Sri Lankan government’s move to broad base engineering education will boost women participation in development activities of the country to a great extent, said Architect Prof. Chitra Wedikkara.
Despite the fact that industry is considered as a male dominated career, it currently employs more women in areas such as Engineering, Architecture, Quantity Survey and design.
Wedikkara made these remarks participating in a discussion on, ‘Women Friendly Cities Challenge’, jointly organized by the National Chamber of Commerce, Sri Lanka and World University Service of Canada (WUSC) recently.
“Nerveless, female participation in the area of technical education remains notably low. We have looked at women to be included in sub sectors of the construction industry such as painting, tiling, plumbing and plastering.
During the last year, 40 selected women across the country undertook training in painting.
This year, plans are also underway to provide training to another 40 women in painting, 20 women in tiling and 10 women in plastering.”
Noting that very less women are getting into development activities in Sri Lanka, Wedikkara said that Moratuwa is the only university that has the highest female student intake for engineering education in Sri Lanka mainly due to its location and, female students comprise close to 60% of overall students at Moratuwa University.
While female engineering students in rest of the faculties, located outside Colombo consists of 20%.
She also urged the need to introduce more women friendly cities to enable women to fully participate in the economy of the city as well as the country.
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