Missing role models discourage women from studying engineering

A stereotype that medical or teaching profession suits women more has been a major barrier to girls' engineering education, a Prothom Alo roundtable observed on Sunday.

Stakeholders including women professionals, said inadequate accommodation facilities and lack of role models are also discouraging the women from studying technical disciplines, especially engineering.

“The industries, especially the ones that require physically strenuous works, usually don’t want to welcome women as engineers,” said Fatima Mahnaz, a former student of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Fatima, who is yet to begin her career, regretted that she did not see many female engineers for getting inspiration and that there is a stereotype which affects the women's interest as professionals.

Khaleda Shahriar Kabir, the first female civil engineering graduate from BUET and a former additional director general of Bangladesh Water Development Board, recommended that female students would be inspired should they find role models in the country’s engineering sector.

The discussion on ‘Obstacles to engineering educatioin for women’ was organised by Prothom Alo, in association with Seven Rings Cement, at the newspaper's Karwan Bazar office.

Inadequate accommodation facilities in engineering universities are also a major obstacle to women's engineering education, according to Shamim Z Bosunia, a former BUET professor who is now associated with University of Asia Pacific.

BUET’s faculty of architecture and planning dean Farida Nilufar suggested that female engineering students should be given incentive at the university level so that they do not drop out.

She, however, said the number of female engineering students is gradually increasing although many of them are dropping out or not engaging in jobs on completion of graduation.

Citing research findings, Farida said only 4.4 per cent of the enrolled students of BUET was female in 1982-83 and 9.6 per cent in 1989-90 academic sessions.

The rate has increased to 22 per cent in 2018 session, she pointed out.

Architect Iqbal Habib insisted that the state should help provide day-care centre facilities in every industry for working mothers.

Seven Rings Cement’s director Tahmina Ahmed, BUET’s architecture department’s teacher Nesfun Nahar, road transport and bridges ministry’s deputy secretary Fahmida Hoque Khan, Development Design Consultants Limited's structural engineer Neli Mistri, CREATO’s founder and principal architect Sumaya Islam and Seven Rings Cement’s brand and communication director Atik Akbar spoke at the programme moderated by Prothom Alo associate editor Abdul Quayum.