March 18, 2019

By Matt Windsor for the UAB Reporter

Engineers love to solve problems. They have a tricky one in their own profession, where women comprise only 13 percent of the workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, women make up 46.9 percent of the workforce in the United States.

“The gender gap in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields] is a worldwide phenomenon,” said Virginia Sisiopiku, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB School of Engineering and director of the school’s transportation engineering program. And that hurts everyone, because “if women are not adequately represented in engineering and science fields, then society misses the creativity, innovation and contributions that gender can bring.” Many of the proposed solutions for engineering’s gender gap are similarly large in scope — more on that below — but part of the answer, Sisiopiku said, comes down to a matter of one-on-one: giving girls role models in the field so they can see “that it is possible for them, too, to become successful engineers.”

For Virginia Sisiopiku, the appeal of engineering was a “desire to provide practical solutions to societal problems,” she said. Sisiopiku studies traffic congestion patterns and devises new ways to alleviate congestion using computer simulation models and data analytics. She is the director of the TREND Lab, which focuses on developing innovative solutions to transportation challenges. In 2014, Sisiopiku became the first woman in Alabama to be named a fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and in 2018 she became the first member of UAB’s faculty to receive the Educator of the Year award from the Engineering Council of Birmingham.

“I never considered gender as having anything to do with one’s ability to be successful in engineering,” Sisiopiku said. “On the contrary, I always thought that women can become excellent engineers as they often carry personality traits associated with professional success,” including being smart and driven to succeed, enjoying finding common-sense solutions and fixing problems, and being detail-oriented, productive, dependable and effective multi-taskers. Lingering stereotypes and biases are part of the problem, Sisiopiku said. “Young girls, influenced by longstanding gender stereotypes, often self-select out of science and engineering courses and shy away from considering engineering as a career choice,” she explained.“Many lack female role models in STEM or believe that their chances of achieving their full potential as engineers may be hindered by gender bias in a male-dominated field.”

Since 2015, Sisiopiku has served as event director for UAB’s Girls in Science and Engineering Day, which lets middle-school girls participate in science and engineering workshops that are led by women faculty, staff and students. “They see that it is possible for them, too, to become successful engineers and scientists,” Sisiopiku said. “Many of them come from under-served areas and don’t have anyone in their immediate environment who is a woman and an engineer,” Sisiopiku told the Reporter last year. “I want to instil in them the idea that it’s a career where they have a good potential for success.”

“Pointing more girls toward careers in engineering and STEM will help boost the ranks of female engineers,” Sisiopiku says, but it’s only one part of the road to a more equitable profession. “It is equally important for employers to provide friendly and supporting work environments for women engineers in order to retain them in the workforce and ensure that they achieve their full potential and thrive as engineering professionals,” she said. “Policies and programs should also be in place that ensure equity, fairness and support for all. Such obligations are the only way to break the current cycle of gender disparity in the engineering workforce and, ultimately, best serve the needs of the profession and society at large.”

Click here to read the entire article titled: Meet 5 role models who are inspiring young women to get into engineering