Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Why girls say ‘No’ to Engineering career?' that was published in Newsband

Why girls say ‘No’ to Engineering career?

In India, few girls go on to pursue scientific careers. That’s because society’s perception is that only women are responsible for rearing a child, marriage and not career. When it comes to STEM subjects --- science, technology, engineering, and mathematics --- it’s very much a boys’ club.

Currently, women make up just 8% of the student strength at the 23 IITs across the country. Even developed countries have fewer female scientists. In India, women do take up science for degrees, but few of them go on to pursue careers in this discipline.

Although girls are equally skilled in maths and sciences compared to boys, but the number of girls in engineering colleges are far more less as compared to boys. Thus the gender ratio in all engineering branches remains skewed specially for Mechanical, civil, chemical etc.

There are distorted notions about engineering as a career. It is thought of something which requires a lot of physical work. This is how a laymen thinks of different types of engineers: Mechanical Engineers: Someone repairing a car / Someone in a steel plant. Civil Engineers: The one who needs to deal with contractors, bricks, labor etc. Mining: Needs to go down in mines to set up explosives. Petroleum: Standing near fire all the time in the middle east. Computer Science/ IT: Coding day and night in an IT firm.

They do not understand that with technology the job profile of engineers has changed a lot, that You can perform design and analysis of all most every machine, Bridge, Mine, etc. on a single computer, that not everything engineers do requires the power of a crane.

Most of the people connect female gender with creativity and male gender with Logical and analytical thinking. Hence, most people suggest architecture, biology and Arts, fashion and interior designing to girls and engineering to boys.

There is also this notion that since the girl will have to cater to other responsibilities after marriage she must be able to work from home and should not have defined working hours thus architecture, fashion desiging, interior designing etc. fit in. But here also they forget that engineering also requires a lot of creativity and innovation and thus is suitable choice for girls. Many engineering jobs can be performed from home as well by being a freelance programmer or designer.

Females feel they can’t really handle all the machinery and the working in the labs with machines. To understand and excel in mechanical engineering one must go into the insights of how a machine works and most girls are not gadget freaks for that. But, nonetheless, the trend is changing now and many females are taking up mechanical engineering.