Women in Kenya closing gender gap in science and tech
The number of women in science and technical professions in Kenya has increased steadily, raising hope of bridging the gender gap in a segment skewed in favour of men.
In 2017, there were 21,400 professional women employed in the science and technical fields. This represented a jump of 10.88 percent from the previous year, even though their male counterparts were still more than double at 52,400 professionals.
“Things have really changed. More women are getting into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (Stem). They are getting more into IT and maybe some into engineering. There is actually the will and the drive from women to get into this industry because it is only us who can create an environment to accommodate ourselves,” says chemical and process engineer Emmy Soy-Butaki.
Still, more needs to be done to expose women to opportunities in Stem fields. As a software engineer at Mark Zuckerberg-backed start-up Andela, Joan Ngatia today works with a company in New York city to build websites and applications that are on the cutting edge of the technological space, which can be used by millions of people every day.
“I stumbled upon my current field of practice merely as an extension of the previous job that I had. I am initially trained in Geospatial Data Sciences so in my work while trying to handle a couple of queries and interacting with several software I thought this is something I could do,” says Ms Ngatia.
“I started learning Python on the side during my breaks at my old office. In programming there is an exact flow to how things came up similar to how we do things in real life. If you want to make a cup of tea there are all these steps you need to follow so programming in the same way has all these steps that you need to add sequentially to get your desired result and that interests me,” says Ms Ngatia.
However, even after women work to secure the requisite education to work in Stem fields, they are having a hard time getting employed in the industry.
“Getting a job is a bit harder as a woman because your employer is looking at so many things. For example, most of the time the woman is the one in the family who has to sacrifice to take some time off if you have a child who is unwell or your house girl disappears on you. Those are some of the aspects that I feel really affect the relationship between women and their employers especially in engineering,” says Ms Soy-Butaki
Of the four women in her university class of 36, three got into banking instead of pursuing a career in engineering. The number of women enrolled in universities in 2017-2018 was 215,048, a dip from 234,120 the previous year. The ratio is worse in Stem courses.
Source – Business Daily Africa
