ENGIE: Encouraging girls to study geociences and engineering. Lessons learnt.

“ENGIE - Encouraging Girls to Study Geosciences and Engineering” is an EIT Raw Materials funded project aimed to raise the interest of girls aged 13-18 for studying geosciences and related engineering disciplines. The final objective of the Project is to achieve gender equality in the future of geosciences as well as understanding the reasons for the gender imbalance and early female disinterest in geosciences and creating best practices for the future.

In EGU 2021, ENGIE presented the objectives and key messages from the project. Since then, the project has organized actions in 25 countries counting with a total of 11.117 participants, 64% of them girls.  During the implementation of the actions the participants and partners have been part of the Impact Assessment carried out during said activities. Out of 11.117 participants only 939 answered the questionnaire to its completion. The variations in countries, demographics and, most often, the type of activity they participated is noticeable and could point out to the reasons for this low participation.

There has been a double approach into ensuring the assessment is correct and the results are pertinent by gathering feedback both from participants and organisers of the actions. For the participants, a short questionnaire in their national language created specifically for the targeted age and expertise that allows for quantitative and qualitative analysis and is in the process of being reformulated taking into account the lessons learnt this year.

As for the organisers, ENGIE’s Impact Assessment is based on ensuring coherence with the objectives and the communication the three key messages of the project:

• Changing circumstances not individuals
• Challenging rather than reproducing inequalities
• Taking variations into account

The double analysis carried out through these questionnaires and the wide extension of the ENGIE actions can show a glimpse of the most interesting actions for girls, as well as creating a baseline for tackling gender inequality in geosciences during COVID-19 times. The reformulation of the questions and adding of new feedback measures (wordclouds, forum questions…) by applying lessons learnt and comments from the collaborating stakeholders in more than 20 countries has been considered..

In 2021, ENGIE presented the main concepts and objectives of the project as well as the actions planned. In 2022, the implementations and assessment of the project during the present running time is to be presented as well as evaluated and analysed in order to disseminate ENGIE’s recommendations to organize and assess actions targeted at improving gender equality in geosciences.