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SCWIST member Elizabeth Croft profiled in Where are all the women engineers? article 
Gender equality yet to be achieved despite ‘dramatic’ growth in jobs
By Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun, August 30, 2011, p. C4-5
It’s been nearly 90 years since Rona Hatt did the unthinkable.
In 1922, at the age of 21, Hatt graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in chemical engineering, the first woman to do so in the province.
The achievement earned her the nickname “lone flower” by her classmates – “a woman in a field of men,” according to the university’s archives. Times have changed, and women, led by pioneers such as Hatt, are no longer such a rarity in engineering classes across the country. UBC, for instance, expects to welcome 234 female students into first-year engineering courses this September at its campuses in Vancouver and Kelowna.
Yet, despite a number of equity and diversity initiatives over the past decade, the number of women entering the profession remains stubbornly – and many would say troublingly – low.
Statistics cited in a 2009 study, Paying Heed to the Canaries in the Coal Mine, found that women continue to be under-represented in engineering and applied science programs in Canada at both the college (less than 10 per cent) and university (17.5 per cent) levels.
More widely, “women comprised 47 per cent of the Canadian workforce in the 2006 census. The participation rate of women in the engineering field averaged 13 per cent,” authors Janice Calnan and Leo Valiquette observed, noting a similar trend in the United States and other Western economies.
The gender disparity has continued, they wrote, “despite the fact that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of new jobs in engineering and technology.”
Elizabeth Croft, a UBC mechanical engineering professor and, since 2010, regional chair for Women in Science and Engineering with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), agreed that engaging women in applied sciences is a serious concern.
“I don’t think we’ve done a particularly good job of communicating that the careers for engineers do not require you to be a man,” she said in a recent interview.
NSERC research indicates the problem starts early on in the schools.
“There is certainly no shortage of 1st graders of either sex who could enter the science and engineering world. But at each step along the supply chain fewer and fewer young people choose to study science or engineering, and the drop-off for women is considerably larger than that for men,” according to a 2010 report, entitled Science and Engineering in Canada.
But leadership and policy development within industry itself – or, rather, a general lack thereof – has also been identified as a major factor in the failure to attract and retain women in greater numbers.
The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (APEGBC) reported last year that female engineers are paid less than men on average for all responsibility levels, with women accounting for only nine per cent of the country’s total population of registered professional engineers.
Croft said a lack of role models, combined with a “chilly” industry climate towards gender diversity, provides little incentive for all but the most determined women to pursue engineering as a career.
She counts herself among the female engineers on the job who have developed “dragon skin” in order to compete. “We haven’t done enough yet to make them feel invited and comfortable,” she said.
Still, Croft said she is optimistic positive change is taking place – though not at the pace she would like.
“I look at my students and the [boys’ club] attitude has kind of grown up. They don’t even think they have the attitude any more until you call them on it,” she said.
Larger firms are also waking up to the value of encouraging diversity, in its broadest sense, within their ranks.
“That dynamic of diversity – gender diversity, age diversity and ethnic diversity – is actually a great driver of innovation in the way projects are thought about and put together,” said Michael Kennedy, vice-president of the engineering and architectural firm Stantec in Vancouver.
“I would imagine any smart company that is in our sector has to realize there is a problem when you have 80 or 90 per cent of senior leaders who are quite narrowly defined in terms of gender and ethnic diversity,” he said.
Stantec employs about 200 engineers across B.C., of whom an estimated 20 per cent are women.
Kennedy said the company is taking steps to boost those numbers, including launching a “future leaders” program, designed to identify and support promising talent.
The firm is also a lead corporate sponsor of NSERC’s Women in Science and Engineering project, which works to promote awareness and outreach within schools and industry.
“All the challenges of the planet that are happening today need engineers to make this a better world for people,” said Croft. “And the more people, the more diverse the groups that are looking at these problems are, the better solutions.”
ELIZABETH CROFT, P. ENG
PROFESSOR, MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, UBC NSERC CHAIR FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING FOR B.C. AND YUKON
T he books that line the shelves of Elizabeth Croft’s UBC office give much away in terms of the intelligence and interests of the occupant.
Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems reads one of the ominous titles. Herbert Goldstein’s Classical Mechanics is another.
“Now those are some sweet books,” Croft said, laughing at her own selfdescribed “geeky” fascination with all things that whirl, spin, click and motor.
Croft, 45, is not just a mechanical engineer. She’s been teaching on the subject at the university for almost two decades, after completing a master’s and PhD.
Robots are her thing. She positively lights up when talking about her research exploring human-robot interaction and the potential for a lifechanging application by medical and support staff working in long-term care homes and hospitals.
It was exactly this kind of left-brain/ right-brain split between creativity and science that drew her to study engineering in the first place.
And while she was certainly aware she was one of only a handful of women in her class (when she graduated in 1988, fewer than eight per cent of the students were women), she was never intimidated.
“I grew up with brothers,” she said. “I very much considered myself to be one of the guys. That was the kind of woman who went into engineering then.”
Times have changed, with participation rates for women in engineering at UBC now hovering around 20 per cent.
Croft, as regional chair for women in science and engineering with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, is pushing to see that number expand much further.
Engineering has plenty to offer women.
“If you are creative. If you love solving problems. If you want to change the future of this planet, then engineering is something that you should seriously consider,” she said.
