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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, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:54AM
I don't get this. why is there a new trend to comment on lack of women in tech fields?
there is a glass ceiling for upper mgmt, but that applies to non-whites, non-christians, non member-of-the-elite and so on. its hard to be an exec if you are a member of MOST classes of people. so what? we knew that the elite are picky assholes and its a club that you don't just break into (sad but true).
at the working class level, I see no problems with women in the field. there are less of them. so what? fewer women want to go into tech. should we force them? should we make them feel bad for NOT wanting to be a tech nerd?
maybe we are just running out of real problems. or, really, the real ones are hard to solve and we'd rather not even try.
are women being denied jobs if they wanted them? I doubt it. but lets talk h1b and what life is like being an american trying to get a job in an all indian workforce. its not man vs women, its racial and its the elephant in the room that people would rather not address or discuss.
and fwiw, I've never seen a women NOT get a job in a tech group that was at least reasonably qualified. not once in my 25+ yrs have I seen 'not a cultural fit' used to push her out or not let her join the group. otoh, I have seen that excuse used to refuse work for americans hundreds of times.
should we talk about real issues in the work force or sugar coated non-issues ?
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:08AM
I'm not sure that it's a particularly new trend, I seem to remember articles like these on a regular basis. What no-one ever explains is why it's desirable to try to shoe horn women into courses and jobs they don't naturally gravitate to.
Not that I care one way or the other if women want to be engineers, (or programmers, or cops or photolithographers...).
It just seems an awful lot of effort is put into trying to convince women to try these things. Maybe there are very few women who want these sorts of careers, and that's not a bad thing? I don't know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:18AM
> What no-one ever explains is why it's desirable to try to shoe horn women into courses and jobs they don't naturally gravitate to.
There are at least two perspectives:
The utilitarian: Because diversity of perspective makes the work output better. For example, at least half of facebook's customers are female. But with such a tiny fraction of female developers they have difficulty conceiving of product features that females want. A competitor that better understood the female perspective could one-up facebook.
The egalitarian: Women are being shoe-horned into the current jobs, this is about un-shoe-horning them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:45AM
I was taught that in a couple classes at university. One point I always raised and never got an answer to: What happens if your customers aren't diverse?
You can't claim that diversity improves business because people that are alike can understand each other better in one breath and say in the next that you shouldn't match your customer demographics if they are homogenous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:10AM
> One point I always raised and never got an answer to: What happens if your customers aren't diverse?
You are absolutely right. As long as you don't care about ever attracting new customers, then there is no point in caring about anybody else.
And as we all know, stagnation is the ideal american business model which the majority of businesses strive for.
In case that's not clear, you have an answer now. I find it hard to believe you never got that answer before. I find it easier to believe you simply chose not to hear it and will do so again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:25AM
I'd imagine if you sold NASCAR paraphernalia and decided to have a perfectly diverse workforce, your sales numbers wound change, but not up.
That does not mean that such a situation or outcome is right, merely that putting the blinders on and stating in ever more elaborate ways that diversity is always unequivocally an economic benefit is itself wrong. Diversity has plenty of things going for it, but the hardcore capitalist claim does not hold up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:57AM
I see subtlety is lost on you.
Your NASCAR example is an outlier, not the common case.
Drawing conclusions from outliers is the sign of someone looking to push an agenda.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:06PM
Large corporation with cubicles and pointy haired boss (PHB) seems to fit the model ;-)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 29 2015, @09:08PM
Perhaps it's not certain that matched demographics is the best solution? A different demographics may have a different viewpoint?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday April 29 2015, @06:06AM
Its not a new trend at all.
I went to high-school in the mid 60s and girls were encouraged to take automotive shop, (and did), boys were offered special "Home economics" class, (where I learned to run a sewing machine). Don't know any of the girls in my class that stayed in automotive industry, and I decided not to become a seamstress^^er.
Most people gravitate to things they are interested in, and a lot of people seem to think that is a bad thing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @08:21AM
I think I was the only guy who took typing in high school that semester... all the rest were girls.
I went through on my mom's old mechanical Smith-Corona, which I still have.
That course served me well. I had no problem in college ( in the early 70's ) preparing typed papers.
Naturally, the new computer keyboards delighted me! ;)
The sewing machine skills will come in very handy for you... soooo many times I have wanted to either fix some little rip or fabricate some piece of special apparel but did not know how to sew.
I bought one of those little battery powered thingies, but I never got a decent looking job out of it. My work only gave evidence I was apparently quite drunk on the job.
I saw a beautiful old Singer pedal-powered machine exactly like my mom used to have at my neighbor's garage sale. I passed on it because I had no idea how to use it. But judging from what my mom did with the same model of machine, she made stuff better than one could get in the stores... errr... until those computer guys in Japan developed that seamless garment loom.
Don't ever pass up knowledge. If all else fails, ( unless you get a stroke or something ), you will still have it and no-one can steal it from you.