KINGSTON, Jamaica — Engineering is a historically male-dominated career, but two female students at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, are helping to blaze a new trail for the future.

Roxanne Daley and Tia Brown are the only two females among 12 students in the school’s Electronics Engineering BSc programme, both of them majoring in Electronics and Telecommunications.

For Daley, a former student of St Andrew High School for Girls, engineering has always been the goal.

“I just had a passion for math and physics from high school and I never saw myself anywhere else,” she told Observer Online.

Her passion drives her to succeed in a field where women are under-represented – as is evidenced by the fact that she only has one female counterpart in her classes.

But despite being a woman in a “man’s world”, Daley, a recipient of the Math Science TVET Education and Engineering Scholarship, has consistently excelled academically, maintaining a 3.86 GPA and earning a spot on the Dean’s list every semester.

And she has preserved her sense of humour while juggling labour-intensive courses and a jam-packed schedule.

“I don’t dream of working,” the scholar who is set to graduate later this year joked while commenting on her dream job in the field.

“I went into telecommunications because with that you can go into a whole lot of things. I was looking into aeronautical, working with planes and everything that has to do with communication with planes and antennas, building communication links. I’ve also had experience with developing back-end servers so I see myself branching off instead of staying stagnant… as long as I get a job that lets me travel, I will be fine,” Daley said.

Daley, however, is not naïve about the struggles to be anticipated as a woman in a male-dominated industry because, according to her, she has been subject to some instances of gender-stereotyping in classes.

“Some lecturers might come off as sexist but I don’t really pay it any mind. One of my classes, I don’t remember what was happening, but my lecturer was like ‘you ever rode a bicycle or change a car tyre?’ and he was like ‘oh Roxanne, I don’t expect you to be able to do that’ or some comment like that. I was just like ‘oh what you mean by not me? I’ve ridden a bicycle and I’ve changed a car tyre before’. So I guess, yeah it’s there, they expect you to portray certain qualities being a female — there is really a gender divide but I don’t take it as anything cause men are going to be egotistical,” Daley said.

“There was also another situation where we were having a discussion and somebody was like ‘oh you’re in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) so you have more a masculine personality’ and I was like ‘no, what you mean by that? Being in STEM doesn’t make me more masculine or hide my emotion or nothing like that. I am still a female and I just do science, technology and engineering work’,” she continued.

Naturally, the 21-year-old dreads what is to come in the work world, but she remains resolute in the fact that engineering is much more than “a man doing strenuous work” and she is confident in her abilities to get the job done.

“I’m actually afraid to start working because I know I’m going to be working with a lot of men and they feel like you’re a female so you can’t do certain things or ‘why you in this career path’ or ‘you should have gone to something more feminine’ but I have no intentions of doing any hard labour that a ‘man’ is supposed to do. I have no intentions of trying to compete with a male counterpart, I just wish to go and do the job I am supposed to do and do it well and if I can’t manage strenuous work, I’ll be fine with a male doing it. I have no intention of proving ‘oh I am strong, I can manage anything’ cause that’s fine with me.

“That’s not what engineering is about — a man doing strenuous work — it’s about being innovative and creating solutions to problems that the world is facing so it’s not about me wanting to be a man or portray masculine qualities,” she said.

Likewise for Brown, another talented student in the programme, she is ready to defy the stereotypes and misconceptions that often discourage women from pursuing careers in STEM fields.

“It’s props to me — or us — because there are a lot of males currently in my year and it doesn’t make me feel as I am looked at as just a female that can’t do anything cause you know they have their stereotypes that females in engineering don’t do anything, they just like office work and stuff like that. However, I know what I’m doing and it shows when I see others come to me and ask for help,” Brown told Observer Online.

Labelling her destined career field as “male dominated”, Brown said she was not threatened.

“I see it as a motivation to stand out…Once you know what you’re doing so at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you’re a male or female, it’s really just if you get the job done and how well you get the job done,” she explained.

Brown, who is also president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Student Branch at The UWI —a male-dominated club, maintains a 3.0 GPA average.

She noted that her love for engineering stemmed from a love for architecture.

“From high school I always wanted to be an architect. I was always drawing and designing and stuff like that,” the Immaculate Conception High School graduate said. “However, when I was looking at colleges, not many offered what I wanted and I didn’t want to do upper six as well so I said okay, UWI had a preliminary engineering programme that interested me at first so I applied for it and I got in and I mean it just started from there.”

Thrilled about the opportunity to find and create ways to solve real-world problems, the 22-year-old hopes to break barriers with artificial intelligence (AI).

“My dream job — I actually don’t know because this brings a lot of opportunities yes, however, in Jamaica it’s limited…I might want to start something with AI because I am using artificial intelligence to accomplish my final year project so I hope to work with artificial intelligence,” she said, adding that her final year project is a hand gesture drone.

Brown said her message to young girls hoping to get into STEM would be “not focus on what others are doing no matter the gender because at the end of the day, you are making your mark in the world, you are doing what you choose to do just like they’re doing what they choose to do”.

International Girls in ICT Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in April to highlight the importance of girls in information and communication technology (ICT) and encourage more girls and young women to pursue STEM education. The day acknowledges the achievements and contributions of women in the field.