confidence, many women step back and let the men take over. All-female group projects have been devised to study the benefits women can gain from hands-on experience in a variety of tasks from a Mini-Baja team to coding workshops. While those past projects had a focus on group work, this project revolves around individual tasks in order to get female STEM students comfortable with hands-on manufacturing processes. The focus on individual work rather than group work was intended to push participants outside of their comfort zones, give them a greater sense of confidence in their own skills, and evaluate the benefits of individualized hands-on learning.