Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Women earn most of the bachelor's degrees from the state's public universities, but a minority of the degrees awarded in the sciences.
Female students received fewer than one-forth of the diplomas in engineering, computer and information sciences and math and statistics conferred by the University of Washington two years ago.
They earned slightly more than one-third of the UW's physical sciences degrees that year.
Women dominated in professional fields such as communications and health care.
Some of the state's other four-year public universities saw similar discrepancies, according to a report on gender equity released this week from the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board.
"It's a serious issue for all engineering schools across the country, this kind of gender gap that we have," said Matt O'Donnell, dean of the UW's College of Engineering.
Although more women entered the field in the 1980s and '90s, the number of women studying engineering in recent years has remained flat at around 20 percent -- a cause for concern, he said. Total applications to engineering programs by women and men also have been down, even though there is more demand in the job market for people with engineering degrees, O'Donnell said.
The university is working to attract more women to the field.
The engineering college this year started an outreach program to high school students, sending a personal invitation to those who show an aptitude toward math and science, said Assistant Dean Carmen Sidbury.
It runs a women in science and engineering program and tries to highlight the career opportunities that women can pursue in engineering -- tackling such social challenges as diseases and clean water.
"There's a stereotype that doesn't necessarily fit how many women see themselves," Sidbury said. "We're looking more at giving a broader view of what engineers do."
UW sophomore Maggie Ramirez wants to be an industrial engineer. She enrolled in her first engineering course at the university this quarter -- men make up about three-fourths of the class.
Support programs designed specifically for women at the university offer some balance, said Ramirez, who one day hopes to work for The Boeing Co.
"You are around other people, other women who are pursing the same career as you, and they're going through the same things," she said. "It is nice to be around girls and doing science and math."
The report by the Higher Education Coordinating Board found little progress in reaching proportionality between men and women in several academic programs since the last study in 2001.
The report considered a program to be "disproportionate" if the percentage of women earning a degree in that particular field was more or less than 10 percent of the total number of women who earned degrees for the university.
It suggests further study of the issue, including student's preparation in earlier years for such fields.
Women earned the majority of the degrees in communications and journalism, psychology, foreign languages, health professions and visual and performing arts at the UW.
To see more of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for online features, or to subscribe, go to http://seattlep-I.com.
© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All Rights Reserved.
