This beautiful and artistic piece of research work was presented in a webinar by YOUNG INNOVATORS Engineering Research Institute, India. This explains the major stereotypes, barriers, challenges for women, and their solution. The research work presented is based on a practical analysis of a girl's life and reasons to find herself less confident. Please share your views also. Feel free to contact: [haq.mairaj@hotmail.com] [mehakazeem@ieee.org]

1. Empowerment:
Education and
Women
Presented by:
Mehak Azeem

2. Money?
What is women empowerment?
Fame?
Good job?
Good Career?
Social power?
Family status?
Likeable by society?
Independent?
Super powers?
Achieving your dreams?
Leadership?
Desired job?
Entrepreneurship?
Decision making power?
Desirable position?
Living in developed country?
Strength to face?
Good Education? Speaking power?

3. Women Empowerment
Empowerment includes the action of raising the status of women
through education, raising awareness, literacy, and training. Women's
empowerment is all about equipping and allowing women to make life-
determining decisions through the different problems in society.

4. 01
Empowerment Recommendations
What is empowerment means for you?

5. Women can empower other women …
Gender
90%
90%
Empowering women through Technology (STEM)
Empowering women through Education
Empowering women’s Voices
Empowering women to run their Own Businesses
Empowering women to Drive The Change
Empowerment through Skills
Empowerment through Networking
Empowerment through Public Leaders
Empowerment through Better Career

6. Empowerment at workplace
2020 2021
Large STEM companies in the UK made a list of skills employers
want:
1. Communication & interpersonal skills
2. Problem solving skills
3. Initiative and self‐motivation
4. Working under pressure and to deadlines
5. Organizational skills
6. Team work
7. Ability to learn and adapt
8. Numeracy
9. Valuing diversity and difference
10. Negotiating skills
???40%

7. BE HONEST
BE A CHEERLEADER
ENCOURAGE
OTHER WOMEN TO
STEP UP
5 WAYS WOMEN CAN EMPOWER
OTHER WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE
TELL YOUR STORY
ENSURE OUR
VOICES ARE
HEARD

8. 01
Participate in STEM,
contribute to present and
future
03
Contribute to economic
growth of nation
05
Develop skills, help other
girls to educate
02
Help other women to
grow at every level
04
Take criticism, stereotypes,
barriers as challenge and bear
them to strengthen yourself
06
Inspire future generstion
of young girls
EMPOWERMENT GOALS

9. What should be the strategy to fix?
Filter the fact and fiction
Correction at every level
See the clear picture and start to revolute
01
02
03
01
02 03
Let’s explore with me …

10. FACTS OR FICTION?
Fact or Fiction:
Boys are inherently better
suited in science, math's,
engineering and technology.

11. Fact or Fiction:
STEM careers are not just
interesting to girls.
FACTS OR FICTION?

12. Fact or Fiction:
There is no pressing
need to increase
diversity in STEM.
FACTS OR FICTION?

13. What is problem with women empowerment and education?
Let’s start thinking with your childhood.

14. What you didn’t see …

15. WHY DO GIRLS REJECT THE IDEA OF A CAREER IN
ENGINEERING?
• Engineering faces a recruitment challenge rather than a retention problem.
• Not enough women are choosing the right subjects.
• Attitudes towards and aspirations for STEM and science careers from as early as
the age of 10.
• Perceptions and attitudes formed from early ages, by the time they turn 14
many girls have ruled themselves out of a career in engineering.

16. This means that ….
This means that interventions aimed at
influencing young women’s career and
subject choices the age of 16 will be too
late.

17. Perception of STEM subjects and engineering careers
‘I said [to my daughter] why can’t you do science? She said “oh no it’s a boy thing”. They
had an after school science club and she said “I’m not going because it’s all boys”. I said
well you should at least go along and see if you enjoy it. She went twice and then she
stopped going because it was all boys and she had no girls to talk to.’ (Archer)

18. • Gendered attitudes towards science continue to
limit women’s progression in scientific careers.
• Far greater numbers of women have entered the
profession in the past four decades, to the point
where women now outnumber men at medical
school.
• A career in medicine is perceived as a ‘normal’ or desirable choice for women,
because it is seen as a caring or nurturing profession consistent with prevailing
attitudes about women (ASPIRES 2013).
• Because of these attitudes towards physical sciences, many women do not
consider careers such as engineering to the same extent that men do.

