Bengaluru: Although women have been increasingly making inroads into male dominated careers, very few still opt for mechanical engineering courses both for their undergraduate and post-graduate degrees, going by various studies on student enrolments.
Class 11 students of DRDO Kendriya Vidyalaya received a bit of a pep talk on this at a special session during their industry visit to the Volvo offices in the city on Friday by Managing Director of 3M India, Debarati Sen , who advised them not to go by social stereotypes when choosing their careers.
Elaborating, she said the national GDP would increase by a whopping 30 per cent if Indian women started joining the workforce in greater numbers.
Speaking to the Deccan Chronicle, Mr Kamal Bali, president and MD of Volvo India, said the company intended to offer more jobs to women to increase their share of the workforce from the present 18 per cent. “The women’s attitude that they are made more for jobs in the Information Technology industry rather than in mechanical engineering needs to change. The myth about mechanical engineering jobs being all about brawn and not brain has to be broken,” he stressed.
Later, in a question and answer session with the students, Mr Bali said if more of them opted for mechanical engineering, it would open up a great deal of opportunities for them, much more than in any other discipline. He concluded with encouraging the girls to consider choosing mechanical engineering in their higher studies.
The daylong event for the students included tours to the company’s research and development wing and the Volvo group trucks factory, where they interacted with a team of 14 female engineers, who shared their experience in the field with the students.
