Women in Non-Traditional Fields

This past Tuesday I was honored to participate as a member of a panel discussion at CSN. CSN held an event to raise awareness of employment opportunities for women in non-traditional fields. CSN provided pizza and pop in the lobby of the Telecommunications building and had booths where women and men could get information on fields such as building trades, fire sciences, information technology and criminal justice. About 40 people; men and women, went into the auditorium where they listened to presentations from the dean and 3 industry representatives. Then we had the panel discussion.

I think it was a successful event. There was a lot of interest in how to get into these fields. One of the biggest questions was how to get middle school and high school girls to stay interested in math and science. Everyone agreed that the only reason for the gender gap is due to societal pressures that girls of that age face. The panel also agreed that both boys and girls are not encouraged to try things on their own and allowed to fail. Kids need to learn how to deal with failure and not to fear it. If they can learn it’s just another part of the learning process, they will gain confidence that they can overcome set backs and succeed in the end.

Hopefully the college will run more events like this in the future.

Tags: School, Women's Issues

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Topical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.