TYSEER ABOULNASR, P.ENG
PROFESSOR AND DEAN, FACULTY OF APPLIED SCIENCE, UBC
T yseer Aboulnasr never once thought her decision to become an engineer was anything out of the ordinary – until she moved to Canada.
At Cairo University in Egypt, where she received an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering in 1976, gender “was never an issue,” she said.
Indeed, both men and women were well represented among the program’s 400-plus students.
It was only when she moved to Ontario in 1978, where she attended Queen’s University in Kingston for both her master’s and PhD, that it began to dawn on her that her career ambitions might be considered unusual for a woman.
A casual conversation with a campus clinic nurse during a routine health checkup drove that point home early in her transition to Canada.
“She asked me what I was studying at Queen’s and I said, ‘Engineering,’ Aboulnasr recalled of the exchange. “She literally took a step back and her response was, ‘Why on earth would you do anything like that?’” For the past three years, Aboulnasr has held the title of dean of the Faculty of Applied Science at UBC. That accomplishment follows an impressive career in academia that involved leading-edge research into digital signal processing, which, among other applications, has been used to clean up sounds received in modern hearing aids.
Her success has not come without personal sacrifice and plenty of hard work – a very real side of her life she fears is sometimes “air-brushed” when she’s held up as a role model to younger women considering a similar path.
Recently, she was asked to participate on a panel exploring women’s rights and gender equality following the brutal attack on UBC graduate student Rumana Monzur by her husband.
The discussion caused her to question anew the internal cost she’s paid as a woman working in what remains a male-dominated profession.
“There is no question in my mind that I have changed because I work consistently with men. If I didn’t tolerate a lot of stuff, I would not have survived,” she said.
“But you choose your battles. You drop some things and you focus on some things. Did I go too far? I am happy to have people remind me where right and wrong is.”
LAUREN KULOKAS
B.A. SC. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, UBC COO, ENERGY AWARE TECHNOLOGY INC.
I t was a high school project that – quite literally – catapulted Lauren Kulokas into her current entrepreneurial venture.
Showing academic strength in math and sciences, the Mississauga, Ont., native was often steered as a teenager towards engineering as a potential field of study by school counsellors and career advisers.
But it wasn’t until a Grade 12 physics course, when she took part in a class challenge constructing a full-on catapult that could launch water balloons, that she found herself sold on the idea.
“That [catapult] was just a really, really fun, hands-on project,” she said.
A decade later, Kulokas said she could not have made a better career decision.
The 29-year-old is now chief operating officer of Energy Aware Technology Inc., a company she co-founded with a group of her mechanical engineering classmates following their graduation from UBC in 2006.
The Gastown-based operation develops products that promote sustainability and encourage energy conservation. The company’s main product, the “Power Tab,” allows users to monitor their energy consumption and associated costs.
Kulokas has no doubts her engineering background has helped her to compete in a tough business world, though, she admitted, the signature iron ring on her little finger, symbolic of the profession, still catches many of her clients and contacts by surprise.
“I do get that reaction quite a bit, that ‘Oh, wow, a mechanical engineer. There aren’t a lot of women in engineering.’ That kind of thing,” she said.
But it doesn’t faze her. She views it as acknowledgment of the risks she’s taken and hard work she’s put in to get where she is today.
“Engineering as a profession comes with some credibility and respect,” she said.
AMANDA LI
4TH YEAR B.A.SC, MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, UBC, PRESIDENT – ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE SOCIETY
Amanda Li admits she doesn’t know a lot about makeup or the latest fashion trends.
But, as a fourth-year UBC student studying mechanical engineering, what she’s learned about physics and math — and how to apply that knowledge to complex problem-solving — could change the world.
And that’s exactly what she’s planning to do.
“I definitely like clean energy,” she said in a recent interview.
“You see all these issues happening, especially with the environment, and … I want to contribute to this cause.”
Li, 23, can trace her interest in mechanical engineering back to high school at Burnaby North where she excelled in the sciences and wasn’t afraid to challenge herself.
That her career path would land her in a decidedly male-dominated field was not at all off-putting. She is one of 10 women in her year, compared to 120 men.
“I’m a tom-boy,” she said. “I’m pretty used to hanging around with the boys.”
Li said her male peers are supportive of the women students, though she has noted subtle differences in the way she is treated.
Sometimes it comes in the form of an offhand comment or joke that alludes to more traditional gender roles for women or divisions of labour.
More often, it is an unspoken pressure to be better than the men.
“If you screw up, people will think you screwed up because you are a girl,” she said.
“In many ways I don’t think my male colleagues will think that way, and I’m really optimistic, but you definitely feel that way — that I am representing not only myself … but my entire gender.”
JANET CALDER
B.A. SC., METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING, UBC MBA, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO
“Nice girls don’t take physics.”
That was the advice a young Janet Calder was given by a high school counsellor when she first began exploring a career in engineering.
It was the 1960s — a time when professionally minded women were typically steered into nursing, teaching or home economics. If they went to university at all, “let’s face it, the No. 1 career path was the M.R.S.,” Calder said.
Now 60 and retired, Calder has few regrets about bucking traditions of the day.
Her degree in metallurgical engineering from UBC in 1974 (one of just two women in her class), followed by an MBA, laid the foundation for a dynamic work life that took her from a steel mill in Welland, Ont., to the Greater Vancouver Regional District where, among her achievements, she helped to oversee the installation of the 911 emergency system.
