Key Advantages to Being a Woman in Engineering
This article was featured in our Fall 2019 Print Edition. Copies are available throughout campus. Visit our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter for location details.
Recent polls suggest that the stigma against women in STEM may not be as severe as previously believed. The stereotype that women must prove themselves capable to earn respect from male students has been challenged by newly observed classmate dynamics that show women in STEM receive key advantages over their male counterparts.
Researchers believe the severe female minority in certain STEM majors is the source of this advantage. According to recent data, skewed gender ratios in majors such as engineering offer a rare opportunity for male students — a chance to speak with women. Such an opportunity may encourage male students to offer significant academic aid to their female counterparts.
“I always have my choice of partners for projects, and right now I’m in three different study groups for the same class,” said junior computer engineering major Madelyn Rossi. Many of the women polled indicated male students’ desperation for interaction with the opposite sex is so fervent that female students receive abundant social and academic advantages when compared to males.
In addition to women being continually included in activities with their classmates, a number of poll respondents highlighted the privilege of receiving free tutorials from male students. Male students were observed going to extensive lengths to readily give females unprompted tips on how to improve their work and to offer unrequested explanations of course material. Unfortunately, male students’ “instinctual desire” to take care of their female peers has perhaps blinded them to some of their fiercest competition.
While at this time the percentage of female undergraduates studying STEM rests at about 22% overall, this low number only helps women to get special opportunities and favoritism. Female students hope this culture of paying special attention to women in STEM can be preserved in the face of the university’s renewed focus on size and diversity initiatives.
—The Dixie Wiccan
This writer can be a real witch sometimes. No, really — she’s a card-carrying Wiccan who can’t wait to remind you that Christmas was originally a pagan holiday. Once a timid freshman evangelical, Dixie Wiccan found her new faith in (where else?) the women’s bathroom of the Dixie Chicken, proving once again that hitting up Northgate is akin to a spiritual experience.