Interesting article about women in STEM

[chiguirre]

 

More than half of engineering bachelor’s degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology went to women in 2015, federal data shows. The same was true at Dartmouth College this year. The majority of computer science majors at California’s Harvey Mudd College are women. Here at Carnegie Mellon University, women account for nearly half of first-year computer science students — 48 percent, a school record.

 

according to this article:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/women-break-barriers-in-engineering-and-computer-science-at-some-top-colleges/2016/09/16/538027a4-7503-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_techwomen-411am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

[Pegasus]

Thank you for posting the article. DD19 is studying computer science. It's great to see that the top-tier schools have such a high percentage of women in these majors.  However, it doesn't hold true for other schools.  The article also states:

 

In 2015, about 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering and 16 percent of those in computer science went to women, according to federal data. Those shares were each up two percentage points compared with five years earlier. At that rate, it could take decades to reach parity.

[Gwen in VA]

In the mid-80's MIT made a conscious decision to change the weighting of various factors in admission.

 

The admissions people changed from looking mostly at math-science grades and scores and activities to a more "holistic" view of candidates that took more into account grades in the humanities and non-engineering extracurriculars and other non-engineering attributes of candidates.

 

The result of this change?

The class of 1986 was around 20% women. The class of 1989 was nearly 50% women. I was there during that period, and the changes in class makeup were noticeable!

 

Was this change an improvement, or was this merely bowing to political pressure? Good question!

 

 

 

[MarkT]

Thank you for posting the article. DD19 is studying computer science. It's great to see that the top-tier schools have such a high percentage of women in these majors.  However, it doesn't hold true for other schools.  The article also states:

 

In 2015, about 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering and 16 percent of those in computer science went to women, according to federal data. Those shares were each up two percentage points compared with five years earlier. At that rate, it could take decades to reach parity.

Why parity?  In the end, if an individual is not interested in a particular subject matter then they won't be happy in the long run. By the way, I work with some absolutely fabulous women engineers and the guys have no problem consulting them for help with the hard stuff.  Nerds like to be with other nerds .. it's not really a gender thing.

 

from comments:

Luxi Turna

"As a former IT manager, I can promise you that I don't want to hire anyone who had to be talked in to computer science.

If I hire a woman, it's because she's a "geek." If I hire a man, it's because he's a "geek."

"

Edited September 17, 2016 by MarkT

[G5052]

Yes, this has really changed.

 

When I got my double B.S. in math and computer science, I was one of only two women who earned the computer science undergraduate degree that year. There was one woman who earned an M.S. that year, but she was the daughter of one of the big names in the early days of Silicon Valley, so that apple didn't fall far from the tree. Her husband was doing his post-doc there at the time in another STEM field.

 

When I was working on my PhD at an even larger school, there were only two of us. When I decided to bag my dissertation and take the M.S., I was the only woman getting an M.S. in computer science that May. The majority of graduates even then were from Asian ethnic groups. There were 7 PhD's awarded then, no women. 

 

Many of my colleagues at the community colleges where I've taught have been women. In each case they chose that career because they liked teaching, and it is more family-friendly than most IT jobs.

[JanetC]

The admissions people changed from looking mostly at math-science grades and scores and activities to a more "holistic" view of candidates that took more into account grades in the humanities and non-engineering extracurriculars and other non-engineering attributes of candidates.

 

Was this change an improvement, or was this merely bowing to political pressure? Good question!

I'll say it. Yes, it was an improvement.

 

I have seen the non-holistic approach work against my DD. She was a semifinalist for a national science program, and the section that asked about ECs had plenty of checkboxes for typical geek activities like math team and boys activites like team sports, etc. She had to write in ballet.

 

If school sports teams count on a science program application, why not ballet? They're both equally relevant, IMHO. Of course there was no way to check the "varsity" or "captain" box for ballet. I also think homeschoolers who don't have a menu of school clubs and honor rolls and awards were also at a disadvantage. Most of the checkboxes were simply not available to her.

