Creating Techno Girls

During the course of 2014, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) will be carrying out an assessment of the Techno Girl Programme. The programme, launched in Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal in 2005, but now extended to all provinces, seeks to address the imbalance between boys and girls graduating in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

"A large majority of secondary school learners (in South Africa) fails to reach proficiency in maths and science. For girls, the situation is particularly challenging, with less than a third of girls taking maths and science in their secondary school years. It's well-documented that South African women, over and above a disadvantaged educational background, also face societal stereotyping and have traditional values imposed on them when choosing a career," says Jerry Vilakazi, chairman of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), one of the Techno Girl partners.

He says the current trend in South Africa is that boys outperform girls in maths and science. According to the 'Report on the National Senior Certificate Examinations Results 2010', in maths, 52% of boys passed, as opposed to 44% of girls. In physical science, 50% of boys passed while only 46% of girls were successful. This is despite the fact that more girls than boys enrolled for both maths and physical science.

"Consequently, young girls leave school and higher education institutions without the competencies required to occupy technical careers in STEM fields," he says. "This then acts as a barrier to their entry into scarce field careers, most of which require a degree on one of the STEM fields."

This issue trickles down into employment, according to 'Skills Shortages in SA: Case Studies of Key Professions' by Roodt and Paterson: "The gender composition of the computer professional occupational categories worsened between 1996 and 1999 and 2000 and 2005. There was an increase in the number of women working as computer professionals, but a decline in the employment of women in the associate professional category. Conversely, there was growth in both the male computer professional category and the male associate professional category over the same period. Clearly, conditions privileged male employment."

Staff Sithole, CEO of Uweso Consulting, the programme implementation partner, says to ensure that girls have an equal opportunity to excel in fields that the economy requires, they need to be exposed to opportunities, inspired to succeed, helped with subject choices and guided regarding their tertiary education, while still at school. This is what the Techno Girl job-shadowing programme seeks to address.

The future vision of the programme is to have a critical mass of Techno Girls enter the workplace with the skills and qualifications to ensure their sustained employment.

Staff Sithole, Uweso Consulting

"Selected on the basis of their academic merit, school girls aged between 15 and 18 are drawn from various disadvantaged communities, and placed in job-shadowing programmes in companies," says Nadi Albino, chief of education at UNICEF South Africa.

But the programme doesn't stop there. "To be effective and have meaningful impact, a job-shadowing programme cannot be a once-off activity. The programme therefore involves placing female students in partner company workplaces on a long-term, structured and systematic basis," says Albino.

According to Sithole, the girls are usually placed in a company for three consecutive holiday periods annually, a cycle that then ideally repeats over a four-year period. So a girl will enter the programme while completing Grade 9, continue the programme during Grade 10 and 11, and exit upon completion of Grade 12. Most of these companies also provide the girls with opportunities for college sponsorship in maths-, science- and technology-based courses.

"The future vision of the programme is to have a critical mass of Techno Girls enter the workplace with the skills and qualifications to ensure their sustained employment," adds Sithole. "Therefore, a major focus of the programme is to operationalise the Techno Girl Alumni Association fully and to secure partnerships and devise mechanisms for its sustainability."

This is where the measurement process comes in. Each job-shadowing intake is monitored internally. This entails surveying girls and job-shadowing host organisations to determine whether the programme is on course to achieve its intended outcomes. In addition, UNICEF has commissioned an external programme evaluation, which is scheduled for implementation in July 2014.

Ultimately, the programme needs to be measured on its contribution towards the entry of more women into STEM fields. For this purpose, the Techno Girl Alumni Association updates the records and details of alumni girls each year to track the progress of their studies and careers. Over the long term, this will be quantified to measure the impact of the programme.

"We're currently planning to do an evaluation of the project and the findings would hopefully be available by the end of this year," says Albino. "The main objective of the evaluation is to assess the effectiveness and relevance of the Techno Girl initiative."

To date, approximately 8 720 girls have been exposed to job shadowing through Techno Girl, of which 283 are studying at higher education institutions and 289 are employed. This year's UNICEF assessment will be telling in revealing the extent of the impact that this programme has had on the participating girls in the long term.

First published in the August 2014 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.