Exclusive grant acts to tempt women

MELBOURNE

An Australian university keen to bring more women into engineering has won a rare concession from equal opportunity bosses - the right to advertise and offer posts just for women.

RMIT University in Melbourne has run a "women in engineering" initiative for the past 13 years, but women still make up just 16 per cent of the university's engineering students, and only 5 per cent of engineering faculty staff. At the current rate of increase, men and women are unlikely to be entering the engineering school in equal numbers until 2055.

"The faculty decided that we need to be more pro-active if we are to improve the imbalance in a shorter time frame," said Bob Snow, dean of engineering.

The university sought and won a rare exemption under the Australian Equal Opportunity Act. It means the university can offer several postgraduate scholarships a year just for women. There may be opportunities, the university says, for these women to work their way up the academic ladder.

Nationally, just 14 per cent of tertiary engineering students are female, while only about 5 per cent of engineers in the workplace are women. John Kemp, executive director of the Institute of Engineers Australia, said: "This is a first in engineering in an academic institution. Though we would not necessarily endorse this way of getting women in, we certainly encourage more females into engineering."