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SWE MEMBERSHIP: WHAT DOES IT ADD?
Membership in women’s organizations raises some controversy: some believe that it
isolates and marginalizes the women, while others see it as an enriching network (see, for
example, Ross, 1994; Seymour and Hewitt, 1997). In focus groups, Rowan women were
also divided over the benefits that participation in SWE (the Society for Women
Engineers): some felt it was an enriching and comforting network, others felt it might
brand them as marginal or feminist; they felt that it called attention to the female students
as women, emphasizing their “otherness” (although they did not use that term).
It is worthwhile, therefore, to see whether SWE membership adds to the benefits of
participating in student chapters of discipline-specific professional engineering societies.
IIC-124