“If nothing else, it helped me think better,” Calder said of her education.
It wasn’t easy. Pornographic images of women lining the office walls of a workplace were not unusual.
Open sexism and gender discrimination were often part of the job, particularly in the early years.
“I had employers say to me that it would be really difficult to hire me because they didn’t have any ladies’ bathrooms on site,” she said.
With many of the gender barriers she faced now largely gone, Calder can’t see why more women don’t give engineering a chance.
She’d like to see better support for girls in those impressionable high school years, where encouragement is essential to stick it out through math, science and, yes, even physics.
She recalled a headline-grabbing Barbie doll produced in the early 1990s that uttered a series of controversial phrases at the push of a button, including the memorable, “Math class is tough!”
“Yes, math is hard,” Calder said. “But so what?”
IWIS featured in Radio Canada Podcast
Masala Canada
As a skilled immigrant to Canada, landing a job that takes advantage of those skills can be a daunting challenge. For immigrant women educated in the sciences, the challenge can be insurmountable. Freelance journalist and migration consultant Sacha DeVoretz recounts the frustrations, as told to her by some of those highly-skilled women.
Listen here
‘It changed my life,’ says first Canadian woman in space
Roberta Bondar has used experience to develop better treatment options for Parkinson’s patients
By Max Harrold – Vancouver Sun – July 7, 2011, p. B3
Roberta Bondar vividly recalls being “rattled around as if in a tin can” as she blasted into orbit on the space shuttle, but Canada’s first woman in space has no regrets.
Despite her one “dangerous” ride on the shuttle in 1992, the disorientation she experienced upon entering the weightlessness of space and the surprising amount of readjustment her body and mind required upon returning to gravity on Earth, she would go back to space again if she could.
“It changed my life,” Bondar, one of eight Canadian astronauts to have gone into space on the space shuttle, said in an interview.
The 66-year-old neurologist was able to experience firsthand the debilitating effects of space on the human nervous system. Since then, she has applied that knowledge to her research, devising better diagnostic and treatment options for patients with Parkinson’s disease, among other conditions, she said.
The space shuttle program -with the final flight scheduled for Friday -widened the field for participants compared to previous space programs, Bondar noted.
“It allowed more women and minorities,” she said. “There was more diversity and creativity and it was a better reflection of the western world.”
And although the shuttle served humanity well, it’s time to move on, Bondar added.
“I would go some place different. There’s a lot to discover still on the moon. What are the resources there? How did it form? Do you realize no human being has ever stepped on the far side of the moon?”
Steve MacLean went to space twice aboard the shuttle -in 1992 and in 2006.
On the latter mission, the 56year-old, who is now president of the Canadian Space Agency, helped deliver and install on the International Space Station new truss segments and solar arrays, doubling the power capacity of the orbiting laboratory.
He was also the first Canadian to operate Canadarm 2 in space and the second Canadian to walk in space. On his seven-hour, 10-minute spacewalk he had a long list of well-rehearsed tasks to accomplish. But there were always moments when things don’t work as planned, he said.
“I was working with [U.S. astronaut] Dan Burbank and I was struggling to replace this bolt in a solar array,” MacLean recounted.
Their work in the bulky spacesuits was taxing and both men had to take breaks, on orders from those watching from inside and from mission control back on Earth. “There was the blackness of space on one side and the Earth on the other,” MacLean said. “It took about 30 minutes, but we fixed the bolt.”
By 2007, Dave Williams conducted three spacewalks -the most by a Canadian on a single mission -as the shuttle crew added a truss segment, a new gyroscope and an external stowage platform to the station.
Williams, 57, added he had some big Canadian pride on at least one of his spacewalks.
“We were replacing the gyroscope on the station and I saw the Canadarm, the Canadarm 2 and the maple leaf on the space shuttle extension boom,” Williams said. “It was an amazing moment. I realized they [NASA] had relied on us to deliver. We could not have done all that construction without Canada’s robotics.”
All eight Canadian astronauts have flown to orbit on the space shuttle. (Canadian space tourist and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket.)
Marc Garneau was the first Canadian in space, flying on the shuttle Challenger from Oct. 5 to 13, 1984. He flew again, on Endeavour, from May 19 to May 29, 1996. His last flight was aboard Endeavour, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, 2000.
Roberta Bondar was the second Canadian, and the first Canadian woman, in orbit. She flew on shuttle Discovery from Jan. 22 to 30, 1992, where she performed experiments in the Spacelab and on the middeck.
Steve MacLean flew aboard shuttle Columbia from Oct. 22 to Nov. 1, 1992 and on the Atlantis from Sept. 9 to 21, 2006. MacLean became the first Canadian to operate Canadarm 2 in space and the second Canadian to perform a spacewalk.
Bjarni Tryggvason flew on shuttle Discovery Aug. 7 to Aug. 19, 1997, performing fluid science experiments designed to examine sensitivity to spacecraft vibrations before the construction of the International Space Station.
Bob Thirsk flew on the Columbia June 20 to July 7, 1996, performing experiments on plants, animals, and humans. From May to December 2009, Thirsk was the first Canadian long-term resident of the International Space Station, living there for six months. His transport that time was not the space shuttle, but a Russian Soyuz rocket.
Chris Hadfield flew on the Atlantis Nov. 12 to 20, 1995, becoming the only Canadian to board the Russian space station Mir and the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm in orbit. From April 19 to May 1, 2001 he flew on Endeavour and was the first Canadian to spacewalk, conducting two outings on that mission.
