New initiative aims to attract more female students into science

Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan has launched an initiative aimed at attracting more female students into science, engineering and technology areas to help meet the anticipated shortfall in the sector in the decade ahead.

Speaking in Cork where she officially opened the I Wish project, Ms O’Sullivan said such initiatives were important in highlighting “the really positive career opportunities that exist for female students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (Stem).

“Out of almost 118,000 people working in Stem in Ireland only a quarter are women. For many reasons, it is essential that all stakeholders including Government, educators and enterprise, aim to ensure that Stem education in Ireland fairly represented,” she said.

Congratulating all those involved in the I Wish events across the Cork region today, the Minister said it was important to stimulate curiosity and educate students from the earliest years as to the possibilities of a career in Stem.

Some 1,000 girls from across Cork city and county attended a series of I Wish events in Cork City Hall and Cork Institute of Technology as well as at hubs in the east, north and west of the county highlighting the career opportunities in the sciences.

Ms O’Sullivan said Higher Education Authority new entrant figures showed the numbers of women entering Stem courses at university had fallen from 47 per cent 10 years ago to just 40 per cent in 2013 despite the emphasis on Stem subjects.

She said Ireland was facing a talent crisis with a Forfás expert group on future skills needs predicting Irish companies will have 44,500 job vacancies for people with ICT skills over the next six years and action needed to be taken to ensure those openings don’t go unfilled.

The brainchild of female business leaders in Cork, I Wish is spearheaded by Cork Chamber president Gillian Keating, Caroline O’Driscoll, it@Cork vice chair and Ruth Buckley, head of IT at Cork City Council. It is supported by UCC, CIT and Cork County Council.

“There is a huge variety of exciting opportunities for women in the Stem sector. I Wish is about being proactive, rather than reactive, to the Stem skills shortage. We are giving girls the choice, and the chance, to make changes that could impact their future careers.

“Today we had some of the most remarkable female role models from across the Stem sector in Cork talking, demonstrating and interacting with students, showing them how they can have very fulfilling and interesting careers with Stem choices,” said Ms Keating.

The event was hosted at Cork City Hall by Lord Mayor of Cork Mary Shields and attended by leading Stem female role models from organisations such as Google, Twitter, CoderDojo, Pfizer and PepsiCo as well as indigenous leaders across the business,

Ms O’Driscoll of it@Cork said that Irish industry will benefit enormously if more students take up careers in the Stem sector over the next decade as she identified some of the barriers that need to be overcome to achieve that goal.

Amongst the barriers is that negative stereotypes persist that Stem is more suitable for boys, and the perceptions that Stem subjects are overly difficult as well as parents, who are the main influencers on their daughters, lacking information on Stem career options.

There also exists a disconnect between industry’s skill needs and students subject choices for their Leaving Certificate while the information available on Stem carers can often be very fragmented, added Ms O’Driscoll.

The I Wish project is also backed by Cork born medic and Channel 4 host Pixie McKenna, who said girls should know that science and technology offers really exciting career options for them over the next decade when she hopes there will be greater gender parity in Stem.