by Gideon Madzikatidze
HARARE – Despite making significant progress in fostering or embracing gender equality and equity as part of inclusivity at work places, most women engineers have suffered from systemic gender segregation and diverse stereotypes from man (workmates) with less than 20% gaining confidence to sail through after rigorous carrier guidance, the 2025 Women in Engineering Conference presentations have disclosed.
Changing policies, regular engagements from early childhood development to tertiary or vocational levels using complementing curricular, creating platforms that invite expert’s for career and awareness campaigns on engineering-related matters was cited as major strategies to strike gender-balanced carrier’s among female and their male counterparts.
Speaking in Harare on Monday at the Women in Engineering Conference (2025), Engineer Martha Ndoro from the Ministry of Transport called on women to avoid carrier discrimination based on gender from early childhood ages.
“Let us create an enabling environment which give confidence in children from early childhood stage. If you buy toys for both boys and girls, do not discriminate, buy them similar tractor, excavator, interactive laptop toys, among others,” Ndoro said.
Furthermore, “Expose both girls and boys to the same environment and therefore groom them to become engineers. This would enable them to take up engineering as a non-discriminatory gender carrier,” Ndoro added.
Moreover, “Systemic bias should be addressed through gender policy reviews and ensure inclusivity; women should participate to ensure representation of their carrier interests. Once we have those policies besides technical expertise, there is need for interaction to demonstrate that women can,” Ndoro announced.
On the other hand, “There is also need to be flexible or have broad exposure in terms of skills. Engineers are problem-solvers hence the need to include them in all spheres of engineering. This would also help them in contributing towards essential services delivery,” Engineer Dorothy Madziya, Engineering Services Director from the Ministry of Local Government said.
“Communication skills should be part of engineering, since the way we present ourselves drives perceptions and narratives. Integrity should also be part of bringing change and narratives to women in engineering which gives them confidence in fight against professional stereotyping,” Madziya added.
Gender stereotyping and other gender violations are growing concerns that remain vicious to social order and remain to be addressed, owing to the deported social canalisation process which slowly contours to be deconstructed.