Engineering Australia has designated 2007 the "Year of Women in Engineering". The rationale behind it being that Women currently represent less than 10% of Engineers in Australia.
It's fundamentally a bad idea to promote anyone into a profession simply to "make up numbers". This applies to both men and women equally. This entire campaign will mean that women will enter engineering for all the wrong reasons: scholarship money, because they were pushed into it, or because some high school careers counsellor promoted it as a 'flashy' profession.
The two concerns Engineers Australia has is that less than 10% of the profession is composed of women, and that the retention rate of women who actually do enter is very poor.
There's a very good reason for the low retention rate. Women aren't genetically predispositioned to work in the "hard" sciences, such as engineering and physics.
In 1921, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung analysed people's approaches to decision making. Jung found that there were two ways people approached the decision making process. He titled these two groups "thinkers" and "feelers". The "thinker" group has an emphasis on analytical factors, while the "feeler" group bases decisions upon feelings and their values.
Different personality types are suited to different professions. The analytical types are naturally suited towards professions where logic and structure dominate; such as Engineering. The values-based personalities are naturally suited towards professions where they are directly rewarded for helping people, such as psychology, the health care industry, and human resources (Myers in Consulting Psychologists press, 1998).
Encouraging people of any gender into a profession where their personality doesn't suit them is wrong -- both for the person involved, and for society as a whole. Branding women as "the keystone in Engineering" devalues every single engineering accomplishment that has been made over the last 200 years, simply because a man was responsible for it.
Certifying women as Engineers simply because they are women, and not because they are qualified in their own right degrades both the profession, and the prestige that certification carries.
Comments
Before jumping the gun, I think you need to get some facts straight.
By quoting Myers you are writing off most, if not all, women as value-based personalities and most men as analytical. Anyone who generalises a group of individuals in this manner are on dangerous ground as they are either ignorant or prejudiced.
Whilst I agree different personality types go for different careers. That is what Carl Jung, Myer-Briggs and a number of others theorised in regards to the temperament types. However, to simply use this to categorise women as not belonging to engineering and physics because they are 'feelers' is a grossly prejudicial and sexist view.
What engineers australia are trying to do is to dispel the myths of engineering that has been going on for too long: that it is mainly suited for men. If you look at the more complete definition of what engineers do you should understand why women belong in this field as much as men. "relies on a mixture of the knowledge base of natural science, the methodology of scientific rigor, intuition, creativity, and, not least, common sense. If we, for a moment, visualize a scale of professions stretching from scientists on the one hand to artists on the other, engineers lie somewhere in the middle, with architects somewhere between engineers and artists. If for the scientist the aim is to discover the truth about Nature, and for the artist the aim is self-expression; then, for the engineer, the aim is to be useful to society." (Speech by Dr Alasken at the UTS university graduation - faculty of engineering)
You are futhermore insulting the engineering certification program by implying that they are trying to "simply make up numbers". I am writing so that possibly you will take a moment to explore before stating ludicrous statements such as "devalues every single engineering accomplishment that has been made over the last 200 years, simply because a man was responsible for it." Just to give you an idea, here are a select few examples of things I'm certain you either use or know quite well...
"Dishwasher - In 1886, Josephine Cochran proclaimed in disgust "If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine, I'll do it myself." And she did, Josephine Cochran invented the first practical (did the job) dishwasher. Josephine Cochran had expected the public to welcome the new invention, which she unveiled at the 1893, World's Fair, but only the hotels and large restaurants bought her ideas. It was not until the 1950s, that dishwashers caught on with the general public.
Windshield Wiper - Even before Henry Ford started manufacturing his Model A, Mary Anderson was granted her first patent for a window cleaning device in November of 1903. Her invention could clean snow, rain, or sleet from a windshield by using a handle inside the car. Her goal was to improve driver vision during stormy weather. In 1915 the Mary Anderson 'windshield wiper' became standard issue on all cars.
Brassiere - The first modern brassiere to receive a patent was one invented by New York socialite, Mary Phelps Jacob in 1913. At that time, the only socially acceptable undergarment was a corset stiffened with whale bones. The invention of the brassiere eventually led to the demise of the often masochistic corset.
Disposable Diapers - In 1950, Marion Donovan was a young mother in the post-war baby boom era. She came from a family of inventors and inherited the inventing 'gene'. Unhappy with leaky, cloth diapers that had to be washed, she first invented the 'Boater', a plastic covering for cloth diapers first made from a shower curtain. Later, using disposable absorbent material and combining it with her Boater design, Marion Donovan created the first convenient disposable diaper. Companies she presented it to told her that her product would be too expansive to produce, so she went into business for herself. A few years later, she was able to sell her company for $1 million.
Scotchgard - Patsy Sherman was a 3M research chemist assigned to work on fluorochemical polymers. Patsy Sherman was one of very few women chemists to work for a major corporation when she was hired by 3M in 1952. Her work was an essential part of the introduction of 3M's first stain repellent and soil release textile treatments which have grown into an entire family of products known as Scotchgard protectors.
Kevlar - Stephanie Kwolek's research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight." (extracted from DaVinci Institute)
So again, before you undermine and degrade the reputation of other people and institutions, please get your facts right.