Undoubtedly, and for very obvious reasons, the female species is the most important in our world – women are simply the better half of the world. March 8th is a date set aside to celebrate women globally. Regardless of their status, shape, size, position or ethnicity, all women deserve to be celebrated and on the 8th day of March every year, they deserve as much love as the world can offer.
Originally and first celebrated in America, The International Women’s day is a global and annual event that is celebrated on the 8th day of March to acknowledge the social, political and economic achievement of women in the society.
The movement to empower women to be responsible for their own destinies and be in charge of all their decisions in all aspects of their lives, including but not limited to, choice of profession, right to get married or not, political ambitions and their economic choices has recorded well earned victories for women globally in recent times – but yet the battle is still far from being won and the movement is still sweeping across many other fronts.
Similarly, women are now being encouraged to venture into careers and professions without the fear of being “bullied” by their male counterparts. Some career choices have been wrongly projected to appear strictly for men and women have over the years either outrightly shunned joining some industries for fear of being stigmatised or opting to not practice in it because they appear to be “male-dominated” industries.
One of such careers, that have since inception being riddled with gender imbalance is Engineering. Over the years, there has been an outcry by women over the fact that the industry has been designed to strictly appear to suit only men.
However, women have been encouraged to consider pursuing a career in Engineering as opportunities that avail to them in the very broad engineering industry is surely not in short supply. Women are now being urged to join the industry that currently only constitutes about 9% of them in total.
While a lack of role models may be a part of the problem, the pointers all indicate to the fact that women can indeed have a future in engineering. Recently, girls have been said to outperform boys on average in math and science related subjects in school.
While the engineering industry must look to make the career more attractive to women by offering better working conditions and other job perks. More importantly, young girls should be encouraged to venture into science right from a young age and they should be urged to do so without fear of being overrun by men. Women have demonstrated to have strong willpower and resolve over the years and maybe in the next decade or two, they will confidently compete with men in the industry. The phrase, what a man can do, a woman can do better, sharply comes to mind.
To all the beautiful women across the globe, Happy International Women’s Day!
