1. Engineering qualifications at the OU – what motivates women to study?
Carol Morris and Sally Organ

2. Why an eSTEeM project? We know that female engineering students
Account for ~10% of engineering students
Most in 25 – 40 age group
One third qualified to first degree level or above
Anecdotally
Not working in an engineering role
Concern that they cannot relate to existing curriculum
Concern about gaining industrial experience

3. Who did we survey?
Pilot survey to 190 engineering students on T192(17J) November 2018
18 female respondents
10 male respondents
14.8% response rate
Main survey to 800 engineering undergraduate students January 2018
60 female respondents
54 male respondents
14.3% response rate

4. Work and study Women 71% work full-time 10% part-time
19% work in engineering,
23% in STEM
44% have never worked in engineering
Men
84% work full-time
4% part time
58% work in engineering
12% in STEM
17% have never worked in engineering

5. Aspirations

6. Attitudes to study

7. Encouragement

8. Next steps
Over 20 students (female and male) have volunteered for one-to-one interviews
Hope to conduct interviews in May, June and July to gather more in- depth information
Work with marketing to attract more mature female entrants to engineering at the OU
Information to feed into curriculum design and student support
I was never able to interact with peers on this module except at face to face tutorials where I felt out of place as the only female in the room. Also everyone else seemed to have some sort of background in engineering which I do not and I felt my lack of knowledge and understanding left me feeling embarrassed and afraid to interact. I would have love to had a "buddy" in the same situation as myself.
Female student, T192 17J

9. THANK YOU Please come along and interact with our poster over lunch