Engineering: Bridging the gap

“As long as girls have to do it [science, engineering and maths subjects], they do equally well. What happens if they don’t have to do it, they make decisions away from it, and some of those reasons are probably exactly the same as they were 25 years ago, and that’s a bit sad,” Terry Marsh, Executive Director of the WISE (Women into Science, Engineering and Construction) Campaign.

According to the WISE Campaign - an organisation that aims to give girls a spark of inspiration to follow the pathways in maths, science, engineering and construction – media images, pressure from friends and family or inappropriate advice might be what is stopping girls reach their full potential.

We spoke to Terry Marsh, executive director of the WISE Campaign, about the issue. She said: “[In the past,] they were being put off by various reasons: reasons like teachers sometimes implying that subjects you needed to study were too hard or that the environment they would go into would not be conducive to women. And at that time, I think there was more of a myth that science was a boy’s subject.

“I would say that it is probably not the case now because girls do equally well as boys up to GCSE.”

It is after GCSE that the problem starts. In a publication from the Engineering and Technology Board (ETB), ‘Women in SET’, they report that in 2007 girls obtained 51 per cent of A*-C grades in Mathematics and Double Science Awards when those subjects were compulsory but at A-Level females represented 59 per cent of biology students, 40 per cent of Chemistry students, 40 per cent of Mathematics but only 22 per cent in Physics.

Terry explained: “See, that’s the thing a lot of girls worry about when they go to A-Level, that other people will tease them for joining all the boys by doing physics… I had that with my maths. I was the only girl in the maths group at school and they said, ‘oh you love being with all the boys,’ and I said, ‘hang on a minute. I am here because I can do the maths.’ But you feel a bit weird.

“Saranja Sivachelvam, who gave an inspirational speech at the WISE Awards 2008, said, ‘I’m not going to tell you it’s been easy that I chose physics. I didn’t want to choose physics but talking to WISE made me want to choose physics. Now I’ve chosen it it’s been a bit tricky because being with all the boys is not comfortable at times…’”
 
During the process of choosing A-Levels, girls choose against physics. But what is making them turn away from the subject that they have proven they can do at GCSE? Terry has evidence of the process of girls being turned off physics. She says: “People might not being doing it on purpose but they’re putting them off… We have it on film: a girl asking why would you do physics? And the other girl saying, well you could be a physics teacher, and the other girl saying no, I don’t want to be a physics teacher so I’m not going to do physics. The other girl says, well you could be an airline pilot and another girl butts in and says ‘a girl being an airline pilot? Don’t be stupid.’ Then they say no, ‘physics is rubbish isn’t it?’ And they walk off down the corridor.

“We are not helping them understand that if you’ve got your maths and physics then every job is available to you.”

Why girls?

We asked Terry why we should care about girls and encourage them into the science, engineering and technology (SET) community? The answer has a lot to do with making the United Kingdom as world leader.

Terry said: “Well, we’re just about to launch a little video with a girl who has an amazing cake, and she cuts it in half and says ‘these people are guys going to engineering’ and then she chops a thin slice off the other half and says ‘these are women going into engineering,’ and then she picks up the last bit and just throws it in the bin and says ‘we are wasting the talents of all these people who could actually make a real difference to the future of the UK PLC because at the moment we are actively putting them off.’”

But as Terry has said, some of the reasons girls are put off SET careers are the same as they were 25 years ago: She elaborated: “There are those that align with the idea that the male has a certain type of brain and a female has a different sort of brain and when you bring them together, they work well together. I don’t think I agree with that because then I wouldn’t have the maths degree I’ve got because I’m a female.”

But women have performed well in the workforce and have, according to ETB figures, made up 61 per cent of total students participating in Further Education in 2007. But, females were only making up 14 per cent of those studying engineering, manufacturing and technology at that level.
 
Terry explores some old stereotypes and some new thinking: “As far as science and engineering are concerned we have made quite an improvement – in the last 15 years there are at least double the number of female students going into engineering at university - but for the last 10 years, it’s just stayed the same. It’s gone up from seven per cent to about 15 per cent and it just did that 10 years ago and now it just bounces along the same - each year a few more, a few less.

“So what WISE says, the easy wins to attract girls have been won and we now have to do something completely different because as soon as you do get girls engaging with engineering in a very physical way, as soon as they put on their overalls and get a spanner or a soldering iron and start taking stuff and start hauling stuff about, they just love it. They love doing the stuff because school, when you think about, is not a lot of doing - a lot of listing and an awful lot of writing and perhaps drawing, but the physical ‘let’s just hit metal with metal’ doesn’t happen in school very much.”

What to do?

Terry has a question for girls at school for which an honest answer might see marked improvement. She asks: “Who are the people who say it’s not a good idea to go into science [and engineering]? Is it their parents? Is it their friends? Is it something they’ve seen on the television that makes it look like it wouldn’t be a good idea? Once you start to try analysing it, about what your feelings are and who is influencing you, you start to see it a little more clearly for what it is. You’re not going to start and have everyone going for it but just to keep most of that cake from going in the bin.”
 

Further reading

WISE Campaign

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