Nursing and Engineering tackle gender inequality

As one of the top schools in the country, Penn prides itself on the diversity of its student body. While the university continues to progress toward a more equal community, there are still significant changes to made.

In October, School of Nursing Dean Afaf Meleis noted that 94.6 percent of freshmen nurses are female. This marks a 10-percent increase compared to the current sophomore class, where 84.6 percent of nurses are female.

When pressed on the subject in a later interview, Meleis acknowledged the gender imbalance among nurses. She pointed to the school’s Faculty Diversity Action Plan as a possible model to increase the number of male nurses trained at Penn.

Meleis also pointed to different groups available to nursing minorities, including the Male Association of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania.

MAN-UP, led by its President Nursing junior Spencer Stubbs, works to fuel dialogue among male nurses about their practice and education. The group also works to recruit male nursing students through high school outreach.

In comparison to the Nursing School, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences suffers a lesser degree of gender inequality. The undergraduate population of SEAS is now 34 percent female. While this percentage is higher than the national average of 17.8 percent, most of the equality is seen in the school’s Bioengineering Department.

In departments like Electrical Engineering, Engineering senior Willis Zhang says that there may be only two or three women in a class of 30 students.

However, Zhang maintained that “if there were more girls, it wouldn’t be any different.”

When asked about the measures SEAS is taking to create a more diverse population, Zhang said “I think they’re trying, but I don’t know what they could do.”

In order to counter inequality, students launched Alpha Omega Epsilon this year, an Engineering sorority designed to foster community for women engineers on campus. The Engineering school also created an “Advancing Women in Engineering” program.

“Since its launch four years ago, AWE has led the way in increasing our success in both recruiting and retaining our women engineers,” Engineering Vice Dean for Academic Affairs Joseph Sun wrote in an email.

The Engineering school has also focused on recruiting new students through outreach to local middle and high schools.

However, the gender divide persists.

“It doesn’t affect me, but you can tell some girls can be affected. Some girls may be less likely to raise their hands and participate,” Engineering senior Julia Quindlen said.

Quindlen also mentioned that there were some cases in which students and professors made comments to her female engineering friends about their place in the Engineering school.

“There have been instances where people would say things to make them feel like they didn’t belong in engineering as a female,” Quindlen said.

“If you want it to affect you, it can definitely keep you from participating. It just kind of depends on how you feel about it,” she added.

However, Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies professor Ruth Cowan said the inequalities in the Nursing and Engineering schools may be outside of Penn’s control.

“Whatever your good intentions are to increase diversity, it doesn’t matter if the pipeline doesn’t have such people in it,” Cowan said.

Since fewer women apply to engineering schools and a minority of men apply to nursing schools, “you have to start young,” she added. “You have to start in high school when people are making decisions about where to go to school. Lower schools would have to do a better job of career advising.”

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.