Goal 5: a role model for the female engineers of tomorrow

For this fourth episode in our series of articles on Goal 5 (Gender Equality) of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we head to South Africa where we meet Alisha Raghoonanan, who is a project engineer and manager with EGP. When not coordinating projects like the recent construction of the Oyster Bay wind farm in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, she is a mentor in EGP’s Back to School program. This is an initiative that entails showing schoolgirls that studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects isn’t only for boys. The lack of women studying STEM subjects is an international problem, and South Africa is no exception. Alisha Raghoonanan grew up in the “very strict, orthodox” Indian community of Lenasia, which lies to the south of Johannesburg’s Southwestern Townships (a.k.a. Soweto). She says that even though girls in her generation were expected to marry young, they weren’t discouraged from professional careers, it’s just that the options were limited to teacher, doctor, accountant or lawyer. Engineer wasn’t on the list, but Alisha, who matriculated (i.e., graduated) from Lenasia or Secondary School, aka “Lenz High,” in 2007 and went on to study Civil Engineering at the University of Johannesburg before doing post-grad both there and at business schools, broke the mold. Initial reactions Alisha’s role in the Back to School program, which began earlier this year, is at “Lenz” High, her alma mater. After EGP had chosen Alisha and her three fellow mentors and contacted their old schools, she spoke at a career day in May, and then met with her mentees before beginning the program, which consists of four sessions. The girls are from Grade 11, the second most senior year. Alisha says that she has seen a remarkable change in attitude: “Their initial reaction was ‘Well, you don’t look like an engineer!’ and they would ask crazy questions like ‘How did you manage to avoid getting married when you were young?’ and ‘How do you balance work with family life.’ But I think the fact that I look like them has helped them relate to me and now they ask more practical questions like ‘How do I enter the field?’” Some girls even got Alisha to call their fathers and persuade them that engineering was the right choice for their daughters: “I told one dad that, with renewable energy becoming increasingly important in the future, if his daughter chooses to study engineering, the world will be her oyster (no pun on Oyster Bay intended – ed).” A sense of pride Interestingly enough, Alisha’s own father, who is an engineer, played a role in her career path: “I was quite creative as a kid. I loved to draw and still do, and I wanted to be architect,” but this would have meant going to UCT (the University of Cape Town) some 1400 kilometers (870 miles) away, and “Dad didn’t want me to leave home, whereas I could study engineering at my local university!” After graduating, she began working in the almost all-male world of construction engineering, which was “pretty intimidating at first, but I have no regrets. I’m really grateful to my Dad for pushing me in that direction as it has given me so many possibilities. He’s really proud about everything I do and I feel both lucky and proud to be a female engineer in South Africa.” And she hopes to pass on this luck and pride to her mentees: “My dream is to meet one of them ten years from now and for her to tell me: ‘I’m an engineer and I want to show you something I built.’”

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Goal 5: a role model for the female engineers of tomorrow

Goal 5: a role model for the female engineers of tomorrow

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