Sally Chiwama’s Weblog

THE GENDER GAP IN THE ENGINEERS FIELD IN ZAMBIA.

By Sally Chiwama

The Engineering Institute in Zambia (EIZ) has embarked on career development project that is aimed at encouraging more females to join the engineering field.

Lungu said this at the Launch of the EIZ regional branch in Livingstone

Vice Chairperson of the EIZ Eng. Julius Kazembe Lungu told this author that the response has not been excellent but rather okay and “at least it’s a start”.

“The ratios of women in the engineering world in Zambia are no great but we have started a careers development programme that is aimed at encouraging girls and women to join the engineering field” he said. He said that out of the 1428 engineers in Zambia only two (2) % were women.

He said his organization has started this from primary school level and will soon be going into the secondary schools in a bit to encourage more girls to enter the engineering field.

He also noted that there were not enough role models in the engineering fraternity to encourage girls and women to take up the engineering field.

Lungu emphasized the need for concerted efforts by all stakeholders starting from parents at home to the government especially that the number of students venturing into the engineering field had dwindled.

Asked if there was a deliberate policy to try to encourage more women to enter into engineering, Lungu said that there was no policy on women but that the board would look into coming up with a one.

Out of more than 30 Engineers at the launch only one (1) was a woman.

With all the talk of empowering women to decision making positions, one wonders whether people are walking the walk and talking the talk.

The Engineering fraternity in Zambia certainly isn’t living to that phrase.

The African Union position on 50/50 target of women and men in decision making positions and the goal 3 of the millennium development goals.

34 year old Mercy Banda was the only woman at the launch, an electrical engineer by profession says that she feels challenged to be in this profession.

Mercy started working for the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (ZESCO) at the Victoria Falls Power Station in 1995 and has never looked back since then. Her aim, she says “is to be one of the top women in the engineering field in the country”.

Banda says that there are three women at the Victoria Falls power station but she is the only one in Electrical Maintenance department.

She also says that in the beginning it was difficult to be accepted by the men folk in her department a they though she would never manage the job and gave her lighter jobs to do until she had to prove her self by taking up some of the most difficult ones.

“I love a challenge and like to climb poles and fix transformers, I also have to maintain the generating machines and other machines” says a confident Banda.

She says that she faces other challenges such as the gender roles as home as she is a wife and mother of two. She says that her biggest challenge is that she hardly spends time with her children as she works long hours.

Banda says that she doesn’t believe that the woman is a weaker vessel because a woman is gifted as she can multitask unlike the men folk.

“Even in the villages, a women do more work than the men folk as they have to wake up very early to fetch water and other chores and are almost all the time the last to go to bed she says.

Banda challenges fellow science subjects and venture into the engineering field. Zambian women have all the potential and should not be afraid to take up challenging jobs, she said.

Banda attributes her success in the engineering field to her supportive husband as well as her boss at the office whom she says encourages her in everything she pursues to undertake.