Julie Payette flew on the shuttle Discovery from May 27 to June 6, 1999. And she was flight engineer on the Endeavour July 15 to 31, 2009. Her second mission was also the first time two Canadians – Payette and Bob Thirsk, a resident on the space station, where the shuttle was docked -were in space at the same time.
Dave Williams flew on the Columbia April 17 to May 3, 1998 and aboard the Endeavour from Aug. 8 to 21, 2007. He set Canadian records on that last flight by spending more than 17 hours and 47 minutes outside the space station during three scheduled spacewalks.
SCWIST aims to improve the experience of immigrant women in science and technology
Highly educated female immigrants say Canada isn’t on their side
If you’re an aspiring immigrant with a science degree, don’t expect to find good work in Canada, say various immigrant women in Vancouver
Sacha DeVoretz, Vancouver Observer June 18, 2011
Jayashree Shrivastava, a 38-year-old environmental scientist from India, says if she could start over, she’d go south of the border.
“I’m telliing people from India who want to immigrate to try the U.S. first, and not Canada. The U.S. will recognize your education and experience and Canada will not,” Shrivastava said.
“My sister is finishing her Ph.D. in the U.S. and she is much farther ahead in her career than I am.”
After seven stressful years of looking for work in her own field here in Canada, Shrivastava is only now coming to terms with the realization that her dream of contributing to the sciences in Canada has diminished.
Feelings of frustration, isolation and depression have been a part of daily life for Shrivastava, who tried to communicate her experience with the Ministry of Environment in India to Canadian employers.
Shortly after her arrival to Canada, Shrivastava spent over a year meeting with employers in order to understand the credentials and requirements for her occupation. Her ordeal took a toll emotionally and had a considerable cost. As part of her journey to find a job in Canada, Shrivastava returned to India for a month to gather documentation of her education and work experience to demonstrate to Canadian employers.
After several unsuccessful years of trying to gain meaningful employment in her field, Shrivastava found a part-time job with Canada Post.
“I felt very stressed and sick. I had to start working part-time,” Shrivastava said of her transitional years in Canada.
She was working for Canada Post and has been out of work due to the strike. While she is luckier than some, who have faced long-term unemployment, she was hoping she could make a contribution to Canada that matches her years of education and experience.
In June, The Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) hosted an event at a local Vancouver pub to provide an opportunity for women in the sciences to exchange industry news and meet familiar faces. It helped women like Shrivastava learn about opportunities and offered a supportive place for the women to express their apprehensions.
Gordana Pejic, an engineer who first arrived to Canada in 1999, understands Shrivastava’s response and feelings of despair.
“The biggest problem for immigrant women in the sciences is their understanding of how to present their experience to employers and the technical English language in the industry,” Pejic said.
With Pejic’s insights as an immigrant who is trying to get a break in the field, she has taken on the role of director of Immigrating Women in Science Project (IWIS). A not-for-profit organization with no formal funding, IWIS is a program of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology and hosts three events per year, providing much needed support to female newcomers.
Mojgan Kavoosi, who works as a chemical engineer for a pharmaceutical company, got her education from UBC and said that being a woman in the sciences can come with distinct disadvantages.
“Some fields of engineering are more male dominated, for example, civil engineering,” she said. In her field of chemical engineering, she said, it is a pretty even ratio of male and female.
Kavoosi said that these types of networking events have helped women in the sciences where there continues to exist an “old boys’ club” which continues to be hard to crack into.
Pejic feels it is important to break down misperceptions that immigrant women may have about how to approach their job search in Canada.
“Women from other countries are treated differently than in Canada. In other countries, women are not encouraged to be proud and speak out about their accomplishments; here in Canada, you must do this to succeed,” said Pejic.
One possible remedy to eliminate the barriers that immigrant women may experience is a mentor program. Pejic feels that “mentors with other women in the same field would help these newcomers understand the step by step process here in Canada and discover hidden opportunities in the industry.”
Johanne Nadeau, communications advisor for the B.C. and Yukon Region, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, responds to the concerns that highly skilled immigrant women are unable to supply the Canadian job market with their years of education and knowledge.
“Finding a job in Canada may be different from finding a job in another country. Canada attracts skilled and talented professionals from around the world and the Government of Canada is committed to providing them with the information and referral services they need in Canada, beginning overseas, so they can succeed in our labour market,” Nadeau explained.
As part of the government’s ongoing efforts to increase the likelyhood that immigrants will find a job in their trained occupation, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, through the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP), run by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC), offer services abroad to skilled immigrants before they arrive to Canada.
Through CIIP, the government of Canada offers overseas orientation sessions to prospective skilled immigrants in India, China, the Philippines and now, the United Kingdom. Over 9,000 professionals have taken part in training sessions on how to have their credentials recognized in Canada.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada has in recent years welcomed between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents, annually. In 2010, Canada welcomed the highest number of legal immigrants in more than 50 years, at 280,636 permanent residents. This was done to support Canada’s post-recession economy.
Are skilled immigrant workers in Canada an important aspect of Canada’s future economy?
CIC responds with a yes. Over the medium-term, due to Canada’s aging population, immigrants will account for all labour force growth sometime this decade.
