Signal Processing - July 2017 - 4

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Rabab Ward | SPS President | rababw@ece.ubc.ca

Mind the (Gender) Gap

n my last "President's Message" [1], I
talked about the many ways that diversity drives innovation in our field and in
all facets of life. Returning to this discussion, I'd now like to focus on women in
engineering (WIE). There are numerous
examples of women throughout history
who had to overcome serious hurdles to
make valuable contributions to science
and culture. I will mention three exemplary role models.
Sophie Germain, the great French
mathematician, was not allowed to attend
the Ecole Polytechnique in the late 1700s;
she used a male pseudonym and eventually won the Paris Academy of Science
grand prize for the theory of elasticity.
Another famous renegade in popular culture and in the signal processing field is
the actress Hedy Lamarr, who invented
a spread spectrum technology in 1941
to scramble radio signals on torpedoes.
In the 1960s, her technology was implemented on naval ships during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Her applications ultimately
galvanized the digital communications
boom and are currently used in many
devices, including the global positioning
system, cell phones, and fax machines.
Last but not least is Madam Curie,
whose incredible achievements influenced me from an early age. She was my
idol, and I used to dream that one day I
would also do great things. As a young
girl, I did not know exactly what my own
"great thing" would be. But I was lucky to
also have a mother who instilled in me the

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2017.2704998
Date of publication: 11 July 2017

confidence that, with hard work, I could
reach any goals I set. I certainly faced
many obstacles, but whenever I came up
against a closed door, I looked for another
door to open.
I was born and raised in Lebanon. In
1961, I was not allowed to study engineering at the American University of Beirut,
even though my grades were higher than
all of the male students in the country at
that time. So I went to Egypt and enrolled
in medical school. But my heart wasn't
in medicine, so I switched to engineering. I returned home in 1967 and became
the first female member of the Lebanese
Professional Engineering Society. When
I later joined the University of California
in Berkeley, I was the only woman among
all of the Ph.D students in electrical engineering. In fact, the first woman to earn
her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
at Berkeley was an Egyptian woman who
graduated four years before me.
Upon my graduation in 1972, unlike
my male colleagues, I could not find a
job in academia. I looked upon that as an
opportunity-to have children and also to
work abroad, which led to my becoming
the first woman appointed in engineering
at the University of Zimbabwe. Eventually
I joined the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Applied Science, and, in
1981, I received a tenure track professorship and became the first woman engineer professor at British Columbia.
Looking back, I realize that the vast
majority of those who helped me succeed were males as, at that time, I did not
know other female engineers in my field
who could extend a mentoring hand. I've
IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE

July 2017

enjoyed a fulfilling career in electrical
engineering, specifically in the signal processing field. And I've since enjoyed the
privilege of working with many talented
women students, colleagues, scientists,
engineers, innovators, and business people.
The number of women studying and
working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has
increased so much since I was a girl. But
since the early 2000s, the number of
women engineering undergraduates has
remained stagnant at about 20% in the
United States, and only 11% of practicing
engineers in the United States are women,
with typically lower annual salaries lower
than men (in 2013, it was US$65,000
for women compared to US$79,000 for
men). It's no wonder that only 27% of
women remain in the STEM fields after
the age of 30.
According to 2016 research, STEM
Fortune 500 firms are no more diverse
than in 2001, indicating an entrenched
gender gap. The picture is similar in the
United Kingdom, where only 9% of the
engineering workforce are women. At the
same time, the United States and the United Kingdom are dealing with a shortage
of STEM workers. With STEM jobs set
to grow 17% by 2024, we need to provide
more resources and incentives to women,
to fill the labor market gap. Furthermore,
according to research, companies with
gender parity are 15% more likely to perform better.
There is encouraging news coming
from other countries. Thirty-five percent of
engineering students in India are women.
In some Arab countries, enrollments are

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