Dr. Lesley Jolly
University of Queensland Catalyst Centre for Engineering Design
5.30 pm, Thursday 17th May 2007
Flash Recording (65 minutes, introduction by Ruza Ostrogonac is first 3:30 minutes has low sound level)
Engineering is famous as the profession that has not attained anything like equal respresentation of the sexes despite thirty years of debate on the issue. Recent trends seem to indicate that small gains in female representation made in the 1990s are slipping away, even in formerly gender-equal countries in Eastern Europe. In a climate of sensitivity to skills shortages it is common to hear calls for increased female participation in engineering. Sometimes it is said they will be valuable for the different perspective they bring, although direct evidence of this is hard to find. In this session we review what is keeping women out of engineering, what would need to be done to change the situation, and we ask whether it is ethical and possible to support calls to encourage more women in the profession.
Dr. Lesley Jolly is an anthropologist who has researched women in engineering for the last decade. After early work with Australian indigenous people, she was approached to undertake an ethnography of the first-year engineering class at the University of Queensland with a view to understanding the gender dynamics there. Since then her association with engineers and engineering has grown to dominate her research life. She has undertaken studies of the social dimensions of engineering design education and examined how engineering design management happens in the mining and construction industries. She contributes to the Catalyst Centre with Prof. David Radcliffe at UQ. She is also researching social sustainability in master planned communities.
2007 is the Year of Women in Engineering
This seminar is presented
by the Engineering Learning & Practice Research
Group
School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Western Australia
The function commences at 5.30 pm in room 1.01 (first floor) for tea, coffee and refreshments.
Seminar presentation commences at 6 pm in Engineering Lecture Theatre 1, Civil and Mechanical Engineering Building, The University of Western Australia.
Fairway Entrance 3 (free parking available after 5 pm).