Gender gap in the engineering field

Gender gaps in various industries are still a reality among women. Industries have seen the huge gap in gender-based roles and trying their best to overcome it. However, according to Belong.co an outbound hiring solution start-up, there is only one woman engineer for every three men engineers, concluding that the Indian technology industry has just 26% women in engineering roles. The survey was done with data collected from around 3 lakh women. This proves the fact that Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) jobs attract fewer women. Further, the overall representation of women in the engineering workforce of IT firms is just a dismal 34%.

Further, in the men’s career path, they move into managerial positions after 6 years of experience, while women take 8 years. The women prefer testing jobs to core engineering fields, and the numbers are low, 34 women to 66 men. The most significant drop in numbers is after 5 years, when women quit to start a family or feel that it is a male-dominated industry.

How can the gender gap be solved?

Education: Many young adults rule out certain career paths, especially within STEM subjects. This affects the number of young women applying for engineering or science-related subjects. Therefore, colleges and schools must make STEM subjects attractive, especially for women.

Men as Allies: Achieving gender equality requires active involvement of men who would support and encourage women’s empowerment, mobilizing resources to ensure women are given equal access to resources.

Reducing barriers for women: Understanding the number of women participating and studying engineering subjects and their activities is required. After reviewing the various analysis and points, we can find out what acts as a barrier to studying engineering amongst women and successfully find ways to overcome it.

Importance of women in studying engineering?

The landscape of engineering is changing with time. The lack of faith in women that they would not excel in subjects such as mathematics and Science needs to be stopped and has to be overcome by parental and peer encouragement. Challenges such as work-life balance are gender-neutral and can be achieved through mentorship and more significant understanding amongst partners. Organizations are slowly realizing the importance of women engineers and welcoming the aspect of women engineers into the industry.

Did you know Ayyalasomayajula Lalitha received a lot of support and guidance from her father before she worked on the largest dam in India?

Engineers, despite their gender, find solutions to problems, find accessible routes to demanding processes, and keep machinery well-maintained, efficient, and correctly functioning. It is, therefore, important to have good female representation in the engineering sector. An opportunity should be provided to everybody to come up to their potential. This makes it essential to provide enough opportunities for women in engineering, especially in their education. It is vital that more female engineers are recruited so that they get an adequate opportunities and be role models for the upcoming generation. In doing so, they can majorly contribute to the future and advancement of their job and also help break gender stereotypes that the profession is for men.