This year, 5,254 boys sat the Leaving Cert engineering paper. Just 315 girls – just under 6 per cent – took the same exam.
This isn't just an issue of equality: international evidence and, in particular, studies from Stanford University, show that a lack of women engineers means that society misses out on vital innovations.
At home, there is no shortage of initiatives to entice girls into science, technology, engineering and maths: Smart Futures, the Walton Club at Trinity, Science Week, Tech Week and Steps to Engineering, to name but a few. Still: 6 per cent.
Two engineering teachers – Ciarán O'Callaghan of Inver College in Monaghan and the ASTI subject representative Eamon Dennehy – say that girls who do take the subject perform well and often do better than the boys.
And with three female students in a class of 24, O’Callaghan has more than double the national average.
Role models
Old-fashioned sexism, a lack of role models, stereotypes about what being an engineer involves and a lack of family-friendly jobs all take part of the blame.
One major initiative, Science Foundation Ireland’s SmartFutures, aims to get more students involved in science, technology, engineering and maths through schools talks. Launched three years ago, it’s a collaborative programme between Government, industry, SFI and Engineers Ireland, and over 50 companies. Last year, two-thirds of the volunteer visits were to girls’ and mixed schools, reaching an estimated 2,500 female students.
Another programme, Girls Hack Ireland, run by the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, brings together large groups of female Transition Year students to build code under the mentorship of working engineers. Again, this is early days.
Research shows that how students see themselves “fitting in” is the greatest influence on their choice of study or career path. A male-dominated world like engineering may be seen as harder to crack.
Where are we going wrong? Dr Susan Amrose, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California in Berkeley, has managed to buck the trend, with 103 male and 128 female students on her course.
Amrose is a project scientist, and her work involves less focus on research and intensely publishing paper after paper, and more on the social good of engineering, such as how it can be used to help communities in developing countries or impoverished neighbourhoods. This brings her out into the field rather than locked away in an office.
Emerging research suggests focusing on social good may be the way to bring more women into engineering, but the academic sector has been slow to catch up.
Amrose also says that a constant focus on powerful and successful women in science may be counter-productive.