Before then, though, we continue to need economic immigrants to meet persistent sectoral and regional labour market demands. Economic immigrants with transferable skills, education and experience are particularly important because they are able to adapt to our changing economy. Economic immigrants also help Canada stay globally competitive and drive improvements in innovation and productivity.
While the Canadian government continues to make significant advancements for newcomers and immigration, the reality for Shrivastava is a faded dream of working in her profession in Canada.
“I am disappointed I can’t contribute my skills, but I no longer feel the need to prove myself in Canada,” said Shrivastava.
Women Atop Their Fields Dissect the Scientific Life
By GINA KOLATA
June 6, 2011 The New York Times
Elena Aprile, Joy Hirsch, Mary-Claire King and Tal Rabin are members of a rare breed — women scientists at the top of their fields.
Dr. Aprile, a professor of physics at Columbia University, is searching for dark matter. Dr. Hirsch, a professor of neuroscience at Columbia University, maps brain processes. Dr. King, a professor of medical genetics at the University of Washington, studies the genetic basis of common complex medical conditions like breast cancer and mental illness. And Dr. Rabin is a cryptography researcher at I.B.M. All four were in New York for the World Science Festival, and were invited to a 30-minute round-table discussion at The New York Times on Wednesday. They talked about their lives as scientists, the joys and struggles of research, and the specific challenges women in science face.
What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of one part of the discussion.
GINA KOLATA: I once wrote about the life of a senior scientist who traveled from meeting to meeting promoting himself and his work. A woman scientist I interviewed said it was really hard for her to travel that much, and she felt that her career had suffered because of that. I was wondering if this is still a problem. And if it is, how do you handle it?
MARY-CLAIRE KING: We are very well established. It may be more of a problem with younger women who can’t travel because their children are small or travel far less compared to their younger male counterparts — although it is also true that young men are much more involved nowadays taking care of the small children, and it may be more of an equalizer.
ELENA APRILE: You have to do what the guys do, and it does not matter what it takes. It is important to be out there, and so it comes with the territory. You have to find a way around to solve the practical problems. You have to.
TAL RABIN: Even when we do make it to the conferences, I think that there is still something different about the way that we promote ourselves.
I remember standing next to one of my co-authors, and he was talking to some other guy, and he was telling him, “I have this amazing result. I just did this, I just did that.” And I was sitting and thinking there, what result is he talking about? Until he got to the punch line. It was a joint result. It was a result of mine also. I would have never spoken about my result in the superlatives that the guy was speaking about it.
MS. KOLATA: What would you have done?
DR. RABIN: I would have said, you know, “I have this very interesting result, and we achieved very nice things.” But not “This is the best thing since we invented the wheel, and here it is.”
DR. APRILE: I think I wouldn’t do it as nicely as you.
DR. KING: But women can help each other out a lot in this way because we know this about our younger women colleagues. We can introduce them to our colleagues. We can say: “Diane has a fabulous result. She needs to tell you what it is, and don’t move until she has told you.”
JOY HIRSCH: There is one very important component here that is worth raising, and I think that is the need for institutional procedure and commitment to bring women on board. When I was at Yale, I was the chairman of the Status of Women Committee for a long period of time. During that time Yale as an institution had a major commitment to raise the visibility and the numbers of women, and we did exactly as you described without a compromise at all in quality. It is not that we just teach our women to be self-promoting and to be excellent. We must also, I think, take the responsibility of teaching our institutions to be receptive and proactive and even aggressive in this manner.
DR. APRILE: And it is not just the top. It should also be the colleagues and the ones closest to you. You have to have women involved in search committees.
MS. KOLATA: So what you are describing, as I understand it, is getting a lot of people into the beginning positions. But then how do you keep them?
DR. KING: I think the choke point is going from a postdoc to an assistant professorship to a tenure-track position. In my experience the largest remaining obstacle is how to integrate family life with the life of a scientist.
MS. KOLATA: And you have advice for women?
DR. KING: At institutions where there is child care on site, where it is subsidized, where there are enough places for assistant professors to have their children, women do well. And at institutions where it is assumed that you will make your own arrangements, women do less well. There is good data on this. We need institutional commitment.
DR. APRILE: It is by example that young women see that you can be both a successful scientist, the best, but also the best mother and the lover, and the wife. You can do everything, so I think you need to have more examples of those.
DR. HIRSCH: I think it is important to develop a style in the laboratory where these issues are open and can be talked about. And what happens is that men become involved too.
MS. KOLATA: It must be exciting for your children to grow up with a mother who has such passion for what she does.
DR. APRILE: It depends on the child. The second of my daughters used to say, “Mommy, why can’t we have dinner at 6 p.m. like everybody else?” They finally accepted these crazy hours that I had to live with.
DR. RABIN: I am a child of a working mother. My mother was a very high-ranking lawyer in the Israeli Department of Justice, and I think she is the best mother in the world. And what I can say about her is that although she worked long hours, she was always available to me when I needed her. So somehow I think it is easier for me, because I can go and work without the guilt, because I know you can be a great mother. Whether I am or not is a different question.
DR. HIRSCH: The great discovery for me was the middle of the night. It’s all done, and everybody has gone to bed. You can go to your computer and sit down and work. The middle of the night has been what saved my life as a scientist.
