This post is not about knitting. And that's fine, because I am more than just a knitter. I am also an Engineer.
I recently read news about how the university I attended, UTS, plans to change its admission requirements into Engineering degrees, by awarding 10 bonus ATAR points to females who apply for them through the Universities Admissions Centre. The general reasoning is that this will encourage more women to enter into the field of Engineering.
I am not encouraged by this.
Were I to apply for entry into an engineering degree again, I would not want to apply for one where anyone in my course could look at me and wonder if I maybe would not have made it in, were I male. I know that dropping the entry level for females does not mean that female Engineering graduates will not be as qualified as male Engineering graduates, but even so, it's very easy to still have one's perceptions clouded by the knowledge that females may have had an easier time getting into the course. This imbalance in entry level requirements could easily lead to male students actively avoiding females in group work, for fear that they may not be able to keep up. Regardless of the validity of these fears, I can easily see this behaviour compounding the existing sense of a "boys' club" that already exists in the industry. Giving men a reason to doubt a woman's competence is no way to make the Engineering industry more inviting to women. Frankly, I am insulted by this lowering of entry requirements, because it suggests that the gender imbalance in the industry is because women are less capable of being accepted into Engineering studies as a result of their school marks. This seems unlikely, as more than half of university students in Australia are female. The problem then is not that they're not able to get into the Engineering degree in the first place, but rather that they are not interested.
I fully support encouraging more young women to enter into Engineering once they finish high school, but to lower the entry requirements for all women suggests to them that the university considers them otherwise incapable.
I looked up the definitions of “engineering” and “engineer”, and found some delightful definitions.
“engineering - the action of working artfully to bring something about”
“engineer - skilfully arrange for (something) to occur”
All knitters are engineers, as we are working artfully to bring something about every time we work a stitch in yarn with our needles. However, too often, the Engineering industry is misunderstood as being focused on blue-collar work instead. Women flock to degrees in Architecture because they are interested in design work, not understanding the amount of design involved in Engineering. I respect that UTS is in a difficult position, where by the time young women are considering careers, they have already rejected Engineering. However, lowering the ATAR requirement for all women is not the answer. Young girls need to understand what Engineering really involves, and how it can fit in with their own interests, before they are pushed away by gender stereotypes. Changing the ATAR requirement just feeds into the stereotype, and serves no-one but the university.