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How To Increase the Number of Female Engineers
HughPickens.com writes: Lina Nilsson writes in an op-ed piece in the NY Times that she looks with despair at estimates that only about 14 percent of engineers in the work force are women. But 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. She notes that MIT, the University of Minnesota, Penn State, Santa Clara University, Arizona State, and the University of Michigan 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."
According to Nilsson, women seem to be drawn to engineering projects that attempt to achieve societal good. She notes that MIT, the University of Minnesota, Penn State, Santa Clara University, Arizona State, and the University of Michigan 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."
So all we have to do is get men to stop being pigs
Nope: the article says nothing about that.
selectively recruit women
Nope, the article says nothing about that.
completely chance the workplace,
Nope the article says nothing about that.
and for the coup de grace, only work on things that women might want to work on so we have more women to work on the things they want to work on because the things men will work on do not suit women?
Nope. The article says nothing about only working on only those things.
If you believe this article.
Nope, if we're to believe your non-reading rant about the article. Pro tip: if you want to complain about the article, read it first otherwise you look like a right plonker.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, of course not. Who is suggesting we force it?
They made their course more attractive to women, nothing else. It even says they didn't make any other effort right in the summary. No forced sign up, no press gangs etc. They just made the courses more interesting to female students and they signed up of their own free will.
Mind blowing, huh?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you read John Locke, as Jefferson did, and as did just about every educated, politically-minded person of the time, you'd know in what sense "equal" is being used. It's a very narrow concept. "All men are created equal" means that there is no man or group of men on earth who can claim a right to be the political rulers of anyone else.
Which is rich considering that many of the guys who were behind the writing of that document were slave owners. You're quite correct of course but the irony is rather thick.