THOUSANDS OF FEMALE ENGINEERS VISIT AUSTIN

More than 14,000 people descended on Austin this week for the sold-out Society of Women Engineers conference, also known as WE17.

The popular conference provides professional development and networking opportunities for primarily women engineers, with topics such as “Thriving in a Male-Dominated Environment.”

But the conference is especially popular with college students because of its robust career fair, with 300 employers attending. About half of the conference’s attendance is made up of college students, according to Jonna Gerken, president of the Society of Women Engineers.

Students come armed with resumes and are able to snag interviews with recruiters and sometimes even job offers.

And that’s the reason, some attendees say, men have started to crash the party. The career fair particularly was noteworthy because men made up nearly half of the attendance, with an especially large contingent from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Anyone is welcome to register for the conference, Gerken said.

“We are a diverse organization and so it would be disingenuous of us to say men couldn’t come,” she said. “Men are important part of furthering the mission.”

The mission of the organization is to help women “achieve full potential in careers as engineers and leaders.”

Claudia Gutierrez, who is currently studying bone tissue engineering on a Fulbright scholarship in Switzerland, says this is her sixth year attending the conference. She said she has no problem with men attending the conference.

But she said she feels as though men from nearby schools are taking advantage of the career fair and not bothering to engage with the rest of the conference. “It’s great when we see people, men and women actively sitting with other people and engaged,” she said.

Several women commented on social media about the noticeable amount of men in attendance at the career fair. On Twitter, someone calling themselves Tina Marie wrote “really bummed there are more men at the career fair than women.”

At the overall conference, which includes events such as panels and field trips to see Austin employers, the attendance was 75 percent women, according to a spokeswoman for the Society of Women Engineers.

RALPH BARRERA / AMERICAN-STATESMAN Akanksha Pathak, a college student from East Brunswick, N.J., talks with Google Representative Srialekhya Jonnalagedda on Thursday at the job fair of the Society of Women Engineers in Austin. About 300 employers are participating in the fair which also...