Western Sydney University Engineering student, Valerie Jochico is one of four girls out of the 50 students who will be competing in Bridgestone’s World Solar Car Challenge early next month. Valerie, alongside her teammates will race against 30 other countries from Darwin to Adelaide across some of the world’s most challenging landscapes. This year the event will reach its 30th anniversary as it celebrates its relentless passion for a sustainable future. Throughout the building process of the solar car, Valerie contributed largely to logistics and IT, playing not only a critical role in the design of the brake system, but also how the students will survive in the desert during the 40-day period. “When I originally joined there was only one other girl on the team. It was a bit of a boys club,” she said. Valerie says at …show more content…
The team will drive as far as they can until 5:00pm where they must stop and camp in the desert till morning when the race resumes. “As a part of the logistics, team we are well prepared for what our team needs to survive, but sometimes things don’t go to plan. I am confident that our team’s cooperation will be able to figure anything out,” says Jochico. The current Australian STEM workforce is made up of 72% males and 28% woman with the gender pay gap standing at 30.1%. According to Professionals Australia, this is becoming an increasing issue as women are underrepresented in a way that promotes gender segregation and stereotypes. Western Sydney University’s Woman in Science and Engineering (WISE) program is addressing these issues by promoting and inspiring girls throughout their degree whilst also providing them with opportunities to meet employers visit workplaces and attend industry events. The female students also have access to a mentoring program, which pairs them with professionals in their field for career advice and
As we move deeper into the digital world, the importance of STEM education is becoming more and more apparent. Unfortunately, however, the gender ratio continues to be skewed with men dominating - in both classrooms and the working world. Among the challenges women face in entering STEM fields are stigma and a lack of support. Fem4STEM aims to breach these barriers by providing girls and women a platform to showcase their abilities, as well as meet other women who share a passion for STEM. We believe strongly that advancing STEM education requires collaboration between industry, educators, and families. As such, we have partnered with a number of clubs and professors at
According to the 2022 data on women in engineering in Australia, women comprise only 13% of the
In a speech in February 2013 President Barak Obama said, “One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being encouraged the way they need to.” It been three years since President Obama has made that statement and the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and math as known as STEM majors is still a big problem today. The STEM workforce is crucial to Americas global competitiveness and groundbreaking capability. The people who work in the STEM field make up nearly half of the United
Although the recent upward trends in the number of women in STEM fields are promising, they are not truly due to decreasing cultural stereotypes. Women receiving graduate degrees in engineering increased by 2 percent from 2000 to 2008, but this trend is not as hopeful as it may seem (Giges). This increase was mainly evident in communal fields like environmental or biomedical engineering (Giges). This is further evidence of the impact of cultural stereotypes and their influence on women’s career paths. Society’s expectation of women is that they serve as caring motherly figures and community-centered careers adhere
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a beautiful technology oriented university filled with a myriad of advancements in technological studies. As a young woman who is planning to pursue a future in engineering, it is truly inspiring to see Shirley Ann Jackson, a Ph.D., as the President of Rensselaer. She has shown courage and determination by being one of the few women to graduate MIT in her time. During her time at the school, she has put a huge emphasis on the young women on campus. At RPI there is a huge women’s support network, which include the Women at Rensselaer Mentor Program and Women in engineering program and professional societies such as Society for Women Engineers and Women in Computing. Programs like these help young women to
All though women in STEM face many challenges as a whole, a question being posed in this study is whether or not women in math and physics intensive studies face unique obstacles. Underrepresentation in STEM seems a stubborn fact of the matter, however, it is not even across the board. The number of women present in the life sciences (sciences such as biology, environmental studies, health care, etc.), both at the academic and professional level, is much higher than the number of women present in fields that focus heavily on math, physics, and engineering. More and more women are choosing to pursue post-secondary education and enter the specialized workforce; in 2010 the AAUW found “Women currently earn over half of all doctoral degrees
I reviewed your memorandum to Governor Jerry Brown, outlining a “Plan to Increase Demand for Electric Vehicles.” Your message to the California government is clear about its intent. You offer solid arguments. You urge the government to develop electric vehicles to improve air quality in California, and clearly identify the burden to develop and market the electric car within the private sector. To improve your paper, you could strengthen your arguments with more concrete support, develop more seamless transitions, and include associated counter-arguments.