 

Science and math should be front and center at MIT, but they shouldn't be everything. Scientists have to write grant proposals, give talks, mentor students, and do all sorts of things besides hang out in a lab. Hobbies and a life outside the lab are healthy, and if some of that time is spent in typically-female activities, isnt that fine?

 

DD is a dedicated scientist, but it isn't all she is. I hope she is appreciated in college applications.

[Lilaclady]

I think it is great but has been mentioned by a pp, that is not across the board. A lot of smaller schools are closing their computer science depts.

I was just talking with a dad whose daughter entered a college for computer science but had to change to history with a minor in computing because she was the only black girl in the dept and there was not a lot of support for her. He feels that they will eventually close the dept in a few years.

[JanetC]

I was just talking with a dad whose daughter entered a college for computer science but had to change to history with a minor in computing because she was the only black girl in the dept and there was not a lot of support for her. He feels that they will eventually close the dept in a few years.

 

I don't think that there are a lot of computer science departments closing around the country. This is a very high-demand degree and any school that can't find students to fill computer science classes must have a poor CS department. (Maybe they need to add classes in hot subfields like graphics and gaming, big data, AI, computer vision for self-driving cars, etc.)

 

However, I can really see how being the only black girl in a CS department would be hard. There are a lot of STEM departments that are not supportive of women. Then there's what happens after graduation. Women and minorities drop of out STEM (and other male-dominated) fields pretty regularly when they are not valued and respected in their workplace.

[*LC]

I think this is easier to attain at smaller schools that are selective as Gwen mentioned the criteria can be weighted to attain the desired results. 

 

I don't understand Dartmouth's numbers. Their engineering enrollment is not 50/50. They have 257 students in engineering/ 83 are women.  https://www.dartmouth.edu/~oir/data-reporting/factbook/enrollment.html  My kids' school has more than 83 women in most of the large engineering majors. There are more than 83 women declared in each of these majors chemical, mechanical, industrial. (Those students have completed their engineering pre-reqs, so are at least sophomores. You have to declare by start of junior  year.) They have some eng majors that are more than half women, but none of the big ones. Overall, their school is a bit above 20 percent average. Their school currently has more students enrolled in engineering than Dartmouth has ever graduated with an undergraduate engineering degree. 

 

Oops, gotta go.

[Gwen in VA]

 

I also think homeschoolers who don't have a menu of school clubs and honor rolls and awards were also at a disadvantage. Most of the checkboxes were simply not available to her.

 

I think homeschoolers actually have an ADVANAGE in competitive college applications. They can participate in or pursue any activity they want, regardless of whether the local high school has a "club" for that activity.

 

Engineering schools like leadership, but this generation is not pursuiing hands-on activities to the same degree that previous generations have (think mucking around with cars or radio-control airplanes as dated examples) so any hands-on activity will be of interest to engineering schools. 

 

Wild engineering-related activities pursued by homeschoolers I know:

Civil Air Patrol (Many girls participate and it can demonstrate leadership too!)

Kite-building (with a national kite-building award and an expenses-paid visit to India to participate in an international event there)

Founding a company (involved design and production work and it made a non-trivial amount of money!)

Part-time job that is engineering-related (work at a sail loft)

Volunteer position (historic boat -- involved maintenance of it)

Building multiple kayaks (yes, they were beautiful and they floated!)

Crewing on boats at races and regattas

 

And a more "feminine" hands-on engineering-related activity -- dress design and sewing reenactment clothing!

 

With homeschooling, the sky is the limit for activities! (While none of these activities come with the term "captain" or "president", they obviously show motivation, dedication, and leadership!)

 

It is a challenge to figure out how to list / make known unusual activities on a college application, but it can be done. And if specifically approached, some admissions offices will make exceptions to the "don't submit anything extra" rule.

