TWO of this year’s 37 first-year engineering undergraduates at La Trobe Bendigo are women.

Not that it bothers 19-year-old Amy-Maree Lane of Robinvale.

“I’ve always grown up doing not-typical-girl things,” the engineering student said

“When I was home last weekend my Dad and I went out and practiced some welding, went four-wheel-driving… and I guess my older brother has always been a bit of an influence on the things I’m interested in.

“He does a bit of everything too – and he’s into motorbikes. ”

And after studying classes like methods, physics, chemistry, physical education and further maths at a small country school, it is fair to say Ms Lane is comfortable in a male-dominated environment.

“Mostly I was either the only girl or one of two girls in the class,” she said.

“I was just a bit of a tomboy.”

But senior lecturer in civil engineering at La Trobe, Daniela Ionescu, is concerned.

“We need more women in engineering,” she said.

“When you ask girls what they want to do it often deals with taking care of others… well why shouldn’t it be taking care of structures?”

Ms Ionescu identified a number of reasons for the dearth of females studying engineering. It isn’t seen to be cool, she said, girls aren’t encouraged to consider it as a career path, engineers in general just aren’t very good self promoters.

But she is calling on female colleagues to make a public stand and address one of the major factors in the gender imbalance – a lack of visible role models.

“To a large extend it comes down to the fact that young girls don’t have anyone in their family, or in their neighborhood, or any friends to look up to… they aren’t dealing with engineers – except men.”

“There are lots of role models out there, I guess they lack advertising or don’t promote themselves very well.

“So from that point of view, we’re not doing a very good job.”

For the Romanian-born professor, however, her career path was never in doubt.

“I was meant to be engineer,” she said.

The streets of Bucharest in which she grew up were busy with construction sites. Daily walks took her through a maze of new apartments, commissioned by the communist regime.

“When I was in kindergarten, instead of drawing dolls like other little girls, I was drawing cranes and construction sites,” she said.

If that sounds atypical, Ms Ionescu said, it shouldn’t.

“We have to somehow overcome these stereotypes, if we are going to get more women in engineering,” she said.

 

This article was originally published on Bendigo Advertiser 8th August 2015. Read the original article here.