more of the same
The number of women in Canadian engineering schools dropped by 20 per cent between 1999 and 2004, according to the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers.
The most dramatic drop was in first-year enrolment, the society said.
The decline followed a decade in which a record number of Canadian women broke into the male-dominated world of engineering.
Those stats aren’t new (at least not to me). The last statement, however, is. I wonder how they define “[breaking] into the male-dominated world of engineering.” Cause as far as I can tell, there’s still a long way to go before we get to that point.
March 20th, 2006 at 11:43 pm
I think all they’re saying is that in the late 1980s and 1990s, a lot more women were entering engineering. I had heard that in the 80s, there were record highs numbers of women in engineering. They thought things were getting better, and then something changed and our numbers declined again.
March 20th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Yeah, that’s what I assumed they meant. It’s how they said it that bothers me. Maybe it’s that the Engrish has got the bestest myself of.
March 21st, 2006 at 12:20 am
That wasn’t really Engrish, more like Statistish. Two well-covered facts.
First, if overall female enrollment is down 20% and most of the drop is in first year, doncha think that maybe next year the drop will be even higher. Early signs are that women will drop into the 15% range of programs like electrical and computer engineering.
Second, if 28% of 100 students are female, that’s 28 women entering computing. If 22% of 150 students are female, then “record numbers of Canadian women” will enter engineering – 33. I can’t wait to see if they follow up given declining enrollments… 15% of 40 students would give 6 female graduates – which corresponds to the 80% drop in graduation reported by the National Science and Technology Advisor to the Prime Minister.
And that doesn’t even count the number of famel engineers who run away to Japan and eat funny looking food and watch DVD’s with marines.
March 21st, 2006 at 12:32 am
Yeah, we famels are hard to come by.
March 21st, 2006 at 1:14 pm
“break in”… Sounds like its criminal… Like breaking into a car or something. You’ve gotta have guts. And the pioneers did.
Women had to show their own and be that much better to gain any sort of acceptance. Those pioneers worked their asses off just to be afforded what men got by tradition. They inspired a whole new generation of women who were excited by the possibility of pursuing a career in engineering.
What happened? You think those powers that be, would say…ok…women can know best too and change the field, to adjust to a new reality. No such luck. Unfortunately you get a new wave of opposition. Not as blantant and open such as women don’t belong in engineering, b/c women don’t make good engineers. It’s now, well if you want to give up having kids, living a normal life, that’s what’s required to be an engineer. We’re too pigheaded to adjust to the fact, that hello biology only allows one sex to have kids. We need to adjust. I think a lot of younger students now have the benefit of seeing a generation of women that succeeded in engineering, but at what cost?
In order to “break in”, women had to conform to be engineers. When will engineers conform to the reality that the profession is best served if all people are attracted… XX and XY. oh and the occasional XYY or XXX. IMHO. of course