Understand how things work

April 15, 2015

Illustration by Robert Seegler

There are still significantly fewer women than men in STEM professions. But the self-image of tech women is changing. There are increasingly female role models at the top of companies - and the digitalization of all industries is creating a variety of areas of application. We present three young professionals who have the best career prospects.

Angela Merkel invited 24 girls to the Federal Chancellery. She shakes their hands, walks a technical course with them and poses with them in front of the cameras of media representatives. It's Girls' Day - and, like every spring, the Chancellor is taking time for a small group of teenagers to draw attention to a big project: "Girls' Future Day" is intended to introduce schoolgirls to careers that, in her eyes, are more for boys : “The earning and career prospects in the so-called MINT professions are very good,” advertises the Chancellor. “The need for well-trained skilled workers is also increasing.” That means: It’s worth it, dear girls! The topic is close to Angela Merkel's heart: Because she is convinced that Germany, as a location for innovation, thrives on well-trained IT specialists and natural scientists. And because, as a physicist, she herself studied one of the so-called MINT subjects – math, computer science, natural sciences and technology.

This means that she still belongs to a minority today, almost 30 years after her doctorate. Current figures prove this: According to data from the Federal Statistical Office, the proportion of women among science students remains low. In the 2013/14 winter semester, there were a meager 22 percent of female students in engineering, and only a good 10 percent in electrical engineering. The natural sciences, which include math and physics, reach a comparatively high level of 37 percent.

In order to increase the numbers overall - politics and business have agreed on this - countless action days, funding programs and projects are being initiated to bring together what obviously cannot come together on its own: girls and technology. Girls Day is just one of the offers. Even in kindergarten, the “House of Little Researchers” supports the joy of discovery among girls and boys nationwide. At “Come do MINT”, 190 organizations from business, politics, science and media want to inspire girls for MINT careers through various campaigns. Code Week, a European initiative, took place for the first time in Germany in 2014 and is intended to introduce girls and boys to the world of technology and programming in a playful way. And once the young women have a degree in their pockets, large and medium-sized companies set up their own programs to support their advancement.

Kathrin Geiger knows such programs. She thinks it is particularly important to start getting involved at school. “So that the girls who are interested in technical subjects don’t let their self-confidence be undermined.” Wrong comments from the teacher, dominance of the boys or a lack of interest from the other girls – many things can make math, physics or chemistry seem uninteresting. However, Kathrin Geiger never experienced this herself. She had fun – and good grades – in math and physics. It's possible that it was due to her family background: her father is an engineer, as is her brother. Geiger herself is now a doctoral student at BMW. The now 28-year-old studied electrical and information technology at the Technical University of Munich. After her 1.0 diploma thesis on metal-semiconductors, she is now doing her doctorate on the subject of “Physical On-Board Network”. To put it simply, it is about a new design method for wiring harnesses, a core part of the electronics in the car that connects all electronic components, supplies them with power and enables communication between the control units. It sounds abstract to outsiders, but Geiger goes into raptures when she reports on her work: “A wiring harness is not visible to drivers, but it is indispensable – comparable to the bloodstream and nervous system in the human body.” Identify problems, bring about improvements, Developing solutions are the work steps that inspire the electrical engineer. And when she has successfully mastered a topic: check it off and move on to the next challenge. “I want to know how things work. “I enjoy understanding technology,” says the doctoral student. “I never liked learning by heart. Studying law would have been terrible for me.”

Getting to the bottom of things and understanding technology – that is also what drives Kathrin Reichstein. The civil engineer works for THOST Project Management and constantly learns about new topics through her changing clients. THOST's areas of activity are systems, energy, mobility and real estate - and Reichstein has already gotten to know three of them since she started her career at the end of 2011. She is currently preparing to build a new high-voltage line. Her personal highlight would be working on an offshore wind turbine - because it would not only be a challenging technical project, but also difficult conditions due to wind and weather. “Large projects fascinate me. If I can help build a huge system and then understand how it works, I think that’s cool,” says the 28-year-old. “Before, I had no idea how a power line worked. Today I know it, that fulfills me.” However, Reichstein only discovered her fascination little by little: her advanced courses in high school were English and math – and her father was an engineer. So it seemed obvious to also start studying civil engineering. “I actually only gave myself one semester, but then it became fun, it was easy for me, and I stuck with it.”

