Naadiya and Traci: more female engineers needed

Updated - Thursday 07 April 2011

South Africa is plagued not only by a skills shortage, but also a skills gap. Graduates entering industry face a double-edged sword in the form of ‘fast-tracking’ and poor mentorship. And the engineering industry is traditionally male dominated. If it is up to Naadiya and Traci, this is going to change. Naadiya Moosajee is the co-founder of the South African Women in Engineering, SaWomEng. This non-profit organisation is geared at motivating, celebrating and empowering women. It is trying to amend the issue of a severe shortage of female engineers in the world, and particularly in South Africa.

Traci Reddy is member of the organisation and in charge of the conference division. SaWomEng is an NGO based in South Africa, but with aspirations to go global. “We are focusing on the personal, professional and technical development of women that are in or have the aspirations to go into engineering”, volunteers Naadiya and Traci told the WaterCube during the World Water Day event in Cape Town, 22 March.

See the video interview by Petra Brussee, IRC.http://watercube.blip.tv/file/4916894/

IRC’s Dick de Jong talked to them as well for a longer interview.

Q: When, why and with what did you start?

Naadiya: We started in 2005 leading to a 2006 conference of third, fourth and post-graduate female engineering students of Cape Town University, where we concluded there is:

a lack of mentors;
a lack of access to job opportunities;
a need to link technical development with social aspects of engineering design work;
an opportunity showcasing the role and contributions of young women.

That first conference was so successful that it provided us with a business case for the second conference in 2007. There we brought together the top 70 female engineers studying in South Africa. We also had the first companies on board as sponsors, they have an interest in getting new female engineers in their work force.

Q: What does your one-week conference entail?

Naadiya: We have facilitators do all sorts of sessions, such as capacity strengthening, skill development, personal development, networking communications, and financial planning. The participants also need to produce technical project proposals on engineering and sustainable development. Ten teams of eight from last year focussed on water resources management and capacity development in informal settlements of Hout Bay Municipality and how they could help the municipality.

A variety of organisations within the water sector presented to the delegates as expert panels, and after a week, each group presented their innovative ideas and solutions to a group of judges comprising high level officials of the municipality, water board and industry, who were impressed.

Q: What is the current reach of your campaigning work?

Naadiya: We now have 80 volunteers, some of whom are assisting with mentoring new participants. We see around 1,000 young women from 18-30 each year. In 2009 we started also doing sessions at high schools to get more female students interested in taking up engineering studies in university. Information sessions are a day when members of GirlEng (the high school division of SAWomEng) advertise engineering to as many girl-children as possible. Girls are recruited through advertisements in print and audio-visual media. Marketing material is also sent to specific high schools. The information session entails a four-hour-long presentation which provides details of core engineering disciplines. This includes the origins of the discipline, most significant achievements in discipline and what a day in the life of a practising engineer entails. Application forms for the workshops are disseminated at these sessions.

In each of the five provinces we do follow up workshops that are attended by 60 hand-picked applicants from the information sessions. The one-day workshops cover key activities which include:

Introduction to the world of engineering
Team building activity
Technical project
Information session (University entrance requirements etc)
Careers fair
Sponsor talks

More than 60 percent of those students did chose engineering studies in university, we found.

Q: How is your work funded?

Naadiya: We have many corporate sponsors that sponsor all our delegates to the annual conference. They see the value of our platform for their companies. They include: mining industry, construction companies, Murray & Roberts, BHP Billiton, Unilever, VW and many others. We also provide separate workshops on mentorship, leadership and membership specialisation. We are all volunteers who either study or have a job. We also have male engineering students as volunteers. I am working in the transport sector, predominantly working in operational management, funding acquisition and finances. My MBA study is currently in progress through the Edinburgh Business School.

Q: What has been the impact of your work?

Naadiya: Around 40 percent of our graduating participants get jobs with sponsoring companies. They come back later as mentors in the process. We have also started longer-term monitoring. Given the reactions we have received from India, Uganda, Ethiopia and even from my German university it also seems to be replicable in other countries.