Women in Engineering
The headline would seem to indicate that there
are quite a few women who are practicing engineers in the
electronics industry. But you know that isn’t so. More
correctly, the headline should read, "The Lack of Women in
Engineering." Very few women display the title of engineering on
their business cards. The responses to our 2008 Salary Survey
featured in the April issue lend credibility to this premise.
Only 5% of the more than 1,600 professionals who responded to
our annual survey were women.
Perception over the years has been that girls
just don’t do as well as boys when it comes to math and science.
Because of this, some parents tend to steer their daughters away
from taking science and technology courses in high school, fully
expecting they won’t be able to learn the material and,
consequently, get low grades. This notion only perpetuates the
myth of gender inequality.
Recently, a team of researchers from the
University of Wisconsin and the University of California,
Berkeley collected the necessary data to hopefully set the
record straight. The findings: Girls are just as adept in math
as boys. In work funded by the National Science Foundation, the
study leader, Janet Hyde, psychology professor at UW-Madison,
along with other researchers sifted through math scores from
more than 7 million students who were tested in accordance with
the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the SAT.
According to a news release from UW-Madison,
the team gathered data on students in 10 states including math
scores from state exams, gender, grade level, ethnicity, and
other pertinent information. From the data, the researchers
calculated a quantity called effect size which determines
the degree of difference between each gender’s average math
scores in standardized units. The results showed no
difference—the average scores were the same for girls and boys.
Looking at the variability in math scores for
both genders corroborated the fact that just as many girls as
boys landed in the top scoring percentiles. Also, the data
showed that the female students could handle complex problem
solving equally as well as males.
As for complex problem solving, the
researchers found a glaring omission in all of the state exams
for NCLB. The tests just did not delve into the students’
ability to solve complex problems, forcing the researchers to
look elsewhere for this data. Since teachers gear their
instruction to what’s asked on their state’s exams, it’s
possible that complex problem solving will deteriorate for both
girls and boys in the future. Dr. Hyde noted that "this skill
can be taught in the classroom, but we need to motivate teachers
to do so by including them on the tests."
But teachers and tests can only do so much.
We, the parents and grandparents, must get more involved in our
children’s education.
So here’s what you need to do. When you go home tonight, tell
your daughters all about your challenging engineering work and
why you enjoy it. Tell them an engineering career is not just
for boys but for girls, too. Girls can handle the math and
science courses equally as well as boys if given the proper
guidance and encouragement. You can make a difference.
Paul Milo
Editorial Director
pmilo@evaluationengineering.com