Encouragement of female engineers

Encouraging women (story of Gladys Ngetich grew up in Kenya, where she studied engineering).

I think there's so many problems that need to be solved and the problems are quite diverse, so the solutions also need to be diverse. We need to be involving as many different members of society as possible, not just women but also different ethnicities and different socioeconomic classes and disabilities - it has to be a combined effort. Making parents and teachers aware that engineering is an interesting, rewarding, successful career choice for girls would go a long way towards increasing the intake of girls. But, at the same time, we have to do things to improve the environment for when they do become engineers.

Role models
My earliest role model was my dad, who was a mechanical engineer. Growing up I didn't really have any other engineering role models but when I became a graduate student and started to feel more and more that I was a minority in terms of gender, I started to seek out role models. Now I know all of these amazing female engineers who are definitely huge role models to me, like Dame Ann Dowling, Professor Eleanor Stride at Oxford and Professor Alison Nobel at Oxford. I think they don't get as much visibility as they deserve. For young girls to look up to someone like Dame Ann Dowling and say, 'I want to be like her' - that would make such a huge difference.

Short presentational grey line
Gladys Ngetich grew up in Kenya, where she studied engineering. She came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and is now studying for her PhD.