Faced with falling numbers of female applicants and students, U of T’s engineering faculty is starting to reach out to ever-younger women to promote the engineering profession. “The grades that are the most important are seven and eight,” said Marta Ecsedi, dean’s advisor on women’s issues. “By the time you’re in [Grade 9], you’ve made your decision.”
There are two reasons for the drop in female participation in engineering, Ecsedi explained. First, the four-year high school curriculum is very compressed, making it difficult for students to fulfill their engineering prerequisites if they don’t start early. Second, young women tend to aim for “care-giving professions,” and they don’t see engineering as such. “They’re opting to apply to Life Sciences,” Ecsedi said.
According to the Canadian Council for Professional Engineers (CCPE), the proportion of women enrolled in engineering programs at Canadian universities fell last year for the third year in a row, to 18.5 per cent (see chart). On the bright side, there are more women in engineering than in 1990. Though the engineering student body in Canada increased by 54 per cent between 1990 and 2004, the number of women enrolled in engineering doubled, from 5,022 to 10,218.
At U of T, though, the numbers look worse. The proportion of women has fallen to around 20 per cent, from a high of 29 per cent a few years ago, faculty registrar Barbara McCann noted. In effect, more women are graduating from engineering than enrolling. The make-up of the faculty’s chemical engineering program is telling: the fourth-year class is 62 per cent female; in the first-year class, however, only 39 per cent are.
Canadian engineering schools are stepping up their outreach programs to stem these losses. Ecsedi pointed to an event held last October called “Go Eng Girl!,” organized by engineering schools at several Canadian cities for women in Grades 7-10. The Toronto event drew 500 of them. Female engineers, researchers, and industry professionals shared their life experiences. The speakers were selected to highlight “the caring side of the profession,” as Ecsedi put it. And that was just a start. “We need to do things on a bigger scale,” she said.
And in Dr. Cristina Amon, of Carnegie Mellon University, U of T’s engineering faculty may have found itself another role model. She will become the faculty’s new dean in July.
U of T student groups are also doing their part. Tahmina Afroz and Dominica Yi, who run Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Toronto, said that their group visits Toronto-area middle schools to speak about career opportunities for women in science and engineering. They do so without promoting a specific university. WISE Toronto put on presentations at three Toronto-area schools in 2005; this year, Afroz and Yi plan to visit many more.
The Varsity consulted engineering students on the issue in the atrium of the Sandford Fleming building, on Monday afternoon.
“I don’t think a better sales pitch” is the solution to getting more women interested in engineering, said Agnes Durlik, a fourth-year chemical engineer. “I don’t believe in advertising.”
Instead, Durlik stressed good teaching. “I understood the subjects because I had good teachers,” she asserted. One such, an OAC chemistry teacher, warmed Durlik to chemical engineering; another, a civil engineering prof, has gotten her thinking about graduate school.
Most women interviewed did not seem bothered by the preponderance of males in engineering. Second-year chemical engineer Katrina MacDonald said that growing up with a lot of males around had prepared her for it.
MacDonald made light about the women of engineering. “We’re not really girls,” she said. “I find that most girls that go into engineering tend to be tomboyish types.”
Ellen Chan, a second-year materials engineer sitting across from MacDonald had a different reason for pursuing engineering. “My dad’s an engineer,” she said. “It was always an option.”
Chan’s mother, it turned out, is a nurse. This news traveled around the table, and to the adjacent one, causing commotion.
“My dad’s an engineer, and my mom’s almost a nurse!” someone else exclaimed.
“Your dad knew how to pick them,” MacDonald quipped to Chan.
(A few decades ago, male-dominated engineering and female-heavy nursing used to have social events together. During Frosh Week, engineers still stomp around yelling “Who do we like? Nurses!”-among other things.)
Chan dismissed the lack of women in engineering as just another campus stereotype. “Yeah, it’s like, we don’t like writing, we don’t like English, we [only] do lab reports,” she mocked.
