2017 Tutu Fellow Hema Vallabh spoke at a TEDx event in Johannesburg about how she realized that young girls weren’t considering becoming engineers because it was a job for men only. She tried to find the source of this misconception and found it was in the definition of traditional engineering as being a space of strength and physical ability.
She makes the case that the needs of society nowadays should be addressed with the new definition of engineering as a space of innovation and invention, which are skills that women have. She wants to bring the information to a young generation of women who otherwise might be excluded from considering the profession.