Thursday 24 March 2016

Women in engineering (or the lack of) (UKPSF V1 V2)

I teach physics on a foundation course. The course feeds into various engineering degrees. When I look out to the audience I don't see many women students. it could be that there are less than 10% female students. I am not sure what I can do to improve this. I try to be careful to not use any sexist language, or use any examples that depend on gender. (This is not too hard when we study electrons and atoms).

It looks like there are professional societies, whose main purpose is encourage girls to study engineering. See for example: The Women's Engineering Society.