KELSEY RETTING/Daily Bruin Professor Ann
Karagozian (right), who works in a lab with mechanical
engineering graduate students, points to an acoustic wave
guide.
By Jany Kim
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
[email protected]
She cooks. She cleans. She raises a family. She develops
spacecraft propulsion systems.
Ann Karagozian, professor of mechanical and aerospace
engineering, is one of many female faculty at UCLA working in
male-dominated fields.
As a numerical minority, such female faculty occasionally deal
with subtle gender discrimination.
Karagozian observed that men who grew up in the engineering
profession may initially view the small number of women
differently, with attitudes “flavored by their
upbringing.”
She attributed this to initial prejudicial perceptions that
arise in any unfamiliar social interaction and to the
“history of institutions,” since many engineering
schools consisted of an entirely-male student body before the
1970s.
When Karagozian was working part-time at Hughes Aircraft as an
undergraduate student in the late ’70s, a co-worker initially
refused to address her directly, even when responding to her
questions, but allowed her to listen while addressing another
employee.
“My own feeling is that there are impediments to
women’s progress,” said microbiology department chair,
Sherie Morrison, citing the fewer number of women invited as
speakers in their field due to their lack of connections and low
numbers.
However, Morrison emphasized that most issues are a result of
“unintended discrimination.”
MAE professor Adrienne Lavine, one of eight women among 130
engineering faculty, said that because of the increasing number of
younger, well-educated people, overt discrimination is an
inconsequential issue.
Moreover, because cases of gender discrimination are unintended,
it is not a serious issue in her professional career, Lavine
said.
There is “nothing you can point to and say,
“˜I’ve been discriminated against,'” Lavine
said.
One instance of subtle discrimination, according to Lavine,
involves the generalization that women tend to speak of their work
in simpler terms. Although this makes the information easier to
understand, women might be perceived in a “not so
impressive” light as professionals in their field, Lavine
said.
Though gender does not affect the women’s performance
professionally, it pushes female faculty to stand out among their
colleagues.
“Certainly being a woman means being remembered
more,” Lavine said.
Being unique in a department means being a “symbol”
and a “role model” for other women, Karagozian said,
but it also means being somewhat “scrutinized,” and
perceived according to past positive or negative impressions of
woman engineers.
Lavine raised the issue of “positive
discrimination,” describing it as a “double-edged
sword.”
Being appointed to prestigious committees seeking female
membership through affirmative action means positive
“exposure” for her, she said, but there lingers the
“funny feeling” that the positions had been given to
her based on her gender.
On affirmative action for women, Karagozian recognized the
importance of opportunities afforded by such policies.
“If you have an opportunity, take it and demonstrate your
capabilities,” she said.