What Matters: April 2001
Women in Engineering
By Joan Munzel Gosink '62
I started using my initials, J.P., instead of my name, Joan, when I was junior at MIT. In my sophomore year, a certain math instructor graded my quizzes unfairly—taking off full credit—25 points—for the same small errors that counted 2 or 3 points for the male students. That was in 1960. I was the only female student in that class, so I transferred to another section. There was no other recourse in those times. Besides, I was grateful to be at MIT; Rensselaer, in my home state of New York, would not even send application forms to women.
Fast forward to 1985. I had used my initials for all my papers, proposals and reports throughout my career, and had been very successful in publishing and in acquiring grants. I was submitting an equipment proposal to the Army Research Office, and was rushing to catch a plane. I asked the department secretary to do the cover sheet and the cover letter and to submit the proposal. When I returned from my trip, I found that the secretary had used my name instead of my initials, and I was dismayed, to say the least. As expected, the proposal was turned down. The next year, I increased the budget, used my initials, and submitted the same proposal. It was funded.
I went back to using Joan in 1990, when I was on sabbatical as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation. In control of almost $5 million, it made sense then. I'm glad to say that we have witnessed a significant change in attitude during the last ten years or so. Most engineering programs and funding agencies proactively support diversity in their hiring and awards processes. Fairness is a concern.
Why should we want to increase the numbers of women in engineering? Fairness is one answer, but certainly not the only one. I assert that we will have better products and services when women participate in engineering design and development. After all, the primary function of engineering is design. Since design is a creative process in which we synthesize our own experience and perceptions into a plan or a model, a more diverse design team will formulate a wider scope of ideas, and this leads to better, more adaptable designs.
Women are known to be good team players. This is important for engineering in the 21st century since so much of our work is now done in interdisciplinary teams. A group of colleagues at the Colorado School of Mines is researching the effects of gender composition in design teams on the quality of the design product and on team satisfaction. Their preliminary data show that both features are improved when the team is mixed and contains more than a single female or male.
Complex design requires cooperation and strong leadership. Indeed, women may be better leaders. An article in U.S. News and World Report1 raises this thorny issue. The authors point to a changing pattern of corporate leadership that favors more participatory, inclusive approaches to management. This is the forte of women.
Women bring a different perspective to the design process. For example, women are more often concerned with safety and environmental issues than men. Would airbags have been designed differently if women had been part of the original design team? Would the O-rings on the Challenger? A survey appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education2 reveals that women freshmen attend recitals and concerts, and visit art galleries or museums at rates at least 8 percent higher than their male counterparts. Will our engineering products be characterized by superior aesthetics or better ergonomic features if women participate in their design? Perhaps.
Unfortunately progress toward increasing the representation of women in engineering continues to be slow. Fairness is now considered "political correctness," and backlash measures against special programs in universities and in industry are common. But as we have seen, there are other reasons to support the participation of women in engineering. In a competitive and global economy, we need to use all our best resources, and women represent 50% of our intellectual resource. We need their skills. We will all profit from the contributions that women can bring to engineering.
It is time to realize that diversity is worth the extra effort. We need positive measuresyes, affirmative action programs—to recruit and retain women in engineering programs and faculty positions. These proactive programs not only redress old injustices, they promote the quality of the profession of engineering.
Incidentally, now that I am the director of a large and successful engineering program, I still use Joan. And, you may also be interested in knowing that the math instructor from 1960 is still at MIT, now a full professor.
1. Editors. "Are Women Better Leaders?" U.S. News and World Report. January 29, 2001. p. 10.
2. "This Year's Freshmen at 4-Year College: a Statistical Profile." The Chronicle of Higher Education. January 26, 2001. p. A 48.
About the Author
Currently on sabbatical at the National Science Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education, Joan Gosink has been the director of the Division of Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) since 1991. During her tenure at CSM, the division grew in enrollment from 550 to 850 undergraduates, initiated MS and PhD programs in engineering systems in 1993 (which now enroll about 65 students), and increased its research funding by 500 percent. In 1999, the Division was designated a Program of Excellence by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, one of two in the state that year. Recently, Dr. Gosink was chosen Unique Woman of Colorado 2000 by the Denver Post for her work in encouraging women in engineering.
Dr. Gosink received her SB in math from MIT in 1962, and her MS from Old Dominion University and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, both in mechanical engineering, in 1973 and 1979, respectively. She is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Joan and her husband, Tom, have four sons; three have PhD degrees in the biological sciences and one is an MD.
What Matters is a guest opinion column written by a different MIT alumnus or alumna. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Alumni Association or MIT. Interested in writing a column? Email whatmatters@mit.edu.