She takes it for granted that she is respected by male colleagues and customers. “When it comes to getting involved, you shouldn’t be squeamish. I like that, I'm more practical. And if you show that you're capable of something, it can even be an advantage to be a woman." It is now also accepted to dress as a woman - and not to appear as an engineer in a man's outfit. Reichstein says she wouldn't go to work in a short skirt, but that's a question of type. Blouse, chic trousers, blazer – this is what your work clothes look like.

Even small things like this can help change the image of scientific professions. When the American Marissa Meyer, CEO of Yahoo, was photographed lying in a skin-tight dress for the fashion magazine Vogue in the summer of 2013, half the IT scene discussed whether such a thing was allowed. And if the physicist Claudia Nemat is the only woman on the board of Deutsche Telekom AG and is responsible for the technology and Europe departments - and is also the mother of two small children, she is a role model for many women and has more impact than countless brochures about exciting jobs.

Modern female 'role models' on the one hand - and concrete support on the other - these are the cornerstones with which large corporations in particular are currently using to inspire young female talent, especially in the USA: Google invested US$ 50 million in programming courses for girls last summer , Facebook, Twitter and AT&T support similar initiatives. Not just out of do-gooder spirit: the need for skilled workers among IT professionals is huge - in the USA alone, "Girls who code" expects there to be 1.4 million open positions for IT specialists by 2020 - and women are considered to have great, as yet unused, potential. In this country, too, the proportion of women studying computer science is particularly low at 18 percent. For Katja Windt, President of Bremen Jacobs University and a doctor of mechanical engineering, this is absurd: “The job market opportunities for engineering graduates are much better than in other areas.” So why, she asks, don’t more girls try their luck here. Your chances are significantly higher than in competitive functions such as human resources or marketing. And Bettina Laurick, head of the IT service provider GFT Technologies in Germany, emphasizes: “Ultimately, it is the personal interests of each student that decides. However, if we look into the future, it becomes clear that IT will increasingly influence our lives and our work as digitalization progresses. The MINT subjects offer real opportunities for a successful career.”

Kornelia Birnkammerer also had that in mind: After training as a tax clerk, she soon realized the limits of this activity. She had already enjoyed physics and math at school, so she studied industrial engineering at the TH Ingolstadt, wrote her bachelor's thesis at MAN Truck & Bus AG and now works as a trainee at the agricultural machinery group CLAAS. Instead of construction, she chose to focus on production - and over the past 21 months she has worked on the combine harvester assembly line and worked on optimization projects for their production process. It is this combination that the engineer likes so much: “I think it's great that I work close to the product and have a connection to the combine harvesters. That's exactly what attracted me to industrial engineering: getting to know the design and production of machines, but also keeping an eye on economic efficiency. Today it is more important than ever to pay attention to costs and therefore feasibility.”

By the way, the fact that Birnkammerer is surrounded mainly by men doesn't bother her at all. “I usually find the working atmosphere among men pleasant,” she says. “Sure, women’s jokes are sometimes made in the workshop. You can then laugh along or listen away.” Kathrin Geiger, a doctoral student at BMW, thinks that the stereotypes of women and men in the tech scene have long since changed. Physicists, she says, used to have a reputation for always sitting in front of a computer with their ugly glasses and not being very communicative. “Today it’s often the coolest guys around who are totally connected.”

Illustration by Robert Seegler There are still significantly fewer women than men in MINT professions. But the self-image of tech women is changing. There are increasingly female role models at the top of companies - and the digitalization of all industries is creating a variety of areas of application. We present three young professionals who have the best career prospects. Has 24 girls

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