The contents of this report outline the final results gained from the production of a solar car prototype after using the engineering design process efficiently. The report contains the
In this modern fast paced world that we live in, there are many issues that are looked over, energy is one of these. As a world, we are dependant on dwindling fossil fuel supplies and take for granted electricity, oil, and gas. There are four completely renewable sources of energy around us that should be used and developed, they are: wind, growing plants, flowing water, and the sun. These sources of energy are the ones we should be tapping, because they are reliable and renewable. Harnessing the suns energy is the most certain and ultimate energy source. Looking at a brief history and some facts about solar energy, a glimpse of the future can be seen, a future not dependant on
Did you ever think about where your drinking water comes from? The water that we drink was initially sea water that has undergone a scientific process called desalination. Desalination is a chemical process in which natural compounds are separated from water, making the water clean and drinkable. Traditionally, sea water is propelled through hydraulic pumps which create a flow to separate the water from the sea salt. Hydraulic pumps require certain chemicals that are harmful to humans and these chemicals sometimes are cross-contaminated in the drinking water being produced. Personally, I don’t want to drink chemicals that are threatening to my life and that cause harm to the environment. Many
Engineering has historically been viewed as a man’s job. In recent years the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) community has made more pointed efforts to recruit women. While the process of aggressively seeking out women is taking place, the perception of what it means to be an engineer remains skewed. Since the perception has changed about engineering, societal views are pushed towards a generic understanding of what it means to be an engineer. Problems in recruiting women engineers can exemplify the differences in society we don’t often discuss such as merit and opportunity.
The inequality around the world is making women doubt about what the world demands them to be. Unequal pay had been a topic women have faced all their life. Men as women should have the same opportunity to express their potential differently, but that does not mean women are less advantageous than men. Our community had been in charge to make women feel less forgetting recognize all the essential effect women contribute to this society. In Gaby Galvin’s words, Study: Inclusive Environment Key to Closing STEM Gap, "We're still using science, we're just not doing it in the fields that are the most lucrative and most high status," she said. "But if you can be a doctor, you can be a computer scientist". Everyone should have the choice to follow
According to the data published by Australian Bureau of Statistics in May 2015, the full time average earnings of women is $284.20 or 17.9% less than the full time average earnings for men, this figure is calculated on the full time employees’ average weekly ordinary time earnings. The gender pay gap has hovered between 15% and 19% over the past two decades. The gender pay gap is the different between average weekly full time equivalent earnings of male and female, expressed as a percentage of earnings of male. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency highlights that the gender pay gap is resulting from a combination of factors, including the female graduates start on a lower wages then male graduates, even they are in the same industries and workplace and this is maintained throughout their careers, women are under presented in leadership and senior management position, women’s traditional caring role combined with lack of flexible work options that force them into casual an non-career part time jobs, men receive bigger attraction and performance bonuses than women and male dominated work has historically been better paid
Solar energy is an eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. Our planet has been experiencing an average increase in global temperatures. Slowly but surely our planet is deteriorating, unless we change our form of energy into a greener alternative. Deterioration of our planet may occur at a faster rate. The depletion of fossil fuels is detrimental to our environment. By substituting fossil fuels with the solar energy, our planet will benefit. These benefits include: reduced climate change, beneficial economic opportunities on both a large scale benefitting our government and on a smaller scale helping individuals decrease their energy bills, and solar energy is renewable and sustainable.
It is interesting to note that when man was created, his needs were all around him. Some were obvious such as food and water, but other needs needed discovery like solar energy. Solar energy is the most ancient kind of energy known to man, however, man started researching it in the early 19th century.