For as much effort as UCLA has put toward increasing its undergraduate diversity through outreach programs, one group of individuals – women in engineering – is consistently overlooked.
It is quite troubling that as the field of engineering and its associated salaries have grown in the last few decades to contain many of the highest paying jobs out of college, the percentage of women in engineering has not changed significantly.
Currently, UCLA’s Engineering Science Corps Outreach Program is the primary program that targets underrepresented minorities and women for engineering degrees, careers or both. Although the program targets students that are considering applying to UCLA, the program has not had a sufficient impact on the enrollment of women in engineering.
To increase its effectiveness, the program should be divided into separate, smaller programs that target specific groups – one of which should be women – in a comprehensive fashion at elementary schools, high schools and colleges. The program would provide mentorship resources, pairing current women in engineering and UCLA engineer alumnae to mentor young women in K-12 schools.
By focusing outreach efforts on young women, UCLA can help alleviate the low numbers of women in engineering while also working to encourage young women to pursue science careers.
Despite a commitment to increase the percentage of women in engineering at UCLA, the university has had absolutely no success in its pursuit. In 2002, the percentage of women enrolled in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science was 22.5 percent. And in 2014, the percentage of women enrolled was a slightly lower 22.4 percent. Since 2001, the percentage of undergraduate women enrolled in the school of engineering has fluctuated between 16.3 and 22.5 percent. Additionally, the raw number of women has fluctuated greatly, with no distinct trend, between 420 and 721 in the same time period. Despite UCLA being one of the premier institutions in the country, its engineering gender demographics resemble the national average. In the last year, there have been multiple notable incidents of sexual discrimination toward women engineers against companies ranging from sexist promotion practices, firing practices and intimidation.
At Facebook, program manager Chia Hong alleges that she was ignored and asked to do tasks such as plan parties and serve drinks to male employees. Former GitHub engineer Julie Ann Horvath alleges that the wife of one of the founders attempted to intimidate her into quitting by stalking her around the office even though the founder’s wife was not employed by the company. Former Twitter software engineer Tina Huang is suingTwitter for having “subjective, secretive promotion practices” that created a “glass ceiling” that prevented women from being promoted.
And the list goes on and on.
What’s damaging is that incidents like these deter women engineers from seeking promotions or complaining about sexism in the tech world. Even if the field changes to allow more fair opportunities to women in engineering, the mere perception of limited career advancement and sexist labor practices may discourage women from pursuing careers in such fields. Sadly, they would be justified in doing so.
UCLA has a vested interest in preparing its students for the workplace. The university should ensure that women going into such fields know how to succeed. The program would provide valuable advice and experience from women engineers on how they encountered and handled sexism in the workplace. Such a program would provide a great benefit in both helping women pursuing engineering and attracting women to the field.
Because of the societal pressures stemming from gender differentiation at early ages, it is understandable that women are a minority in engineering and hard science fields. It is unacceptable that archaic attitudes are pushing women toward fields that may limit their financial success. Moreover, the lack of understanding of the constraints of sexism by the male-dominated tech world only further deters women from pursuing such careers.
While it is undoubtedly difficult to stop gender discrimination in the workplace, more women in highly paid fields such as engineering can help curb this phenomenon.