Society of Women Engineers

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE), founded in 1950, is a not-for-profit educational and service organization in the United States. SWE has over 33,000 members in nearly 100 professional sections and 300 student sections throughout the United States.

The SWE Archives contain a series of letters from the Elsie Eaves Papers, (bequeathed to the Society), which document how in 1919, a group of women at the University of Colorado attempted to organize a women's engineering society. This group included Lou Alta Melton, Hilda Counts and Elsie Eaves. These young women wrote letters to engineering schools across the nation, asking for information on women engineering students and graduates.

They found 63 women engineering students at 20 universities, 43 of those at the University of Michigan alone. From a letter that Hazel Quick wrote to Hilda Counts, we know that the Michigan women had organized a group in 1914, called the T-Square Society, although no one was sure (even then) if it was a business, honorary or social organization.

Many negative responses were received from schools that did not admit women into their engineering programs. From the University of North Carolina, Thorndike Saville, associate Professor of Sanitary Engineering wrote: "I would state that we have not now, have never had, and do not expect to have in the near future, any women students registered in our engineering department."

Some responses were supportive of women in engineering, but not of a separate society. Many of the women contacted as a result of the inquiries wrote about their support for such an organization. Besides the Hazel Quick letter from Michigan, there was a reply from Alice Goff, expressing her support of the idea of a society for women in engineering and architecture, "Undoubtedly an organization of such a nature would be of great benefit to all members, especially to those just entering the profession."

Though the Society of Women Engineers did not become a formal organization until 1950, its origins are in the late 1940s when shortages of men due to World War II provided the new opportunities for women to pursue employment in engineering. Female student groups at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, Cooper Union and City College of New York in New York City, began forming local meetings and networking activities.

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