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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 29 2015, @12:46AM   Printer-friendly
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."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @03:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @03:33AM (#176924)

    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