Boosting diversity to increase STEM’s potential to transform the economy
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) plays a vital role in the economy of a country, enabling enterprising young people to develop solutions to problems within their communities and take up business opportunities. The under-representation of women within STEM fields around the globe, however, is severely hampering lack of diverse thinking as well as critical mass of talent within these fields.
Women represent a minority in STEM industries, only accounting for 11% of employees within architecture and engineering globally for instance, according to the World Economic Forum. In South Africa,a mere 11% of all engineers registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) are women, while just 4% are professional engineers.
A very encouraging development is the fact that there has been a 203% increase in the number of registered candidate females to ECSA over the last five years. However, a lot still needs to be done to make STEM careers in general and Engineering fields specifically, more attractive to female students. This, as just 5879 female candidates were registered with ECSA by the end of its 2017/18 financial year, compared to 16 890 males.