Gender gap in engineering
More women need to be encouraged to pursue careers in engineering

Engineering a way to close the gender gap in STEM (infographic)

3 Mar 2016

This week is Engineers Week, an Engineers Ireland initiative that aims to inspire the next generation of engineers.

A strong focus of the week – and of the industry in general – is to encourage more women to consider entering the engineering profession as, despite progress in recent years, it is still overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Throughout Engineers Week, we have heard from the woman director general of Engineers Ireland, Caroline Spillane; we have heard what it is like to work at the cutting-edge of engineering in the area of AI, and we have been told how not fitting the stereotypical engineer mould shouldn’t hold you back from pursuing a rewarding career in the area.

Our editor John Kennedy also wrote about how, in this day and age when problem-solving and analytical thinking is needed in every walk of life, we should all aspire to be engineers.

While it has been amazing to see some great strong engineering women featured on Siliconrepublic.com over the course of Engineers Week, the gender inequality in the industry is still very much an issue, as the below infographic from the New Jersey Institute of Technology highlights.

Based on US statistics, the infographic highlights the inequalities in the sector – and, also, why more women and girls should study engineering, and STEM subjects in general, and what we can do to encourage them to do so.

 

Engineering - Gender Gap

Engineer planning project image via Shutterstock

Brigid O Gorman
By Brigid O Gorman

Brigid O Gorman joined Silicon Republic in April 2015 from a background working in national media in Ireland and Australia, and served as the site’s sub-editor until September 2016. Brigid has worked as a writer, social media manager and sub-editor and, when not agonising about ill-used apostrophes and misplaced commas, she likes to get out in the fresh air for a run, eat nice food, drink good wine and watch bad television.

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