DR. RABIN: What I do feel as a mother is that sometimes I hear these young women graduate students talking. They are saying, “Yes, the baby is going to be born, I am going to be back doing research within a week,” and so on. And I think that one important thing to remember is that these children are going to grow. And if you miss out on their babyhood and then childhood and so on, these times are gone. You should think how to balance these things and get the research done but not forsake these things that are never coming back. The research is going to be there two years down the road, three years down the road, but there are things that are very precious that should not be missed out on.
MS. KOLATA: Would you encourage your daughter to be a scientist?
DR. KING: My daughter is now 36. Both her parents are scientists — her father is an ecologist and I am a geneticist — and she said that she was not going to be a scientist, that the life was just too tough or too grueling. She went to Brown, and she did linguistics. Loved it. Now she works for the Berkeley Humane Society and organizes huge projects for them — writes grants, organizes large groups of people doing work. So in many ways, there is not that much difference between her daily life and my daily life.
DR. HIRSCH: I think the judgment about whether someone should be a scientist or not is a very serious one, because the life of a scientist, whether you are a woman or you are a man, is very difficult. It is a nonstandard life. It is a life with constraints and obligations that don’t come with other types of professions. If my daughter has to ask “Should I be a scientist?” the answer is no. But if my daughter says to me, “I was born to be a scientist. I can’t be anything else. This is my life,” then you say, “You go, girl.”
DR. APRILE: I couldn’t have said it better.
DR. RABIN: The truth is that I feel differently. I think that the life of a scientist is a fantastic life. I think it is exciting because every day there is something new that you can go and think of. There are challenges, no doubt, and the times when you can’t solve things. So I think it is all a wonderful life. And not to mention even things like time flexibility, traveling around the world, meeting a lot of exciting people. I think that these are fantastic jobs.
I did not grow up with this feeling that, yes, I am going to be a scientist. In fact, in Israel you have to register, you have to apply to a specific school that is not liberal arts. I was good at math. I said, O.K., computer science. And things evolved with time until I knew that this was the path that I wanted to take, and it was also a little bit dependent on the successes that I had that kept me going. So sometimes I think at the onset it is not 100 percent sure, but it evolves.
DR. APRILE: I kind of disagree, honestly, at least in my field, in my life. You have to be very tough, and this is a very hard life and you are always exposed. You have to be extremely strong. You have to face the competition. If one of my daughters were really dying for being a scientist, there would be no question I would support them. But if I have to encourage them, to push them in that direction, there is no way.
DR. HIRSCH: I think it is important to look at this from the point of view of the field of science. It is very important that diversity be represented in the field of science. And so from the point of view of the science — not our daughters — then I think it is necessary to have women and a woman’s point of view. Her ability to collaborate, her ability to think differently, is important for the trajectory of the field. But I really agree with you, Elena. You have to be tough. You have to be made of steel.
DR. APRILE: Titanium is better.
DR. HIRSCH: Yes, thank you. I hope it is not everybody’s experience, but it has been mine, and I say that from the point of view of a very successful woman. I have been made of steel, and thank heavens, because I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.
DR. RABIN: But this is something that I feel has developed in me. I do not think that I was this warrior that I am today when I started out in the field. I am like that today, but I wasn’t like that when I was 20.
DR. APRILE: Even if they are not scientists, these daughters of ours, they have had the best example in their life, and they will carry that example and that passion that they see in us, in me and you, with them. And so you never know what will develop along the way. And if they don’t practice science directly, they are going to change the world in other ways. Just because they have had the examples they have.
DR. KING: They will change the world. They don’t have to do it our way.
Role models help women move to fields laden with men
By Derek Sankey, Vancouver Sun, May 21, 2011, p. D11
Efforts to get more female students into science and engineering fields, where they make up on average just 17.5 per cent nationally, are gradually working to boost those numbers through a variety of mentoring and awareness programs.
At the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering, women comprise 25 per cent of the male-dominated field, with similar numbers in stereotypically male occupations such as information technology. Agnes Soos didn’t let that image stop her from pursuing her passion for engineering. The recent chemical and biomedical engineering graduate is now pursuing her master’s degree in biomedical and plans to go on to earn a PhD in the field.
“I guess I’ve gotten used to the fact there aren’t as many girls (in engineering),” says Soos. “It definitely makes a difference if there is somebody there that can encourage you.”
Role models are very persuasive when female high school students are considering a career path, but the male-oriented image of certain fields within science and engineering remains a barrier.
When casting director Irada Seli, of Cream Productions, put out a call for the upcoming Discovery Channel show Know It All – a program that pits successful professionals from a wide range of fields, both male and female, against each other in a match of wits and smarts – the response was 90 per cent from males.
“I am looking for females, not just engineers, but women who are into mechanical activities -mechanics, welders, engineers, IT – anything that would make them get out of their comfort zone and get into this particular workforce,” says Seli, who recently started targeting universities because of the apparent lack of females willing to step up and become a “know it all.”
“Watching a really strong, motivational person when you’re watching the show, you see that the person bellows on the show -she knows it all, she can do anything,” says Seli. “We know there’s a lot of people and kids watching the Discovery Channel, so you want the little girls to see that it’s possible to be an engineer … and it doesn’t mean you’re going to have to be manly. It just means you’re smart and you can put those smarts to work.”
This week, Soos did her part to inspire more girls to consider a career in the sciences and engineering disciplines. About 650 high school girls went to Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary recently to get an up-close and personal view of what it’s like to be an engineering student, take part in activities that demonstrate the day-to-day responsibilities of engineers and make potentially valuable connections that could shape their future careers.
