GCRF Africa Catalyst APWEN

ShEngineer – INVENT BUILD IT is targeted at building the capacity of female engineers to deliver more socio-economic value to the Nigerian Society. It is an avenue to identify and tackle issues, perception and challenges facing women engineers in Nigeria and respond proactively to these issues through collaborative effort with other stakeholders. It also focuses on building a support system for female engineers in Nigeria.
Through this initiative, 60 female engineers are expected to build their capacity on how to effectively train teachers as well as 500 girls in public secondary schools in Lagos; who will be mentored to take up engineering as a career. In doing this, APWEN will constantly look for creative and new opportunities along
increasingly complex, evolving value chains in engineering. 200 STEM teachers across Nigeria will be identified, trained and integrated into the programme to help meet the overall objectives.

Women are still largely underrepresented in the engineering sector. Public perception borne out of many years of inequality has made it difficult for women to aspire to be engineers. Parents unconsciously assign their girls to courses in the social sciences and humanities as they believe that engineering is not suitable
for girls. This perception has also been embraced unfortunately by teachers who do not pay special attention to girls with innate desire for engineering as a career. Professional development challenges in the educational sector means that teachers are mostly untrained in modern ways of encouraging students to adopt STEM-based careers. This training gap has affected more females than males overall. Professional women engineers suffer from discrimination in their work place, in a sector mostly dominated by men, there are reports of men refusing to recognize their authority, they patronize and objectify them and refuse to fulfill contracts because of their gender. A lot need to be done to decrease the negative
attitude towards women’s involvement in STEM.
The demand for engineers in Nigeria is rising as a result of Government’s massive investment in infrastructural development; this demand cannot be met by men alone. The declining number of girls enrolling for engineering in the University
Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in recent years has become a worrisome trend. In most undergraduate engineering classes’ females constitutes less than 10%. That number is even lesser at Master’s and PhD level.
Removing the stigma and assumption that engineering is only supposed to be for men is necessary and eliminating negative statements and mindsets that perpetuate the myth that women can’t be involved in STEM will require a strategic and purposeful intervention, one that will cut-across all spheres of the society
and help reposition women in the scheme of things in engineering. That intervention will mean granting the required visibility to female engineers doing well in their careers and using them as the needed mentors and motivators to reach other women and girls in the society.