Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1609, USA.
Ann Biomed Eng. 2010 May;38(5):1928-35. doi: 10.1007/s10439-010-9958-9. Epub 2010 Feb 17.
While the percentage of women in biomedical engineering is higher than in many other technical fields, it is far from being in proportion to the US population. The decrease in the proportion of women and underrepresented minorities in biomedical engineering from the bachelors to the masters to the doctoral levels is evidence of a still leaky pipeline in our discipline. In addition, the percentage of women faculty members at the assistant, associate and full professor levels remain disappointingly low even after years of improved recruitment of women into biomedical engineering at the undergraduate level. Worse, the percentage of women graduating with undergraduate degrees in biomedical engineering has been decreasing nationwide for the most recent three year span for which national data are available. Increasing diversity in biomedical engineering is predicted to have significant research and educational benefits. The barriers to women's success in biomedical engineering and strategies for overcoming these obstacles-and fixing the leaks in the pipeline-are reviewed.
尽管在生物医学工程领域的女性比例高于许多其他技术领域，但与美国人口相比，这仍然远远不成比例。从本科到硕士再到博士阶段，生物医学工程专业的女性和代表性不足的少数族裔比例下降，这表明我们学科的管道仍然存在漏洞。此外，即使在本科阶段女性在生物医学工程领域的招聘有所改善多年后，助理教授、副教授和正教授级别的女性教职员工的比例仍然低得令人失望。更糟糕的是，在全国范围内，最近三年获得生物医学工程本科学位的女性人数一直在减少。预计生物医学工程领域的多样性增加将带来重大的研究和教育效益。本文回顾了女性在生物医学工程领域取得成功的障碍，以及克服这些障碍和修复管道漏洞的策略。