“They should definitely think about it,” says Soos. “I really enjoyed the past four years … and I’m going to continue on with it. I have lots of [female] friends who are in mechanical engineering and they love it.”
Farnaz Sadeghpour, chairwoman of the gender and diversity in engineering committee at the University of Calgary, says part of the reason more women don’t enter the field is because of preconceived notions about it being a “man’s job.”
“We need more role models,” says Sadeghpour. “Having role models and seeing successful women engineers can change what we see now. A lot of it is lack of exposure or knowledge about what they’re dealing with. It’s also the male image [engineering] has.”
The school holds activities throughout the year to encourage more women to enter the field, where they take part in activities designed to show them how they can put their math and science skills to work for them. It also has a cyber-mentoring program that matches female high school students with successful women engineers.
“We are actively doing lots of things to encourage female students to come here,” she says.
Soos, meanwhile, couldn’t be happier after being convinced to enter the field. She has always excelled at math and science, but also had a passion for social studies and English. She views her academic and career pursuits as a merger of all of those skills.
UBC Science Report on Diversity Initiatives
A new report from UBC Science summarizes three years of data on faculty recruitment and advancement, with particular attention to women faculty. See http://www.science.ubc.ca/sites/science.ubc.ca/files/faculty/UBCScience_EquDiv_2007to2010.pdf
The data covers hiring and promotion of women faculty; measures of career success and recognition such as merit, retention and scholarly awards; and new policies, e.g., pertaining to parental and maternity leaves.
For more information on UBC Science’s faculty diversity initiatives, see http://www.science.ubc.ca/faculty/diversity.
Positive Mood Allows Human Brain to Think More Creatively
ScienceDaily.com — People who watch funny videos on the internet at work aren’t necessarily wasting time. They may be taking advantage of the latest psychological science—putting themselves in a good mood so they can think more creatively.
“Generally, positive mood has been found to enhance creative problem solving and flexible yet careful thinking,” says Ruby Nadler, a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario. She and colleagues Rahel Rabi and John Paul Minda carried out a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. For this study, Nadler and her colleagues looked at a particular kind of learning that is improved by creative thinking.
Students who took part in the study were put into different moods and then given a category learning task to do (they learned to classify sets of pictures with visually complex patterns). The researchers manipulated mood with help from music clips and video clips; first, they tried several out to find out what made people happiest and saddest. The happiest music was a peppy Mozart piece, and the happiest video was of a laughing baby. The researchers then used these in the experiment, along with sad music and video (a piece of music from Schindler’s List and a news report about an earthquake) and a piece of music and a video that didn’t affect mood. After listening to the music and watching the video, people had to try to learn to recognize a pattern.
Happy volunteers were better at learning a rule to classify the patterns than sad or neutral volunteers. “If you have a project where you want to think innovatively, or you have a problem to carefully consider, being in a positive mood can help you to do that,” Nadler says. And music is an easy way to get into a good mood. Everyone has a different type of music that works for them—don’t feel like you have to switch to Mozart, she says.
Nadler also thinks this may be a reason why people like to watch funny videos at work. “I think people are unconsciously trying to put themselves in a positive mood”—so that apparent time-wasting may actually be good news for employers.
Ums and uhs help babies learn from us
Broken speech from adults can help toddlers learn, study finds
By Derek Abma, Vancouver Sun, April 15, 2011, p. B4
It seems those brain freezes we have when searching for the right words -when all we can come up with for a moment is “um … ” or “uh …” -help young children who are learning from us.
A new study, which involved a researcher from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, shows toddlers interpret such expressions, called “disfluencies,” as signals that they are about to receive new information, giving them an opportunity to mentally prepare for it.
For example, if an adult is walking through a zoo with a two-year-old child, they might point to an animal and say, “That’s a, um, rhinoceros.”
The spoken hesitation that comes before the name of the animal cues the child to prepare for new knowledge, say the authors of the study, published in the journal Developmental Science.
”(Toddlers) have a really complicated task that they’re facing,” said Katherine White, a psychology professor at Waterloo who helped conduct the study. “They don’t know a lot of words; they’re learning new words all the time. Any new information that can help them out would be of great service to them.”
White said research has shown disfluencies can also help adults in processing new information. She said such findings, along with her recent research, goes against past assumptions that disfluencies were simply “noise” and possibly a hindrance to the development of children’s language skills.
The researchers arrived at their findings by testing the reactions of children who were presented with objects on a screen. Two would appear at a time; one familiar object, such as a ball, and another novel object, with a made-up name like “gorp.”
The child would hear a voice identifying the objects. When the voice said “uh” before the name of the object, the children spent more time looking at the mysterious entity than the common object almost 70 per cent of the time.
White said the additional time spent looking at the novel objects was interpreted as a sign the children were processing information about the object with which they were unfamiliar.
The study included children between the ages of about 1½ and 2½ years old, but this effect was only found among the children older than two.
The study’s authors, who also included researchers from the University of Rochester in New York, said children younger than two have probably not yet developed the ability to interpret disfluencies as a signal that new information is coming their way.
MRI technology used to treat anxiety, depression
Patients who observed their brain activity on screen were able to engage in self-reflection and learn to control negative thoughts
By Tiffany Crawford – Vancouver Sun – April 9, 2011, p. A19For centuries, yogis have imparted the wisdom of healing through meditation and self-awareness.
