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U.Va. is good but not good enough on women in engineering

Despite beating other schools, the Engineering School has a ways to go

Last week The Washington Post reported on federal data that show women earned about a third of the University’s engineering degrees, placing us first on that measure of public universities nationwide. The University’s latest honor deserves to be celebrated, and other departments should learn from the specific changes made by the Engineering School to attract and retain women engineers. Still, this news should not allow us to become stagnant on the issue as we should continue to strive for equal representation.

Female students constitute the majority of total undergraduates, but current enrollment profiles in many programs still show a substantial imbalance. At the Commerce School — a historically comparable program to the Engineering School — women make up 44 percent of the total student body, but this may be on the decline. The last admission period saw a drop in female applicants from 43 percent in 2015 to 39 percent in 2016.

A closer look at the Engineering School shows that while the University sits well above the national average of 20 percent of matriculated females, the type of degrees women earn continues to reflect years of male dominance in certain fields. Female students receive more than 40 percent of degrees in the biomedical and civil engineering departments, but only around a quarter of mechanical engineering degrees and about one out of every eight aerospace engineering degrees.

The University should reevaluate gender diversity at all its schools. While we applaud the Engineering School’s program, the University and the state should invest resources in high school-oriented STEM programs. We know diversity of all kinds brings a wealth of benefits to everyone — let’s take this opportunity to think of effective and thoughtful ways to achieve this.

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