A video highlighting the opportunities for women in the engineering sector has been issued by the National Council for Educational Awards. Aimed at teenaged girls, the video was launched yesterday in Tralee, Co Kerry, in a Science Week 1997 event and will be made available to school career guidance counsellors nationally.
At present, Ireland is estimated to be short of 750 technicians in this sector, according to Mr Kevin Lynch, head of Tralee RTC school of engineering. "There is a strong view that if we drew the same numbers of women as men, there wouldn't be a shortage," he said.
The shortage was not as pronounced in civil engineering, he said but multinationals, "the Intels, Hewlett Packards and IBMs are looking for large numbers of engineering manufacturing technicians". The shortage was remarkable, given that RTC engineering graduates were walking into jobs with starting salaries of £13,000 to £16,000, he added.
Colleges were producing as many graduates as possible but drawing mainly from the male gender. Women accounted for only 11 per cent of RTC engineering graduates and 18 per cent of engineers leaving universities. The video features two woman engineers, one working in a building services company and another in a multinational in Ireland.
