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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: 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.