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2016 by Gwen in VA

[Nan in Mass]

I agree with Gwen. It is an improvement. I don,t think you have to compromise on the math and science - you just have to look at other things as well, things that aren,t the standard school sports offerings and heavily competitive activities like math team. I think the shift will benefit men as well as women when it comes to college applications. My youngest's school has an application that is designed to try to let the admissions department compare aspects other than competitiveness and ability to take a standardized test, things like ability to work in groups (without relying on team sports to show this), creativity, real world problem solving, hands-on tool ability, and a desire to contribute to the good of the world. Engineering students have to be good at math, yes, and like solving math problems enough to survive the endless problem sets of engineering school, but many good engineers did not get an 800 on the SAT. There is more to engineering than that.

 

Nan

 

Eta - Youngest's school is evening out their male female ratio faster than 1 or 2% a year.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[regentrude]

Why parity?  In the end, if an individual is not interested in a particular subject matter then they won't be happy in the long run. By the way, I work with some absolutely fabulous women engineers and the guys have no problem consulting them for help with the hard stuff.  Nerds like to be with other nerds .. it's not really a gender thing.

 

from comments:

Luxi Turna

"As a former IT manager, I can promise you that I don't want to hire anyone who had to be talked in to computer science.

If I hire a woman, it's because she's a "geek." If I hire a man, it's because he's a "geek."

"

 

Exactly. I have great problems with the proclaimed goal of parity, because that is suggesting to girls who are interested in more traditionally female occupations that their choices are of lesser value and that they "should" aspire to something "better".

 

I am all in favor of creating a learning and work environment in STEM disciplines that is friendly and encouraging so girls do not feel intimidated or discouraged. It should go without saying that harassment and discrimination should have no place there.

But I am against pushing girls into STEM because it is inherently sexist to make young women feel that their plans, choices and dreams are inferior if they do not choose a traditionally male field.

[Guest]

Around here gals are more interested in a degree in which they have a higher probability of earning a 4.0, so they will be competitive for med school admissions.

 

Public schools here do not offer anything as an ec that would be construed as helping develop STEM skills, other than mock trial and musical. Math team, science club, etc were booted when full inclusion came in with nclb. More importantly, they dont offer the level of math or science that would prepare a student to succeed in STEM at a top school...that is DIY. Our urms are getting in, but they are not in STEM degrees, and they are C students at their Ivys.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Heigh Ho

[Bluegoat]

Yes, this has really changed.

 

When I got my double B.S. in math and computer science, I was one of only two women who earned the computer science undergraduate degree that year. There was one woman who earned an M.S. that year, but she was the daughter of one of the big names in the early days of Silicon Valley, so that apple didn't fall far from the tree. Her husband was doing his post-doc there at the time in another STEM field.

 

When I was working on my PhD at an even larger school, there were only two of us. When I decided to bag my dissertation and take the M.S., I was the only woman getting an M.S. in computer science that May. The majority of graduates even then were from Asian ethnic groups. There were 7 PhD's awarded then, no women. 

 

Many of my colleagues at the community colleges where I've taught have been women. In each case they chose that career because they liked teaching, and it is more family-friendly than most IT jobs.

 

My husband works as a scientist in teh civil service, and all the sections but his have more women than men. (His seems just to be an anomaly.)  I suspect the reasons are similar, working for government includes reasonable hours, good benefits, and good maternity leave.  Even compared to my friends in academia which have some of the same policies on paper, it is much more family friendly.

[Bluegoat]

It's interesting too to me that the medical school here, and some others I know in Canada, have deliberatly decided to move to a more holistic admissions criteria.  And not to get more women but to improve the candidates - somehow, it turns out that people who are interested in all kinds of things have something to offer within medicine.  I suspect that other STEM subjects might find something similar.

[angela in ohio]

Why parity?  In the end, if an individual is not interested in a particular subject matter then they won't be happy in the long run. By the way, I work with some absolutely fabulous women engineers and the guys have no problem consulting them for help with the hard stuff.  Nerds like to be with other nerds .. it's not really a gender thing.

 

from comments:

Luxi Turna

"As a former IT manager, I can promise you that I don't want to hire anyone who had to be talked in to computer science.

