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."

Comments

Re:But why?

[serviscope_minor]

I didn't refuse to go into Comp Sci because the school wouldn't teach the stuff I was interested it.

So in other words you chose a course which was completely of no iterest to you but you did it anyway?

Or perhaps universities should make the courses as boring as possible because why bother trying to interest students at all?

Or perhaps universities should only offer courses that you have personally approved???

It was/is my job to use and extend what the University taught so as to *then* do what I want.

That's your actual job description?

Yet Another SJW Article?

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Do we really need another one of these?

Re:But why?

[AmiMoJo]

Thus accepting that there is a man/woman inequality

"Equality" doesn't mean what you think it means. It doesn't mean that two things are the same, it means that they are equally valued. Obviously men and women are different, but neither gender should be less valued.

If you had said "thus accepting that there is a man/women difference" I would have agreed with you. Accepting inequality would require accepting that female engineers are less valuable, but I don't think that is the case.