Thursday, April 29, 2010

Women on Nuclear Submarines

I was watching the Today show this morning and they had a segment on the anticipated Navy Department decision today to allow women to serve on nuclear submarines. Much was made of the amount of time these submarines spend away from port, the retrofitting that may need to be done to accommodate women, and so on, but one brief comment really caught my attention.

The Navy is having trouble finding enough qualified candidates for this extremely demanding service, and now that more than half the top engineering and technical graduates are women, making women eligible more than doubles the candidate pool.

Repeat that. More than half the top engineering and technical graduates are women.

It seems that the many K-12 and other initiatives to attract female students to these traditionally male professions are paying off.

Way to go!