Among women who left less than five years ago, two-thirds said they pursued better opportunities in other fields while a third stayed home with children because companies didn’t accommodate work-life concerns, Fouad said.

According to responses Fouad presented, one Latina chemical engineering graduate touted how her “first-class engineering education” allowed her to “pursue extraordinary opportunities as a strategy consultant.”

“These findings are likely to apply to women working in fields where there are less than 30 percent women. These women are more vulnerable to being pushed out because they typically aren’t in the internal ‘good old boys’ network,” Fouad said

She says organizations must “realize that it is not a ‘women’s issue’ and it’s not about women wanting to spend time with their children.” Fouad said.

Employer leaders must “model the change and create a culture that has zero-tolerance for incivility and undermining,” she adds. “Climate issues and lack of advancement opportunities lie at the heart of women opting out and/or not leaning in.”

Singh says the researchers are now about half way through the parallel study on male engineering alumni that has generated about 3,000 responses.

“Once we collect this data, we will be able to present points of similarities and differences between men and women in terms of their career experiences and why (and what points) they leave (or intend to leave) the engineering field,” she says. “We expect to wrap up in 2017. Having exactly the same data for women engineers will allow us to present a very rich and detailed portrait of women’s and men’s career paths in engineering over time.”

Singh adds that data collection for the University of Wisconsin study on “what makes for a great engineering workplace” will be completed by the end of this year. Link to the online survey here.

"We didn’t expect to see such an overwhelmingly positive response to this story and women thanking us for shedding the light on a phenomenon that captures their experiences with robust numbers that cannot easily be dismissed," says Fouad.