If I hire a woman, it's because she's a "geek." If I hire a man, it's because he's a "geek."

"

 

Having raised two female engineers/computer scientists to adulthood, I can tell you the problem isn't talking women into it, it's supporting them with all of the pressure to quit. I could tell stories for days about the things my daughters and other young ladies I work with have faced (literally the most recent one just yesterday.) Ugh.

 

I don't care so much about parity, maybe the true balance lies at 50-50, maybe at more women or more men; I care that the 15-20% numbers in various industries and university departments is often the result of discrimination. I don't think the answer is artificially admitting women under lower requirements; I think it's in addressing people's views and - more importantly - actions towards women who ARE interested in engineering and computer science.

Edited September 18, 2016 by angela in ohio

[angela in ohio]

I don't think that there are a lot of computer science departments closing around the country. This is a very high-demand degree and any school that can't find students to fill computer science classes must have a poor CS department. (Maybe they need to add classes in hot subfields like graphics and gaming, big data, AI, computer vision for self-driving cars, etc.)

 

However, I can really see how being the only black girl in a CS department would be hard. There are a lot of STEM departments that are not supportive of women. Then there's what happens after graduation. Women and minorities drop of out STEM (and other male-dominated) fields pretty regularly when they are not valued and respected in their workplace.

 

Yeah, that would be weird to close a CS department, and I haven't heard of that. At middle dd's college, it is the one and only department on campus where you aren't guaranteed to get all your classes. It's so over-enrolled and growing so fast, they can't physically keep up with demand. 

[Nan in Mass]

I majored (and worked) in CS in the 80s. My state university classes and workplace both were close enough to 50 50 that I didn,t ever think about it.

 

And I agree that we have to be careful not to make traditionally female jobs like nursery achool teacher into "lesser" jobs. I never felt that I had to fight for my STEM degree or job but I HAVE (and I would write that in letters a foot high if it would fit on our screens) had to defend my choice to be a housewife and mother.

 

Nan

[Sunshine State Sue]

Our urms are getting in, but they are not in STEM degrees, and they are C students at their Ivys.

urms? :confused1:

[wapiti]

urms? :confused1:

 

probably URMs, Under-Represented Minorities

[Caroline]

Having raised two female engineers/computer scientists to adulthood, I can tell you the problem isn't talking women into it, it's supporting them with all of the pressure to quit. I could tell stories for days about the things my daughters and other young ladies I work with have faced (literally the most recent one just yesterday.) Ugh.

 

I don't care so much about parity, maybe the true balance lies at 50-50, maybe at more women or more men; I care that the 15-20% numbers in various industries and university departments is often the result of discrimination. I don't think the answer is artificially admitting women under lower requirements; I think it's in addressing people's views and - more importantly - actions towards women who ARE interested in engineering and computer science.

Exactly!

[katilac]

I majored (and worked) in CS in the 80s. My state university classes and workplace both were close enough to 50 50 that I didn,t ever think about it.

 

And I agree that we have to be careful not to make traditionally female jobs like nursery achool teacher into "lesser" jobs. I never felt that I had to fight for my STEM degree or job but I HAVE (and I would write that in letters a foot high if it would fit on our screens) had to defend my choice to be a housewife and mother.

 

Nan

 

I only scanned this, but, interestingly enough, it looks like the number of female cs majors dropped steadily after the mid to late 1980s!

 

http://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-science/

 

Also, I only have daughters, but I would encourage both daughters and sons to look at career paths with their eyes wide open: nursery school teacher may not be a lesser job in the philosophic sense, but it is certainly a lesser job in terms of pay. If you make the decision to be a nursery school teacher anyway, good on you, but you need to know what the options are and what financial impact your decisions are going to have. 

 

So, for many people, I don't think it's a matter of talking females into certain types of jobs as much as it is a matter of making them aware of all the options, and then supporting their decisions. And, of course, it's not like no males have ever been talked into certain career paths - plenty of them are pushed into STEM (or business, or whatever). 

 

Other than that, Angela in Ohio voiced my thoughts really well.