While there is a continued interest in sciences for students on their way to attend university, the same cannot be said for engineering, as universities struggle to bring more girls into engineering courses.
With women taking up just 10% of engineering jobs in Australia, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Professor of Practice in Science Communication Lisa Harvey-Smith said that women are “missing out on designing the future.”
“[I]t also means that engineering challenges are being tackled from a narrow set of perspectives,” Professor Harvey-Smith, who is also the Federal Government’s Women in STEM Ambassador, said.
“By diversifying our engineering workforce we will strengthen Australia’s economy and strengthen our ability to face the global challenges presented by changing climate, food and water scarcity and globalisation”.
Monash University dean of Engineering, Professor Elizabeth Croft, said that they want to ensure that the women area given the opportunity to participate in engineering, a “high impact future-proofed career that provides rewarding opportunities to serve society and design ecologically sustainable solutions our planet needs now”.
However, Monash University Education Futures director, Professor Deborah Corrigan, said that the role of STEM in impacting lives is not properly understood.
“There is widespread, cross-national evidence that girls experience lower levels of confidence and higher levels of anxiety with respect to STEM subjects,” Professor Corrigan said.
“We have to first focus on wider STEM interventions as a start, while raising the profile of engineering which is silent within the school curriculum”.
Universities team up to double efforts
As a response to the small number of women in the engineering sector, a newly-formed group founded by deans of Engineering from various universities – Engineering for Australia Taskforce – seeks to bring about gender balance, just like what has been done in the sciences.
The Taskforce’s report, ‘Barriers to Participation in Engineering and the Value of Interventions to Improve Diversity”, looked into 115 international peer-reviewed studies to identify key considerations when it comes to programs geared towards enticing girls to take up engineering.
The study, which was conducted by Monash University Professor Corrigan and Dr Kathleen Aikens, recommended a more inclusive vision for its STEM and engineering to overturn pervasive stereotypes and encouraged previously excluded groups to participate in the field.
Another key recommendation was to work with the education sector to provide a positive image of STEM and engineering in schools through engineering activities that are both social and personally relevant to students.
Existing engineering intervention programs should also be evaluated to see the efficacy of these efforts, the study further recommended.
“Engineering needs the profession’s makeup to reflect the society it serves, and that means we need more women gaining confidence at school to join engineering programs at university,” UNSW dean of Engineering Professor Mark Hoffman said.
Aside from UNSW and Monash, other universities that are part of the taskforce are the Australian National University, University of Technology Sydney, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the University of Adelaide,
Other institutions taking part are the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, Engineers Australia, Department of Treasury and Finance Victoria, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Cicada Innovations and Gender Matters.