In response to a trend of sinking female enrolment in engineering in Ontario, the province’s 15 engineering schools are collaborating to implement strategies they believe will solve the gender gap.

This Saturday saw the launch of an annual workshop at locations across Ontario directed toward young girls and their parents, where speakers challenged the typical image of engineers as “grease monkeys.”

Five years ago, women made up approximately 30 per cent of first-year engineering classes, numbers which have today shrunk to 20 per cent. The decrease is seen as a reversal of years of hard-earned gains in a traditionally male-dominated discipline.

“Girls tend to experience ‘math phobia’,” argued Dr. Doug McDougall, associate chair of the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE. “They come to fear the subject of math at an early age largely due to their parents’ influence and go on to doubt their own abilities, often believing the stereotype that math is for boys and that it is not ‘cool’.”

The Toronto “Go Eng Girl” workshop representing the engineering departments of U of T, Ryerson, York and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) took place at U of T’s 89 Chestnut student residence, and was aimed girls from grades seven to ten.

While parents heard guest speakers, such as professional female engineers, frame engineering as a field in high demand in a diverse range of areas from biomedicine to computers, their daughters were off participating in hands-on engineering activities.

Márta Ecsedi, advisor to the dean on women’s issues at U of T and chair of the Toronto event suggested that the new condensed four-year high school curriculum, combined with the already mandatory geometry and discreet math courses, are contributing factors in the decline of girls in engineering.

“Girls not confident in their math skills see these courses as daunting,” she said.

Ontario engineering schools are implementing new admittance requirements to deal with the decline, in which such math courses will not be considered compulsory, only recommended.

Critics of this change, however, are suggesting that without these courses students will not have the background sufficient to succeed in the math-based engineering programs.

“Discreet math and geometry are fundamental concepts in the engineering curriculum and are returned to and built upon each year,” said Mike Kramar, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at U of T. He argued that easing the admittance requirements may be a band-aid solution for the deep-rooted problem of girls not taking an interest and being encouraged in math.

Ms. Ecsedi said that while nothing is finalized, there will be remedial math courses offered to students who need extra help.

“We won’t be able to see the impact of this workshop for two years, as the oldest students are in grade 10,” said Ecsedi. However, the program has received permission to track the students in order to assess the campaign’s success.

Only time will tell if projects such as Go Eng Girl will have their desired effect of encouraging Ontario’s young women to get over the “grease” and embrace engineering.