Engineering an Equitable Future
We will only truly solve the world’s greatest challenges when we have women at the engineering design table.
Diversity of perspectives
The Sustainable Development Goals are a global commitment to creating a better world. They have been discussed and negotiated in the hallways of the United Nations, and with politicians, civil society, corporations and entities around the world. However, when one breaks down many of these goals, they are fundamentally complex engineering problems, and the reason we, as an engineering community haven’t yet solved them, is because we require a diverse and inclusive engineering sector to do so and we need more women in the sector to meet the challenge of these goals.
According to UNESCO, globally female engineering graduates are at 28%, however, the number of women in the industry remains low. The challenge is not just attracting girls into the sector, but ensuring that the sector has transformed to retain women. In Africa, the numbers are still much lower, as girls have few role models and don’t have access to a lot of information about engineering careers. Entrenched gender roles and norms are still a barrier to entry for many girls, and the stereotypes around jobs still exist. New research conducted in Spain is showing that when girls are exposed to role models in the sector, STEM interest also increased by between 20 and 30% above that of the control group. Similar evidence is found across a number of our programmes to create more awareness of STEM careers for girls. The positive effects of an increase in girls in STEM is beyond gender equality in the sector. The diversity of perspectives, different problem solving and solution capabilities is what the world needs right now.
WomEng on a mission
WomEng, through funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering is on a mission to create a diverse and equitable engineering and technology industry, especially in Africa. Since 2017, the Africa Catalyst project has been supporting capacity building for engineering institutions, while developing local STEM interventions for girls, and employability, innovation and entrepreneurship programmes for women in STEM. We have run programmes in Malawi, Tanzania, eSwatini, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. Already we are seeing the fruits of our labour. One such example is Grace Ghambi from Malawi. After being on the innovation programme in Malawi, she started a local drone company. They manufacture and rent drones to commercial users. Drones have the ability to deliver medicine and goods in places that are difficult to reach by roads. Not only is this a solution working towards the SDG’s on Innovation, but also infrastructure, and gender, as it is mostly women left behind in rural communities with limited access. These drones have the ability to quickly deliver supplies, providing life saving essentials.
Grace is not the only success story. We started the GirlEng programme in 2010, understanding that to increase the number of women in engineering, we need to understand the bottlenecks and barriers to entry for girls. We needed to start younger, at high school and primary school. In South Africa, Radiyah Manjoo attended a GirlEng programme in high school, where she was inspired to study engineering. She went on to complete her engineering degree and work as a civil engineer. She was just recruited into the WomEng team, and heads up our community and alumni relations, supporting our goal to reach 1 million girls in STEM. She has been inspired to pay it forward and change the path of girls like her to become engineers.
Shifting the industry
In my experience, it’s not just about attracting and developing women and girls to the sector, but fundamentally shifting the industry. We have been working on not just attracting more girls into STEM careers, but working to support female founders in STEM businesses. STEM industries have the opportunity to create more jobs, higher salaries and greater economic benefit. Due to the low number of women participating in STEM, it is not surprising that the number of women entrepreneurs in STEM is low. As our countries struggle to emerge from the economic effects of Covid-19, we need new entrepreneurs and business avenues to create these economic shifts.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Women’s Entrepreneurship Report shows that a country’s innovation level increases with its economic development, and “innovation is the indicator with the greatest female-to-male gender ratio; across all 74 economies in their research, women entrepreneurs have a 5% greater likelihood of innovativeness than men”
We need more innovators like, Charlette N’Guessan, from Cote D’Ivoire who selected for our Africa Innovation Fellows programme, supporting female founders in Africa. The only Pan-African Female Founder in STEM accelerator, funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Charlette’s company BACE is using AI and building facial recognition software for the banking industry. In 2020, she won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation.
Investment in women is essential
As we work to support more women in engineering, we are starting to see positive strides and transformation. However, it is not an easy path. Entrenched gender stereotypes and norms still hamper the progress of women. The burden of care, and household responsibilities have been compounded through the COVID-19 pandemic. It is estimated that women could add $13tn to the global economy, in Africa that is $316 billion or 10% to the GDP. In a time where the global economy is attempting to recover from a devastating blow brought about by the pandemic, can we really afford not to include women, especially as STEM industries are clusters for higher job creation and better salaries?
The power of women in engineering is clear, a little investment all along the engineering pipeline goes a long way, but we will only truly solve the world’s greatest challenges when we have women at the engineering design table.
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About Naadiya Moosajee
Naadiya Moosajee is co-founder of WomEng and WomHub, a Pan-African accelerator for female founders in STEM. She serves on several local and international boards and is an Aspen New Voices Fellow.