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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 nitehawk214 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:59AM
This was a clickbait troll fest on the green site. At the Soylents are classier, but still, this is a crap useless article that serves only to bait haters on both sides of the gender argument. (and yeah I was active in the comments over there before I realized I am an idiot and should not have gotten sucked in)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:09AM
I've learned the rule is to ignore any submission by Hugh Pickens, because it's not usually worth reading. This one had such a bizarre double-entendre headline that I wondered if it was a new David DeAngelo product or something. Turns out to be another nothing fluff article. Sometimes when the lightbulb burns out in my basement, I just don't want to change it. The darkness is better. Now I imagine DeAngelo is probably hard at work on his new product launch, Double Your Female Engineers. I'm joking, but it will probably happen for real, and when it does, I'm never going to replace my bulb again.
I still think anyone of any gender who is smart enough to be a female engineer is also smart enough to be a rational actor in an economic system that is offshoring and outsourcing high-tech jobs to depress wages, and not want to get into that field. You'd have to be crazy to invest the best years of your life and lots of money (or debt!) to become something that is decreasing in demand and salary with every passing year. If I was a young person of any gender, and I took a realistic look at software development or hardware engineering, I'd find another line of work in a big hurry.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)