Barb Samardzich, Ford of Europe on driving up numbers of women in STEM

Barb Samardzich is vice president and chief operating officer, Ford of Europe, having worked as a thermal design engineer in Westinghouse Electric’s nuclear fuels division before joining Ford in 1990. She has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and a master’s degree in engineering management from Wayne State University. On 23 June, Ford marked National Women in Engineering Day at their Dunton Technical Centre in Essex, UK with the announcement of an inaugural £1,000 Ford Prize for Women in STEM studies at a “Bring your daughter to work” event.

“…Ford strongly supports the need for more young women to study STEM subjects…”

If you look at law, if you look at medicine, you see a proportion of about 50/50 equally, men and women entering into those fields. In engineering here in the UK in particular, the rate of women engineering is extremely low. It’s around 5%. We have to step back and look at some of the reasons.*

There’s lots of reasons for women being underrepresented in a great field like engineering. First of all there’s women sticking with STEM academics – science, technology, engineering and maths. And when they’re going through school at about 12 or 13 years old, girls are steered away from these subjects.*

Ford strongly supports the need for more young women to study STEM subjects and I’m delighted to announce the Ford Prize for Women in STEM study. [These] activities are part of our on-going work to implement the Your Life pledges and encourage more young people, especially girls, into STEM careers and to inspire a future generation of engineers.