Increased female participation into engineering education through specialised courses

Research has shown that female participation into engineering courses has a very poor record especially in mainstream courses such as Mechanical, Electrical and Civil engineering. This paper refers to local and international reports on this issue and the success of the Product Design Engineering course to attract a higher percentage of female students. The study will reveal female enrolment into the course, performance during the course and employment after graduation over a ten year period that this course has been offered at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. The paper will support the position that higher female participation in the engineering profession is a necessity and that educational institutions have the ability as well as the responsibility to offer specialised courses that are conducive to higher female participation.