Sunday, August 24, 2014

Equality begins with technology – Smålandsposten

today 00:31 | Updated 2014-08-23

A hundred years ago, the first Swedish engineer their education. Her name was Vera Sandberg, was born on Hångers farm in Ljungby, and were recorded in the fall of 1914 Chalmers Three years later she graduated as an engineer specializing in chemistry.

the first female engineer in Sweden would be Småland one might have imagined. But it was actually the last winter before Sandberg got a street named after him in Ljungby. At Chalmers University in Gothenburg, she has been kept in better memory. In addition to a street, an auditorium, and a farce is also a hot air balloon named after her.

Sandberg had a passion for engineering and chemistry with them from home and wanted to work as an engineer. That she was the only woman working in extant poems from time occasionally have troubled her. But she wanted above all be verified as a professional person. “Someone rödstrumpa was never mother”, has one of her sons commented.

Vera Sandberg died in 1979 after having had time to work on several industries, has held various management positions, served on the board and also found time to raising five children. When she died, about ten percent of the country’s engineering students are women.

Today, there are more than 120,000 civil engineers in Sweden, and of these, 19 percent are women. The rise of women has been greatest in architecture and engineering design. Industry-important lines of machine engineering, electronics still only around ten percent of female students.

Special efforts to get girls interested in math and technology has given temporary peaks in the proportion of women is examined. In the late 90s, for example, the proportion of women among newly graduated students coming to Chalmers 30 percent. Chalmers had then a few years worked actively to recruit women. But it has been difficult to get a long-term change. In the mid 00′s was the number of women back in under 20 percent. If you want to increase the proportion of female engineers must work actively for a long time.

There are reasons to do. Fewer women than men choose engineering course may eventually other consequences. Swedish industry is traditionally heavy engineering, and nowhere else in Europe are engineers so well represented in management positions and on boards. When we complain that the business does not have equal boards, it’s easy to forget that it is a symptom of an imbalance that begins much earlier. If the proportion of female engineers is only 20 percent, it is difficult to claim that the percentage of female chief engineers, professors and directors of industrial enterprises should be 50 percent.

The politicians often choose to propose quotas for boards when they want to affect men and women in industry . It’s a method that worked in elected assemblies. Perhaps we should choose a different path in the industry, and instead focus on more female students are becoming interested in mathematics and engineering in school.

Mathias Wide





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