Now, researchers at the University of B.C. say they’ve found a way to eventually help people combat depression or obsessive-compulsive disorders through similar methods using MRI technology.
In the groundbreaking study, published in the April edition of NeuroImage, researchers say participants were able to control their thoughts better when they watched their brain activity on an fMRI -functional magnetic resonance imaging -screen.
The reason they could control negative thoughts, for example, is simply because they became more aware of them. Many patients who suffer from depression, anxiety or obsessive compulsive behaviour are not aware of negative thoughts, said co-author Kalina Christoff, a psychology professor at UBC. So, the technology could be used in the future as a tool to help them become more aware.
Participants in the study watched feedback on the fMRI from their rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for thoughts of self-reflection. They were asked to alternate their thoughts -in 30-second intervals over four six-minute sessions -between their external surroundings or current events, and introspective thoughts.
The fMRI would pick up only the introspective thoughts that were actively being contemplated by the participant.
Researchers did not know what the participants were thinking about.
Then, by watching levels go up or down on a thermometer-like bar on the fMRI screen, the participant was able to see whether there was an awareness of thoughts. The technique does not differentiate between particular self-reflective thoughts so there is no way to tell whether the participant was fretting over an exam or obsessing about being overweight, for example.
“If the bar is low that means you are not aware of your thoughts,” said Christoff.
“You might be having thoughts you are not aware of. But if the bar is increasing, it means you are successfully paying attention to your thoughts.”
Often, people who are coping with anxiety, trauma or depression may have negative thoughts, but they are not aware of them until they become angry or grumpy and snap at people, she said. “We think this helps train you to become more self-reflective.”
Christoff admits the process is similar to meditation, a practice that is included in many disciplines of yoga.
“By training your thoughts, anyone can benefit. You don’t have to have a clinical condition. This is very similar to meditation. And in that similarity, these training methods could have the same benefits that meditation can have. You are training yourself to be more aware.”
Christoff said in followup training sessions, all the participants had higher scores of self-reflection and were much more able to observe their thoughts after the training than before. By using the technology to target the areas of the brain responsible for self-reflection, Christoff believes people who battle depressive thoughts will be able to modify them as they become more aware of them.
“If a depressed person thinks, ‘The world is horrible and everybody is against me,’ and they don’t notice, it will bring their mood down and they’ll feel more depressed and because they feel that they’ll have even more horrible thoughts,” she said.
The idea then would be to use the MRI technology in conjunction with cognitive behavioural therapy, a type of psychotherapy that aims to help people struggling with depression learn to recognize that their thinking can contribute to the sad moods and despair. With time, they come to see alternatives to what their minds tell them.
“We’d like to see if we can speed up this process or enhance it by having additional MRI training sessions that can tell them whether or not they are becoming aware.”
The study also could have implications for treating people with posttraumatic stress disorder. Soldiers who come back from Afghanistan, for example, often have obsessive thoughts.
With the MRI training, psychologists could help them “catch” repetitive thoughts before they create too much damage.
Donate blood with SCWIST!
SCWIST has recently joined the Partners for Life program with Canadian Blood Services. We have committed to promoting this great program and encouraging our Board, staff and members to donate blood.
Donating blood is simple to do and only takes about one hour of your time. Each donation can help save three lives and donors are eligible to give blood every 56 days. Can’t donate? Recruit a friend or family member to donate on your behalf!
Your donations are automatically counted towards our yearly pledged goal once you register as a SCWIST donor. To register with us please go to https://www.blood.ca/Web/PFL.nsf/Member?openform&Lang=E&SFDS=S&cURL;=/Web/PFL.nsf/French?OpenPage&Category=Forms and enter our Partner ID# soci010593 (4 letters, 6 digits), your name, phone number, date of birth and donor card number if you already have one.
There are numerous blood clinics available. Locations can be found online at http://www.blood.ca/centreapps/clinics/InetClinics.nsf/CVSE?OpenForm&CloseMenu;.
To book an appointment call 1-888-2DONATE (236-6283). Blood, it’s in you to give.
Turning Point: Dr. Roberta Bondar
Seeing Earth from space gave astronaut Roberta Bondar an intense appreciation for the need to protect all that our planet has to offer
It took a trip many miles into space for Roberta Bondar to really get perspective on the planet she had known all her life. There, amid the light-sucking black and lifeless stars, Canada`s first female astronaut realized, Às much as we romanticize going into space, the reality is that this planet gives us all we need to nurture ourselves.`From space, that little turquoise orb was a life-changing sight. Àt that moment, it meant more to me to be able to go back to the Earth ^than it did to go to space¸, because beyond is just a dark, cold void.`
At the time that Roberta took that trip on the Discovery space shuttle, she was 46. With multiple degrees in science, she had a wealth of knowledge about the Earth and its ecosystems. But seeing the planet from space, she got the bigger picture. `This is it. This is what we have, and we should be focusing our energies on preserving it.`
Though Roberta has continued to study the planet, she no longer views it as just a scientific entity. She photographs the amazing world around her to pass on her profound appreciation for our Earth. And in April, her Roberta Bondar Foundation is launching seminars and exhibitions to pique curiosity and inspire imaginations about the environment. She hopes to get others involved in both learning about and taking care of the planet.
For Roberta, teaching is a key part of conservation, because lifelong learning makes people one of the most valuable resources on Earth. “It’s a resource that we cannot replace.”
Homemakers April 2011, p. 82
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