Finding the Feminine Side of Engineering

An excellent article appeared in the autumn issue of the UK magazine Engineering Apprentice. Writer Ross Ringham had a chat with UOP author Monique Frize about her book The Bold and the Brave: A History of Women in Science and Engineering. They spoke about issues facing women in Engineering, and what needs to be done in both the education system and in the industry itself to achieve gender balance.

Here is some of what Frize had to say:

Increasing the pool of women engineers requires that policies, strategies and initiatives be invested at each level of education, from primary school, to college, to university. We must profile women and their work for generations to come, so that girls think, "I can also do this," and boys think, "Girls and women can also do this."

Equally important is the integration of feminine attributes and perspectives into the culture of engineering and technology, ensuring social relevance is included in the curriculum and using a teaching style that reaches a diversity of audiences.

Engineering needs women more than women need engineering roles. Women currently flock in great numbers to health-related careers, which are in great demand everywhere with the ageing population. So we must find the way to achieve more gender balance, and a culture where women no longer have to be bold and brave to choose engineering careers.

To read the full article, visit the Engineering Apprentice website. You may be asked to create an account to view the article, but it is very simple, and there is no cost. 

Frize was selected by Professional Engineers Ontario and the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers to receive their annual Gold Medal for achievement in the field of engineering. The gold medal will be presented at a Gala tomorrow evening. 

Congratulations, Monique!!

"Stop, that's my X-ray!" The true story behind the discovery of DNA

Interesting find today while looking through the archive of Hark, a Vagrant! a web-comic drawn by Canada’s own Kate Beaton. Here’s the comic: 

Hark, A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton

The comic depicts Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick. Do the names ring any bells?

If they do, it’s likely Watson and Crick, and you are likely remembering a 9th grade science lesson on the men attributed with the discovery of the structure of DNA. They, along with a gentleman named Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this breakthrough in 1962. 

The question some people now ask is – did they deserve it, or should someone else’s name have been included on the list of recipients for the Nobel Prize?

The thing is, their discovery was due in large part to an X-ray belonging to Rosalind Franklin, who was also in the race to discover the structure of DNA. Watson himself attributes his original identification of the of DNA to Franklin’s X-ray. In his autobiography, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, Watson wrote: “The instant I saw the picture, my mouth fell open and my pulse began to rush. The pattern was unbelievable…” (167)

The controversy revolves around how they got the X-ray in the first place. How did Franklin’s research end up in the hands of Watson and Crick? Did they misappropriate it? Was it stolen from Franklin’s lab with the help of Maurice Wilkins, her co-researcher? (Wilkins’ name, you’ll notice, IS on the list of Nobel Prize laureates for 1962.)

Either way, it’s a tragic demonstration of how a woman’s contribution to a major event is often downplayed or completely ignored by the scientific community. And, while the actual event may not have played out exactly as the comic portrays -- it's still pushes us to think about what it would have been like for women trying to make it in a time that was not always kind, or even fair, to women.

Interestingly enough, we recently published a book titled The Bold and the Brave: A History of Women in Science and Engineering which touches on Franklin’s work, as well as on the work of other pioneers in science such as Mileva Einstein and Sophie Germain. If you are interested in learning more about the lives and contributions these women made to science, check it out!

Gold Medal Author

Hearty congratulations go out to UOP author Monique Frize,who was selected as the recipient of the Gold Medal which is awarded by Professional Engineers Ontario and the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers.  The gold medal will be presented at a ceremony on November 20, 2010.

Frize will be adding the medal to an already enviable list of accomplishments. She began her distinguished career when she  graduated as the first woman to earn a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering at the University of Ottawa. Her credentials, both as an engineer and as an advocate for women’s equality, are simply astounding. Following her undergraduate work, Frize earned a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London (UK), a Master’s of Business Administration at the Université de Moncton, and a doctorate from Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam (The Netherlands).

She has been awarded five Honorary Doctorates, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 1992 and Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993. 

For more information, see the news release on Carleton University's website:
http://www2.carleton.ca/newsroom/news-releases/carleton-professor-honoured-by-ontario-engineers/

Monique Frize: Catalyst, Activist, Advocate

Tabaret Magazine has published a shiny new cover story featuring Monique Frize, author of The Bold and the Brave. The article, titled Debunking Myths and Legends: Women in Science and Engineering, was written by Susan Lightstone. It discusses some of the hurdles that Frize has come across in her chosen career, and the iniquity that persists for women who follow in her footsteps.

Part of the problem is that people think that gender is no longer a barrier in today’s modern world. Frize disagrees.

“Women’s full and equal participation in society is in no way guaranteed”, says Frize, who looks to the past to prove this point. In her book, she provides numerous examples of women throughout history who, despite societal constraints and prohibitions, developed their passion for and expertise in science. Yet they remain largely unknown—their work either trivialized or adopted by men as their own.

The modern-day myth that gender stereotypes have disappeared is, in fact, untrue says Frize. If society is truly committed to “women’s full and equal participation,” we must, like her, keep “debunking myths and legends.”

On the bright side, Frize presents some of the ways that she and others are working to make the fields of science and engineering a friendlier place for women.

To find out more, read the complete article: http://www.tabaret.uottawa.ca/article_e_439.html

To learn about The Bold and the Brave, visit the University of Ottawa Press’ website. http://www.press.uottawa.ca/book/683

UOP author featured in Nature Magazine

Good news -- one of our authors was featured in Nature Magazine yesterday!

Monique Frize, the author of The Bold and the Brave: A History of Women in Science and Engineering was interviewed about the underrepresentation of women in the academic sciences. It's a great article, which details the strategies being used by universities and in industry to increase gender diversity in fields with fewer women.

Robin Mejia writes:

When Monique Frize started at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, in the 1960s, she wanted to study engineering. At the time, her gender was more than an anomaly. “I was the first one.The dean and the department chair tried to dissuade me and told me to stay in chemistry,which I hated,” Frize recalls. “I wanted to be an electrical engineer.”

Today, a story such as Frize’s sounds almost anachronistic — its overt sexism something that a modern university would be unlikely to tolerate. Yet studies show that in Europe and North America, women are still significantly underrepresented in science, technology,engineering and mathematics, at least at the top levels.

In Europe, only 11% of senior academic researchers are women, according to the European Commission 2009 report She Figures. In the United States, a 2009 National Research Council (NRC) study found that 21% of senior science faculty members and 6% of senior engineering faculty members were female.

“The [tenure] processes have not changed to reflect the lives of young professors,” says Catherine Didion, the director of the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine at the US National Academies based in Washington DC. Universities are attempting to address these shortcomings (see ‘Increasing gender diversity of the candidate pool’). Some have sought policies to make the academic track more family-friendly, such as pausing the tenure clock after the birth of a child. Others have made a concerted effort to broaden faculty searches or offer mentoring programmes. Such moves should provide new solutions to an old problem — especially for those candidates who know that these options exist.

To read the full article, visit this link:
http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2010/100610/full/nj7299-832a.html