My son graduated from Purdue with his Chem E in 2015. His commencement ceremony was all Engineering disciplines. A few women, some African blacks, and lots of Asians. Very few American blacks, and none of them in Chemical, Nuclear, Electrical and Computer, or Aeronautical/Aerospace disciplines. The math in most of tbose fields is brutal, and the math does not care about “diversity.”
That sounds about right...I have a BS in Chemistry, and taking Physical Chemistry was at the extreme margins of what I was capable of understanding...that was hard enough for me.
I have never, ever understood this concept of trying to push women (or anyone else) into the STEM fields. Why? Just to have them there? They make a big deal about women being underrepresented because they are “discouraged” from entering those fields, but when I was in school decades ago, I didn’t see any discouragement going on.
I think there are many people who want to see something a certain way, so they use pretzel logic to make it “true” in their heads.
Those are not people I want engaged in “science”.
The Calculus courses and thermodynamics tend to weed people out. But I agree that this is based on ability, not demographics, beyond IQ’s correlation to gender and race.
Ironically, that is a subject that is highly taboo to research, as is alternative explanations for climate change than “all human’s fault”, better nuclear technology and genetic engineering.