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Women
in engineering, continued
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Q: So, it would seem that there's more
to be done. What are your thoughts about remedying the gender
gap in engineering?
Doyle: Last year the College looked at the issue of women
on the faculty and one of the committee members interviewed women
who either didn't get the faculty positions for which they interviewed,
or chose not to come. Quite a few commented that they felt that
Berkeley was less supportive of its women faculty than some of
our competing institutions. So you know, we do have data that
we don't seem to be keeping up with some of our competitors.
Vujic: There are several organizations helping with outreach,
but the University should do much more. We have to change the
perspective at the elementary and high school levels and encourage
girls to take math and physics. Girls are still led to believe
that these subjects are scary and that they can't do as well as
boys.
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Jennifer Mankoff
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Mankoff: I think that mentoring is extremely important.
It's been a constant in my life by other students and faculty,
as well as an important part of what I've done for others. But,
I had someone ask me recently: if we're trying to make changes,
when do we stop trying? If it's 30 percent female faculty, have
we gone far enough? What about 50 percent? Or 70 percent?
Doyle: When we stop asking the questions, we're there.
I suspect that if one can get to a state where all the biases
have been removed, we would end up with a situation where there
are fewer than 50 percent women in engineering. From my statistically
unrepresentative observation of boys and girls, I see different
behaviors and interests. I suspect there wouldn't be enough women
interested in engineering to equate the genders exactly.
Q: Well, that leads me to ask whether
you see inherent differences between how boys and girls think
and solve problems. If so, how does this affect the gender equation
ultimately?
Doyle: I tend to see a lot more creativity in women students.
It's always difficult to generalize, because there are some enormously
creative men as well as many women who aren't creative. But I
suspect that there would be more "out of the box" thinking
about problems that could lead to some fairly revolutionary changes
in the way things are done. But despite everything I just said
about creativity, engineering has to be quantitative. Not only
does one have to come up with bright ideas, they have to be rigorous,
practical ideas that can work. And I suspect that fewer girls
are interested in that very quantitative way of viewing the world
than boys.
Vujic: I don't think there are inborn differences. I think
it's simply how you start to learn from an early age, how your
family passes on the values.
Mankoff: I agree. It's interesting to think back on the
fact that centuries ago music and math were the same field. And
you would think of one as creative, and the other as analytical,
right?
Vujic: And they go together.
Q: How would the field of engineering
be different if the ratio of women to men were reversed?
Doyle: The first thing that crosses my mind is that society
would have a much lower opinion of engineering as a profession
and the salaries would be significantly lower. My sister is a
physician in Britain, and when she went to medical school, medicine
was a male-dominated profession and very prestigious, with high
salary levels. Now, close to 30 years later, the gender difference
is reversed, and she tells me that the salary levels are going
way down because society does not value physicians the way it
used to.
Mankoff: That's a good point, because when a career becomes
popular you see these switches. It's called "feminization
of a field," and it's happened multiple times in different
careers.
Vujic: Also, because women are less aggressive, if they
were dominating the field there would be less research to create
anything destructive. There would undoubtedly be more emphasis
on innovations to help ease our lives.
Doyle: Women tend to question some of the assumptions that
are part of everyday problem solving. We tend to step back and
ask if there's another way to do this. Generally, great inventions
result from people thinking unconventionally.
Marguerite Rigoglioso moderated the roundtable
discussion and helped edit the transcript of comments. A former
associate editor of the Harvard Business School's alumni magazine,
she is a Bay Area freelancer who writes on women's issues, the
environment, and technology.
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