The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will implement measures to increase the number of women in the science, engineering, and technology work force, according to a DOE announcement on Sept. 6. Currently, women hold only nine percent of jobs requiring engineering skills and ten percent of those requiring physics. Within the DOE itself, women hold only 15 percent of technical jobs. Women are particularly underrepresented in information technology, one of the most crucial job sectors for the coming years. The DOE, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, will enact new initiatives to improve the gender balance in the technical field. They will open national labs to students as a means to gain experience in the field, implement aggressive recruitment and hiring measures, and establish criteria to measure the project’s progress.
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