Celebrate Women’s History Month
Every object you interact with was shaped by a series of design decisions: a fillet here, a tolerance stack there, a material selected based on performance constraints. Behind each of those decisions is a team of engineers. As of 2023, only 16% of that workforce is made up of women [1].
Figure 1: A graphic of women in STEM careers since the 70s [1].
For a discipline built on optimization and iteration, that imbalance should stand out.
This Women’s History Month, it is worth looking not only at the pioneers who paved the way, but at the engineers actively shaping the systems we study, prototype, and build. Their contributions are not peripheral—they are directly tied to the quality of the designs themselves.
A core principle emphasized in engineering education is user-centered design. A system is only as effective as its performance across the range of its users. When the engineers designing a product do not reflect the diversity of those users, gaps emerge, and it is often in ways that are not immediately visible in analysis or testing.
Crash test standards provide a clear example. For decades, crash test dummies were modeled on average male bodies, establishing safety benchmarks that did not fully account for female physiology. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has reported that women face a higher risk of injury in comparable crashes [2], and recent data suggests that incorporating more representative models can improve safety outcomes [3]. This is not a failure of intent, but of incomplete design inputs.
From a design perspective, this is a familiar problem: an underdefined system leading to suboptimal performance.
Women engineers are not simply adding representation—they are expanding the design space. They bring different lived experiences that can reveal overlooked constraints, edge cases, and failure modes. In the same way that a more complete loading condition or boundary assumption leads to a more accurate model, a more representative engineering team leads to more robust solutions.
At the 2026 Digital Engineering Awards, D. Marry Gunaratnam was named ‘Women Engineer of the Year’ for her work in integrating AI and cybersecurity systems, as well as her leadership and mentorship within the field [4]. Her work reflects a broader reality: engineering impact is not limited to technical output, but extends to the systems and people that sustain innovation.
Despite this, retention remains a challenge. Women leave engineering careers at higher rates than men, not due to lack of technical capability, but due to workplace environments that have not been designed with the same intentionality as the products engineers create. Culture, advancement pathways, and team dynamics are themselves systems—ones that can be analyzed, tested, and improved.
Organizations such as the Society of Women in Engineering (SWE) are working to address these gaps. SWE looks to “empower women to achieve their full potential in careers as engineers and leaders.” They host events across the nation to bring together women in engineering. This creates a community where women can feel supported [5]. But lasting change also depends on how future engineers approach design in products and in professional environments.
Women’s History Month offers a chance to reflect on contributions that were historically overlooked. But for engineers, the more relevant question is forward-looking: how can we design systems, technical and organizational, that make full use of available talent?
Engineering is, at its core, about solving problems under constraints. The challenges ahead are too complex to address with an incomplete set of perspectives. Expanding participation is not separate from good engineering practice; it is a necessary condition for it.
References
[1] “Employment and Earnings by Occupation and Sex, 2023.” U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, 2023, www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/occupations-stem.
[2] “NHTSA Study Affirms Need for Female Crash Test Dummy Approved by Trump Administration.” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 13 Dec. 2022, www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-study-affirms-need-female-crash-test-dummy-approved-by-trump-administration.
[3] Analysis of Injury Risks to Women in Passenger Vehicle Crashes. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2023, crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813754.
[4] “Dr. Marry Gunaratnam Named ‘Women Engineer of the Year’ at the 4th Digital Engineering Awards.” EIN Presswire, 11 Feb. 2026, www.einpresswire.com/article/899624850/dr-marry-gunaratnam-named-women-engineer-of-the-year-at-the-4th-digital-engineering-awards.
[5] “About SWE.” Society of Women Engineers, 2024, swe.org/about-swe/.
To cite this article:
Sunday, Emelia. “Women’s History Month.” The BYU Design Review, 18 March 2026, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/womens-history-month.
