Australia’s engineering sector has a lot to learn about gender equality from its Muslim neighbours

Engineering classes look different in Jordan, Malaysia and Tunisia, and it has nothing to do their lecture slides. Up to 50 per cent of university students studying engineering in these Muslim-majority countries are women, while in Australia that figure sits at closer to 15 per cent. The same can be said for America where the number of female students is between 15 to 20 per cent, and it’s something Washington State University is trying to improve. Just last month they launched a research project to investigate what Jordan, Malaysia, Tunisia and even Saudi Arabia, are doing to reach gender parity in engineering studies, and how that knowledge can be applied in a Western context.

Jordan, Malaysia, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia have a higher percentage of female students studying engineering than we do Source: iStockphoto