LAST week 92 women graduated in engineering at the University of Sydney -- about 20 per cent of the total -- and by year's end it's expected another 30 to 40 will do the same.
Last year it was about 100 across both graduations.
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Tempting as it is to construe some kind of invigoration of the discipline's famously glacial progress towards gender parity, engineering dean Archie Johnston makes only modest claims.
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"We have been trying to get our percentage from the low teens into the 20s," Johnston says.
"In some engineering courses, such as chemical, it's about 50 per cent, and in some, such as the relatively new areas of environmental engineering and biomedical engineering, it's between 20 and 50, trending up."
Government figures put the proportion of female graduates at about 15 per cent, and Professor Johnston's estimate of those working in industry is about 10 per cent.
And the discipline compares badly when he takes the long view: "In the past 100 years, medicine and law have gone from zero to about 50 per cent, we are still at 20 per cent."
Hence the outreach programs universities have instituted and the search for emissaries who can be sent into schools to drum up interest. At Sydney, doctoral candidates Nicky Ringland and Kate McDonell, both 26, are on the frontline of efforts.
Ringland came to her speciality, computational linguistics, via an arts degree in languages, and talks of her mission to reveal to students that computer science is cool and exciting.
Nanotechnology researcher McDonell's lack of aptitude for English in her early school prompted her father to accentuate her maths skills via the intensive Kumon program, after which she romped through the curriculum.
Ringland is a mover and shaker in the Girls' Programming Network, and also part of the National Computer Science School and its online challenge, which annually attracts 2000 contestants.
"Mostly it's about trying to get girls who think they might be interested in computing and giving them an authentic experience with women in IT who are passionate about what they do," she says.
McDonell is part of the Engineers Without Borders' domestic outreach program
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