Caroline Harriet Haslett

From the Irish Times:

THE VITAL ROLE played by domestic technology in allowing for greater gender equality has been widely recognised for some time now. By liberating women from much of the drudgery of domestic chores and extraordinarily labour-intensive tasks such as laundry, these developments were critical in facilitating greater female workforce participation.

 

A sizeable body of academic work has been written examining the social and economic repercussions of domestic technology. However, it speaks volumes that while the histories of the “domestic industrial revolution” focus on how they altered the lives of the women who used them, we rarely give as much thought to those women who were instrumental in creating such a revolution.

Chief among those was Caroline Harriet Haslett, the pioneering early 20th-century electrical engineer who spent her working life encouraging the adoption of technology in the cause of female emancipation. In many respects, her story foreshadows the sweeping changes in the role of women in society, but as so often with innovators and pioneers, she had to forge her own path with few antecedents to smooth the way.

Women in STEM

From AOL News:

It's been five years since Lawrence Summers, then the president of Harvard, infamously suggested that "innate" differences were to blame for the lack of women in top science positions at universities. But a new report suggests that social factors play a significant role in holding women back in science, technology, engineering and math -- the so-called STEM fields.

The report, which looked at recent research on the topic, found that entrenched stereotypes and biases affect performance in both genders. The authors highlight two main stereotypes: that girls are not as good as boys at math, and that scientific careers are "masculine" in nature. Researchers found that the stereotypes can lower girls' performance in these subjects and also reduce their interest in pursuing science or engineering jobs.

Women in Maths & Science

From CBC News:

The National Research Council reported this spring that women who earn Ph.D.s in science (though there are still far fewer of them than men) are as likely to land teaching positions, promotions and tenure at major research universities as their male counterparts. During the same week the National Academy of Sciences reported that girls in the U.S. have now reached parity with boys in mathematical achievement.

Currently universities are reporting marked increases in female enrollment in science, engineering and math degree programs. Engineering is now one of the most popular majors at the all-female Smith College in Massachusetts. (The college graduated 20 students from its new engineering program in 2004; today it enrolls 135.) Half of all MIT undergraduates are now women. And last year at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh women made up 30 per cent of undergraduate students in mathematics and science, up from 17 per cent in 1986.

The Ivy League's Brown University, which has had a highly regarded mentoring program called WISE (women in science and engineering) for more than a decade, has noticed a striking increase in female applicants who are interested in pursuing science degrees. The number of women intending to enroll in physical sciences increased about 40 per cent from the class of 2010 to the class of 2013. Brown is also is making a concerted effort to hire more women for its science faculty, according to Katherine Bergeron, a dean of the college. Toward that end the university recently received a $3 million US grant from the National Science Foundation to support women in the sciences.

Women in Engineering

From the University of Wollongong, News & Media:
"Enrolments in the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering (SECTE) have usually included only one or two women in each year.

But this year, much to the surprise of staff, that figure has soared to 12 – meaning that 20% of first year SECTE students are women.

To mark the occasion the school held a first-year women in engineering lunch today (Wednesday) so the students had a chance to meet each other and female staff in the faculty.

Lecturer in the School, Dr Montse Ros hosted the lunch and told the students about the different ways they can be a part of the traditionally male-dominated faculty.

“Throughout your degree, you should voice your ideas about how to make courses more female friendly,” she told the group.

She also encouraged students to apply for scholarships, attend Women in Engineering conferences, and get involved by becoming student representatives.

Dr Ros said the lunch was an important step in making the new students feel welcome in a traditionally male-dominated field."