Women leaders in STEM say what they mean, and mean what they say (Part 1)

By Sharyn Macnamara, senior writer at African Mining, incorporating Mining Mirror

Pinpoint Stewards hosted its 3rd Annual Women & Leadership – in Engineering, Infrastructure and Innovation Conference from 28–29 February 2024 in Johannesburg, Sandton. The skills shortage within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) careers globally, on the African continent and more specifically, locally in South Africa – characterised by what is called the ‘leaky pipeline’¹ phenomenon, as well as the brain drain experienced over the last twenty years – is of grave concern. The conference hosted women in the industry who have made notable contributions and strides in bridging the gender gap within STEM – yet another exacerbated concern. Challenges in attraction, retention, development and promotion of women were debated by women leaders in the engineering, infrastructure, mining and innovation sectors.

In September 2023, Minister Blade Nzimande said, “Patriarchal attitudes, systematic barriers and certain practices and norms have defined women out of the research, scientific and technological developments that are engines of the Industrial Revolutions. The measures aimed at greater gender inclusion in our recently approved Science Technology Innovation Decadal Plan (2022-2032), our ten-year plan, include the STI Transformation Framework, and the STI Gender Strategy that is aligned to the government-wide gender responsive planning and budgeting framework…” Although this statement heralds a potential turning point in the current status quo, at this event, the realities expressed by women deeply entrenched in this sector leave much to be desired; and it is clear that more needs to be done to ensure Nzimande’s 10-year plan yields the desired results. In her opening address to the 100 attendees, Ankia Roux, co-owner with Sudhira Sewsunker of Pinpoint Stewards, the 100%-women-owned, Level 2 B-BBEE training and conferencing company, noted that it will take an excess of 100 years to bridge the gender gap in STEM. [Listen to Ankia Roux here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7168889576550338560]

In her keynote address to attendees, the Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI), hon. Bernice Swarts said of the conference, “This is an innovative and refreshing idea to have a bespoke and unique conference specifically and deliberately aimed at empowering women… This is also an opportunity for us as women leaders to exchange ideas and views on how we, together, can accelerate and forge ahead with the task at hand.” She added, “For too long women have been left behind in the progress of humanity in general and our country specifically. It is sad that such a vast majority of humanity is kept on the sidelines of progress instead of bringing everyone on board for the progress of all of humanity.”

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Swarts pointed out that that government would continue to work on the legislative and policy front to remove the barriers to the progress of women, however the private sector would need to also do its bit in order to lighten the burden and innovate to create more opportunities for growth. She explained that her department is using its minimal resources to build a cadre of professionals for the built industry;¹ and is also using its professional public entities to play a role in “concretizing tasks of providing policy leadership to the wider construction, property and infrastructure sectors”.

Swart emphasised that transformation continues to be a national imperative, but as important a priority was the attraction and retention of women engineers in an array of fields, and she highlighted that the sector faces a shortage of registered professionals within the country – the causes being: ageing professionals; an untransformed sector and bottlenecks during professional registration processes which further contribute to low throughput of professional registrations.

Her advice to the audience was that all should push for more structured and targeted workplace placements and training for women. “It will not help us to mourn and complain about the lack of women leadership if we do not drive these efforts ourselves. Ladies, leadership entails a lot of persistence and drive for the issues that we are passionate about. leadership in STEM. Register to receive our newsletter, disseminated free of charge here: https://www.africanmining.co.za/mining-africa-digital-registration/

References The “leaky pipeline” often depicts women passively leaking out of STEM careers with no discussion of why those leaks occur, but, in fact, the cracks and gaps caused by gender biases and barriers are a major cause of the leak of women and minorities out of the STEM pipeline. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-leaky-pipeline-of-women-in-STEM-The-leaky-pipeline-often-depicts-women-passively_fig1_329192439 In the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, the Skills Pipeline Programme is largely driven by its Professional Services Branch. In existence since 2014, the programme takes learners from school level up to the professional registration stage and is structured as follows, says Swarts: The Schools’ Programme is a development intervention targeted at pupils, teachers and school management and is a direct feeder into the bursary programme. The DPWI non-employees External Bursary Scheme serves as an exit strategy for the Schools’ Programme participants and creates funding opportunities and structured support. The scheme aims to massify and sustain the skills pipeline to feed directly into the DPWI Graduate Internship Programme. The bursary scheme caters for students who are enrolled at traditional universities within South Africa with the exception of qualifications in horticulture. The DPWI Internship Programme aims to develop talent and to create a skills base for the department to align it to the Workplace Skills Plan and to address vacancies within DPWI.  The DPWI provides various forms of Internships namely: Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Internship and Graduate Internship Management Trainee Programme customised to the DPWI to develop Property Management graduates who are not pursuing professional registration. The Artisan Development Programme aims to build capacity for Facilities Management to enable compliance with the National Immovable Assets Maintenance Management (NIAMM). Young Professionals/Candidacy Development Programme is a structured mentorship programme developing built environment candidates to accelerated and obtain professional registration with a statutory council and transform the sector. “These are also infused with the guiding principles of encouraging females to take part in all the programmes.”

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