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from the we'll-all-be-getting-dates-now dept.
Lina Nilsson writes in an op-ed piece in the NYT that she looks with despair at estimates that only about 14 percent of engineers in the work force are women but that there may be a solution to the disparity that is much simpler than targeted recruitment efforts. "An experience here at the University of California, Berkeley, where I teach, suggests that if the content of the work itself is made more societally meaningful, women will enroll in droves," writes Nilsson. "That applies not only to computer engineering but also to more traditional, equally male-dominated fields like mechanical and chemical engineering."
Nilsson says that Blum Center for Developing Economies recently began a new program that, without any targeted outreach, achieved 50 percent female enrollment in just one academic year. In the fall of 2014, UC Berkeley began offering a new Ph.D. minor in development engineering for students doing thesis work on solutions for low-income communities. They are designing affordable solutions for clean drinking water, inventing medical diagnostic equipment for neglected tropical diseases and enabling local manufacturing in poor and remote regions.
According to Nilsson, women seem to be drawn to engineering projects that attempt to achieve societal good and cites MIT, University of Minnesota, Penn State, Santa Clara University, Arizona State, and the University of Michigan that have programs aimed at reducing global poverty and inequality that have achieved similar results. For example, at Princeton, the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders has an executive board that is nearly 70 percent female, reflecting the overall club composition.
"It shows that the key to increasing the number of female engineers may not just be mentorship programs or child care centers, although those are important" concludes Nilsson. "It may be about reframing the goals of engineering research and curriculums to be more relevant to societal needs. It is not just about gender equity — it is about doing better engineering for us all."
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:39AM
I shall eagerly await the programs to get more men in healthcare and education.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:12AM
> I shall eagerly await the programs to get more men in healthcare and education.
That's easy. Just make sure women have equal access to other professions that pay at least as well and they will leave healthcare and education opening up slots for men. It isn't like they want those crappy jobs, its that most other professions are not as welcoming. For example, it wasn't until this last decade that doctors began to approach gender parity. If women wanted to be in healthcare why were they only nurses and not doctors for so long? Because they weren't welcome in the profession. Nursing was the only choice available. Despite that, men still make more money as nurses than women do. [usatoday.com]
The same thing happens with blacks in pro sports. The reason there are so few whites in pro sports nowadays is because blacks have little other options. So you've got practically the entire black population competing for the handful of pro sports jobs while the whites have other choices available with less intense competition so they take those other opportunities. Blacks make up about 12% of the general population while 67% of NFL players are black. But despite that, the number of black general managers is only 7 (out of 32 teams) and only 5 head coaches are black.
It isn't about a minority having a preference for some profession, it's about them not having access to other professions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:38AM
Remember kids, no matter the field or outcome, it is always a white man's fault.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:59AM
It is weird you see fault in that description.
I think you are projecting.
(Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:50AM
No, sometimes it is a white person's fault. Sometimes it is a man's fault. Often the two coincide, as amazing as that may sound. Which one (or both) are you? Yeah, we sussed you out, white man! Now you will take your forty lashes with a wet noodle for being so stupid as to bring up your white male privilege. I sympathize, it must be terrible to be blamed for all the things that white men have done in the past. All the rape, all the genocide, all the Apple products!!! But not to recognize the white privilege you enjoy now: have you ever had you spinal cord severed in the course of a routine police operation? Have you ever been shot in the BACK multiple times for having a broken tail light? Have you, or have you not, ever been followed in an establishment, or shot because you were holding a BB-gun? So you see, it is in fact all your fault, white man, and we all know you are the white man since you are making the complaint. But guess what, I am a "white" man too, and I do not agree with you. In fact, I see you as the problem. You are, as much as you may not be aware of it, a racist, and as a white person I have to disown you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:16AM
Have you?
What I see as the problem is anything illogical, such as the above.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:44AM
I shall eagerly await the programs to get more men in healthcare and education.
William K. Schubert Minority Nursing Scholarship [minoritynurse.com]
Criteria: Student should be a member of one of the underrepresented groups in the registered nursing profession. Underrepresented groups include male nurses / nursing students and nurses / nursing students
Effective Strategies for Increasing Diversity in Nursing Programs [nche.edu]
As the U.S. struggles to find solutions to the current nursing shortage, one strategy to address the emerging crisis continues to surface: Nursing schools need to strengthen their efforts to attract more men and minority students.
Male Nurses Break Through Barriers to Diversify Profession [rwjf.org]
Men provide unique perspectives and skills that are important to the profession and society at large, according to the IOM report, called The Future of Nursing: Leading Health, Advancing Change. The nursing profession, the report states, needs to place a greater emphasis on recruiting more men to the field to meet a larger goal of a more diverse nursing workforce.
This information is not hard to find...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @08:59AM
And yet it doesn't get thrust into our faces every week on the national news, so it doesn't enter the social consciousness. Instead what we're fed with is a constant drip of women-this and women-that, patriarchy and white guilt.
Makes sense though, since marketing and PR are favored careers of the oppressed female minority.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:19AM
Not that it matters or will convince anyone, but by the numbers women are a majority of the total population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:40PM
And of the student population. Which one might imagine would be celebrated but weirdly it instead seems to be hushed up as if its a dirty secret.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @03:33AM
As a male student I don't really mind the ratio (not just socially, I'm a man so I have to suck it up and not complain or be called a mysogynist shitlord of the patriarchy in the middle of class*). But what does bother me is women really truly are privileged with more opportunities and far, far more money dedicated exclusively or via affirmative-action to them. It is really frustrating to fill out 40 financial aid applications and 34 of them say they hold preference to women and minorities. I have a very high GPA, no income, and received just one scholarship out of 40. That is frustrating. Worse, I am expecting to be attacked for even pointing it out.
*only slightly exaggerating
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:43PM
Goal Posts Successfully Moved:
I shall eagerly await the programs to get more men in healthcare and education.
I provide evidence.
And yet it doesn't get thrust into our faces every week on the national news, so it doesn't enter the social consciousness. Instead what we're fed with is a constant drip of women-this and women-that, patriarchy and white guilt.
So you admit the AC I was responding to was wrong, then?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:48AM
And I shall eagerly await the program to get more women into professions such as garbage collection, construction work and coal mining. For decades, the white patriarchy has done everything in it's power to deny women their rightful access to horrible jobs, we cannot stand for this!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:21AM
From what I understand, it is because women don't have any other options but to go into well paying careers in healthcare and education. If only men gave women opportunities to go into the prestigious and lucrative fields of garbage collection, construction, and coal mining, then women would finally reach parity in those fields.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:27AM
Well, that's easy: Pay more for the job.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:48AM
I await the programs titled:
Development Mineral Extraction Engineer
Development Sanitation Worker
Development Construction Worker
Why are we worried about lack of parity in one area, but not in another?
Does this article imply that men are not interested in fields that are "societally meaningful"?
I've made comments on this before, and I'm afraid of becoming seen as broken record, or worse, a misogynist, because I repeatedly have to make the point that there's only every outcry regarding imbalance in the workforce when it comes to the nicer, or better earning jobs, and not the jobs that nobody wants to do, or even possibly carry greater health hazards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @03:19PM
So ask yourself what kind of person works in those sorts of jobs?
Largely unskilled labor with good upper body strength.
The number of women which fit that description is vanishingly small. it should be no surprise that the proportion of women in those jobs reflects the proportion of women with those qualifications.
> I've made comments on this before, and I'm afraid of becoming seen as broken record,
If you don't want to be a broken record, then you have to listen to the responses and learn from them. It really is absurd to equate the jobs with physical requirements as the equal of jobs which are entirely mental.