19. Damaging stereotypes …
• Influence subject choice at school.
• With STEM subjects still seen as ‘boys’ subjects’, despite girls’ higher
attainment in them.
• Female students who self-identify as feminine are likely to feel that STEM
subjects are ‘not for them’, even if they enjoy them.
• STEM subjects are also often perceived to be too hard, which puts off a
number of potential students.
• 80% agreed with the statement ‘scientists are brainy’. While the ‘brainy’
image relates to the wider problem of low recruitment into STEM subjects
and engineering, it is also a gendered issue.
• Despite the fact that girls perform better than boys in GCSE science and
math’s, boys are still more likely to see themselves as clever enough to
pursue A-level STEM subjects.

20. STEREOTYPES ARE NOT REALITY
It’s a
marketing
issue

22. Key area for intervention …
• Women not taking the right A-levels based either on perceptions or lack of confidence in their abilities
unnecessarily narrows the future talent pool.
• Unconscious bias in teachers, who view boys to be ‘better’ and/or more ‘naturally able’ at science than
girls.
• Schools encourage boys to pursue science to a greater degree than they do girls.
• A survey - Girls pursuing physics at A-level were influenced to do so by a teacher, compared to just
under a third of boys.
• Girls view STEM careers as ‘interesting but not for me’.
• Girls who define themselves as ‘girly’ (highly feminine) are particularly unlikely to aspire to a career in
science, and tend to change their science aspirations or drop them.
• Girls who do aspire to science and STEM-related careers are not only more likely to describe
themselves as ‘not girly’, but they also tend to be highly academic

23. Parenting/Nurturing problem …
• Many still believe that most science-related careers are masculine or
reserved for the brainy.
• Key influencers such as teachers and families believe that a career in
engineering will be inhospitable and undesirable for women.
• Nearly half 44% of all STEM educators interviewed by Engineering
UK said that engineering was an undesirable career for their female
students because it is seen as a career for men.
• In another study, more boys than girls reported having been
encouraged to think about engineering as a career, particularly by
their parents.

24. Relationship with science aspirations …
• Self-concept
• Positive attitude towards STEM
• Good understanding of STEM
• Role model at early stage
• Confident career advice
• encourage diversity
• women at an unfair disadvantage
• Reject social influences
• Addressing the lack of science capital available to girls
• Encouraging more young women to pursue STEM

25. Main challenges to attracting more female talent
towards engineering
• Too few girls acquire the prerequisites, particularly physics, at
A-level.
• Poor understanding of engineering careers and the
engineering pathway.
• The fragmented STEM ecosystem, which can lead to an
ineffective use of resources.
• An unhelpful perception of STEM and engineering careers,
among both girls and their families, as ‘masculine’ or ‘brainy’.

26. Challenge 1: Too few girls acquire the prerequisite qualifications in STEM
subjects
STEM administrators whose remit would be
to reduce gender inequality in STEM
Ensure equal participation without
gender gap
Education system
should increase and widen
participation in STEM
STEM administrators
to reduce gender inequality
in STEM subjects.
To address the
underrepresentation of
women in STEM
Monitor and evaluate
participation in STEM

27. A broad attack on
stereotypes to debunk
myths surrounding women
in STEM
Challenge 2: Addressing the unhelpful perception of STEM and engineering careers,
among both girls and their families, as ‘masculine’ or ‘brainy’
Government should invest
in equality and inclusion
training for teachers and
also be offered as part of
continuing professional
development (CPD).
Training to understand
gender stereotypes
Discuss and challenge
those stereotypes and
messages with students
Hear case studies
about promoting
STEM subjects
Gender equality
is embedded in
the whole school
ethos

28. Challenge 3: Poor understanding of engineering careers and the
engineering pathway
Enough
knowledge about
science careers in
general to families
and teachers
Ensuring that key
influencers have enough
information is crucial to
encouraging more young
women to consider an
engineering career
Implementing better
career education and
guidance from an early
age
Strengthening links with
industry is important to
improving students’
understanding of career
pathways

29. “You educate a
man;
you educate a man.
You educate a
woman;
you educate a
generation.”

30. The bad news for Women Empowerment
Unfortunately, the glass ceiling for women in
STEM is not different from the glass ceiling in
other professions, and it will not disappear
without a change in the
status of women => TO DO!

31. Feel free to reach me 
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/mehak-azeem-187108173
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/mehak.azeem.7946
IEEE Collaboratec:
https://ieee-
collabratec.ieee.org/app/p/MehakAzeem950?slv
=true
Email: [mehakazeem@ieee.org]
Thank You