Female KTH students introduce mentoring programme in order to attract more female students

For Edit Wallin it is important to share her experiences from KTH and for that reason she and a few other girls have started a mentoring programme, Pepp, blipepp.nu (from "bli peppad" which means become inspired), the aim of which is to inspire to new thoughts about technology studies, not least for those who do not see engineering as a natural career choice.

"For me it wasn't an obvious choice at all. At sixth form/senior high level I didn't even consider further studies. When I started at KTH, a lot of people around me saw KTH as a natural choice and many of them had engineers in their families. I thought about how to reach all those who do not have any engineers in the family, how to get them to even consider this as a choice. I made sense of many different things and given the uneven distribution of women and men at management level in the business world and given that we at KTH among other schools have a low number of female students, I chose to focus on girls at senior high school level when I started Pepp. I prefer to act while thinking to getting started went fast."

 For Edit Wallin the route towards studies at KTH went via an interest in maths at mandatory school, onwards to studies in industrial economics with a specialisation on energy systems and in between a technical preparatory year that she enjoyed greatly.

"More pedagogical teachers than the ones we had are hard to find."

Edit Wallin argues that social causes lie behind the lower participation of females in technology studies.

"I think it is a matter of getting introduced to that world, because I am convinced the interest is there to start with. It probably has to do with prejudice and social structures in society that lies in the way of everyone discovering this type of education and career path."

The mentoring programme blipepp.nu is aimed towards girls at senior high school level and is currently in a strong stage of development.

"In only one year lots of things have happened. In December, we had a support event for the first year group at Pepp. Now, the organisation is growing and we are a lot of people volunteering for Pepp. Currently, we are a non-profit organisation with five people on council, nine students from different programmes at KTH who runn the mentoring programme on an operating level in the years to come, and in January we will recruit mentors from KTH and girls from different senior high schools in Stockholm. In addition, we are currently identifying what companies we want to collaborate with. So in one year the whole organization has been built, thanks to all fantastic people that have committed themselves to Pepp."

There are plans to develop the mentoring programme further.

"In the long run the idea is for the organisation to have a presence in more parts of Sweden and to have a mutual exchange with girls at senior high school level, engineering students and committed parts of the business world."

And Edit has some good tips for girls who are considering pursuing further studies in technology:

"Try it! And get in touch with us at Pepp! We want to arouse people's interest and show the limitless opportunities that the engineering world has to offer and create contexts where thoughts and experiences are exhanged, dreams grow and where ideas and visions are created. Even if it later turns out that your interest lies in a completely different area, Pepp can help you a bit along the way when you think about the future."

For more information, see: blipepp.nu/

Text: Emma Bayne