Hi Saturn, RE: "The reason for this is very obvious"
In universities, 43% (or 46%) of the math students are women.
RE: " I ran into it spades, overseeing the education of my daughter. During mid-school, all her friends would utter phrases like "math is geeky" ,and did not want to take up advanced math classes in high school."
Holy wow. Please tell me what school, thru PM. That school has bad culture that needs improving.
A very good thing you moved her into a new school. This should be more of an option for students.
RE: "I encouraged my daughter to take the most advanced high school math classes available, and she did very well. But in college she will still not consider Engineering as a profession."
I'm not surprised. The research projects are way too guy-oriented - e.g. car performance vs car safety, which gives the guys a leg up (how many women are working on car performance in their garages compared to guys), etc. etc. No offense intended, but some of the male profs (my friends included) are seemingly clueless to the more interesting women-oriented research studies. No wonder these studies go unattended too. When the research world still spins around guy-oriented projects, what do we expect? I sensed this during my first week of introduction into the different depts. The writing was on the wall. And the only way to fix it, is thru industry that drives products and innovations for a wide customer base.
What are her stated reasons for not entering it?
RE: "Boys tend to do slightly better than Girls in Mathematical skills."
Girls actually do better up thru 3rd or 4th grade. After that, I believe they fall off, and I think it's culture that takes over, classroom culture, etc.
I think there's too much blame on girls and not enough responsibility on the shoulders of others - boys, teachers who permit boys to dominate the dialogue in 5th grade according to research studies, parents, and Hollywood.
What would happen if movies portrayed the sci girl as the most popular, rather than the half-dressed cheerleader? According to the online dating databases, the Bay Area is apparently the only area in the USA where the #1 criteria for dating is a person's intellectualism. Maybe hightech can tell Hollywood, we won't violate copyright if you make better movies of us. A win win.
RE: "We need women organizations to encourage more young girls to enter engineering."
We do. Problem though, when there's so few of us to begin with, one person's reach is too thin.
Btw, men can do wonders to convince women to enter engineering depts, so we all have a role here.
It sends a very good message about an eng dept when a guy is out there asking women to enter their dept. No one did this for any of the women considering engineering at the undergrad & grad school I attended. The only one that did, was a male executive that visited our campus. He really wanted to see me enter engineering and that type of advocacy is very powerful, especially when it comes from the industry.
I think a revamp of how the funding of engineering depts is done, would help take care of the problem.
If the funds could be secured by the students rather than by the professors, that would be a huge jump start for women, because then they can bypass the current male-oriented research blockage to get the funds they need. Professors tend to get a bit concerned if a student asks to get funding directly through the source, because he may perceive some of his guy-oriented funds might be rerouted to her area of interest. A professor is more interested in funding their guy-oriented research project than encouraging women into science, because women are just going to reduce their own research funds.
So, the best thing industry can do, is change the research structure and let students go directly to the funding source in order to jump start this increase in women. Of course, if 85%-100% of the grantors are male, they may not see value the other half sees, but you can't blame people for perceiving just their own needs, which is why diversity is so key.
Raising research funds isn't that hard, as long as you're creative on the idea, and borrow a famous name that gives a grantor confidence. It's a bit of a pay to play system.
RE: "Unfortunately Engineering has a geeky image amongst both boys and girls, which probably accounts for the low number of US born engineers."
I thought eBay's marketing dept just turned the geek into something cool?
Btw, I never perceived math as bad image. In my home and neighborhood & school, it was considered intelligence. It was considered fun, witty (the games I played at home), and a source of so much investigation. Intelligence was highly valued in the part of town where I grew up, especially by my family & peers. But once I got out of our community, wow, was I surprised to see how intelligence wasn't valued - America's dumbed-down media culture with photos of rock stars never turned me on. A photo of someone intelligent or earnestly hard-working would. (Which is not to say that rock stars are not intelligent, obviously they are to create a business, but it's how the media portrays them.) I retained the preferences of my family, and always refused to be influenced by the dumbed-down culture that's imposed on all of us in our society.
Regards,
Amy J |
