Low Female Enrolment in Engineering Can Be Reversed Via Policy-CSIR
Ghana and Benin are tagged with very low female participation in engineering courses. In a bid to bridge the gender gap in the profession, an assessment of the situation was conducted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR. It is expected that the status quo could improve once policy recommendations in the study are adopted.
The study by the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of CSIR-Ghana centered on Ghana and Benin. The transnational scope of the analysis on low female enrolment in engineering courses gave researchers the scope to compare two different scenarios. The basis of the exercise was not only the alarmingly low female participation in the technical subject but also the fact that women are empirically proven to be transformational agents.
Therefore, policy analysts and researchers set themselves the task to know the factors behind their poor representation in an important academic subject such as engineering. At the very least, it is reckoned that the gender disparity may be gradually corrected through the education module called STEM. It is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics schools.
The titling makes the objective of this Intervention self-explanatory. As a balancing act, fair sex ought to be deliberately ushered into the realm of technical studies. The basic task will be to discourage phobia of mathematics-based subjects in women.
The research paper also recommends Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), be strengthened as it is another avenue to absorb more females into technical subjects. For now, two ministerial portfolios have made commitments to collaborate to test or actuate the recommendations. These are the ministries of Education and Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation.
The investigator for the project, Dr Rose Omari said women have the requisite qualities desperately needed in the field of engineering.
Efforts to address the shortfalls in female participation in engineering may also be guided by a US Joint Congressional report which details the abysmally low numbers in the segment. Only 14 percent of all professionals working in engineering are women, it said.
