Thoughts on female professsors

I recently looked up who my professors will be next term and was pleasantly surprised to see that Fluids Dynamics II would be taught by a female. Upon seeing this, I thought to myself "good work, UWaterloo. That's four female engineering professors I've had so far!"

I am currently reading Jessica Valenti's "Full Frontal Feminism" (side note: not nearly as awesome as "He's a Stud, She's a Slut" but still pretty good) and as I read, my mind began to wander a bit, as if often does when I am being challenged to think about something differently. And I realized, holy cats, four engineering professors is not good work! I am enrolled in or have taken a total of 31 engineering courses... so only 13% of my profs have been women. Well, but then again, only 15% of first years were female, so maybe UW is doing pretty well.

At my co-op placement right now, there is only one other female in my entire department. While I'd estimate about 30-40% of people in my office are female, almost all of them are secretaries, or are in HR or accounting. Because I don't know anybody here in Texas, it has been almost three months since I conversed in person with a girl my own age. When people from the office go out for lunch together, the waiter OFTEN makes a quiet"well, aren't you outnumbered!" joke to me.

I know I should get involved and try to encourage more girls to pursue engineering. I attend WIE (women in engineering) events at my school every so often, but the events are usually either really "let's all of us girls paint each other's nails and watch teen movies!" or they're talks in which the speaker tells you that sexual harassment is only a big deal if you make it a big deal, and you should really learn how to have a harder shell and laugh things off. Which speaker? Oh yeah, that was one of the aforementioned four female profs. I am quoting verbatim here, "Don't give them material by being really girly. Just be one of the guys and you'll fit in."

I just read this article, published by UW in 2004, regarding the 18% decrease in female undergraduate enrollment from 2002 to 2004. It has recommendations for the federal government level, the provincial government level, the private sector, universities, and secondary schools. Most of these recommendations are generic things like "offer interest free loans" and only ONE at all even addresses specifically females. Secondary schools should "encourage female participation in technology programs". Nice and vague, right?

Amy Poehler has her new web show, Smart Girls at the Party (theme song: "smart girls have mooooore fun!") and I am just so jealous that she gets to be doing that. Man, imagine having that opportunity? Between the time I starting writing those post (this morning) to now (after dinner) (don't worry, I did lots of things in between that time... it doesn't take me 12 hours to write a post) I've decided that I really need to start walking the walk a bit more. I can be jealous of how great it would be to star in my own show about smart girls or I can email these girls and inquire after volunteer opportunities. Maybe I should keep going to WIE events at UW... or maybe I should start organizing my own WIE events that aren't awful.

Sometimes I just really feel like I'm doing a lot of complaining and not a lot of fixing.