Daring Stereotypes:

When Mary Alum arrived at a construction site for her industrial training earlier this year, she expected to finally put years of classroom theory into practice.

The civil engineering student at Uganda Christian University was stepping into the environment she hoped would eventually become her workplace.

But before she could demonstrate what she had learnt, one of the male workers had already made up his mind about what she could do.

“You are a girl. You cannot mix concrete,” Alum recalls him telling her.

It was a brief exchange, but one that Alum says reflected something much bigger than the task before her.

She had encountered the stereotype before: that engineering and other technical professions require a kind of physical strength, resilience and technical ability naturally associated with men.

“I had heard of such stereotypes about women in the technology and engineering sector,” she says. “That could not stop me because I had been prepared for it.”

Between January and March 2026, Alum continued with her industrial training. She had gone there to test the theories she had spent years studying in lecture rooms.

Instead, part of her experience became about proving that she belonged on the construction site at all.

Her experience offers a glimpse into a much wider challenge facing Uganda as it attempts to increase the number of women entering science, technology, engineering and mathematics, commonly known as STEM.

For generations, cultural beliefs in Uganda and elsewhere have shaped perceptions about what women can and cannot do.

Among the Baganda of central Uganda, for example, some traditional beliefs discouraged women from climbing onto the roofs of houses or performing certain tasks associated with construction and physical strength.

Many such taboos have diminished.

The assumptions behind them have been harder to dismantle.

Today, those attitudes can surface differently: in the subjects girls are encouraged to study, the professions they are expected to pursue and, as Alum discovered, the responsibilities people believe they are capable of undertaking at work.

The consequences can be seen in Uganda’s classrooms and professional bodies.

Research by Winnie Watera and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, using Makerere University enrolment figures from 2016, found that of 19,625 male students enrolled at the university, 8,408 — about 43 percent — were pursuing STEM disciplines.

Among 17,434 female students, only 3,412 — about 20 percent — were enrolled in STEM.

The imbalance continued into professional practice.

A 2019 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung study cited in the research found women accounted for 27.9 percent of registered doctors examined, 16.5 percent of engineers, 31 percent of pharmacists and 23.6 percent of architects.

For Uganda, the disparity presents more than a question of representation.

The government has repeatedly positioned science, technology and innovation as important to the country’s industrialisation and economic transformation ambitions. Through national development planning and Uganda Vision 2040, the country has emphasised producing scientists, engineers and innovators to support infrastructure, energy, manufacturing and technological development.

But if women continue to enter some of these professions in much smaller numbers than men, an accountability question emerges: Are Uganda’s policies and public interventions doing enough to remove the barriers preventing girls from participating?

It is a question the Electricity Regulatory Authority, ERA, is attempting to address within the energy sector.

Under the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, ERA established the Women in Energy Initiative to encourage more girls to pursue STEM careers and support women already working in the electricity supply industry.

For Alum, one of those interventions became personal.

Before her industrial training, she had interacted with Edith Mukaluvusha, a Geographic Information Systems Officer at ERA.

Mukaluvusha represented something Alum would later need on the construction site: evidence that another woman had entered a technical profession and built a career there.

So, when Alum was told that mixing concrete was not work for a woman, she had another reference point against which to measure that assertion.

She could see that the barrier confronting her was not necessarily her ability to understand engineering.

It was the perception of whether she belonged.

Taking the conversation to schools

ERA believes some of these perceptions must be confronted before young women reach university.

Through the Women in Energy Initiative, women working in Uganda’s energy sector visit secondary schools and interact with students about STEM careers.

The encounters are intended to give girls access to female professionals who can speak about their own journeys through technical education and employment.

Rather than simply telling girls that engineering is available to them, the initiative attempts to put an engineer, scientist or other technical professional in front of them.

The reasoning is straightforward: it can be difficult for a young girl to imagine herself in a profession in which she rarely sees women.

The initiative also extends beyond school outreach.

Women already working in the electricity supply industry meet through an annual forum to discuss challenges within the sector and build professional networks.

“We also have an annual forum event where we get together as women in energy and discuss several ideas on how to further combat the issues that some of us face in the sector,” says Aminah Namuddu, a Senior Communications Officer with ERA.

“It also strengthens the sense of community for those in the sector, reminding them that despite what you go through, you are not alone.”

But encouraging girls to dream about engineering is one part of the problem.

Creating the conditions that allow them to become engineers is another.

From encouragement to opportunity

ERA acknowledges that its ambitions for the initiative are constrained by resources.

Sending teams to schools around Uganda requires transport, educational materials and sustained financing. Expanding the programme therefore means finding additional resources and partnerships.

ERA says collaborations with organisations including the Red Cross have demonstrated the potential for partnerships with civil society, development organisations and the private sector.

The regulator also hopes to establish scholarship funds to support girls pursuing STEM education and is exploring graduate trainee programmes that could provide young women with practical industry experience and mentorship.

Those ambitions reveal another dimension of the challenge.

A school visit may change how a girl thinks about engineering, but encouragement alone cannot pay tuition, guarantee access to practical training or ensure that workplaces are ready to treat young female engineers as equals.

The distinction matters for public accountability.

The Women in Energy Initiative is being implemented by a public regulator operating in a sector central to Uganda’s development ambitions. Its success therefore cannot ultimately be judged only by the number of motivational conversations it generates.

The longer-term test is whether interventions of this kind contribute to more girls entering STEM education, completing their studies, accessing technical opportunities and remaining in the profession.

That requires moving beyond visibility towards measurable outcomes.

Government policy can encourage women to participate in science. Schools can encourage girls to choose mathematics and physics. Regulators can introduce mentorship programmes.

But the experience of Alum suggests that another challenge waits beyond the classroom.

Workplaces must change too.

A young woman can successfully study engineering, complete her examinations and secure industrial training, only to arrive at a construction site and discover that someone still believes her gender determines which tools she should touch.

That gap between access and acceptance is where Uganda’s gender equality commitments face one of their most practical tests.

For ERA, the challenge is therefore twofold: encouraging another generation of girls into technical careers while contributing to a professional environment capable of retaining the women who make it there.

Back where the journey began

At Uganda Christian University, Alum is now in her final year

The construction site did not persuade her to abandon engineering.

Instead, the encounter appears to have reinforced something she had learnt from women such as Mukaluvusha: being questioned does not necessarily mean being incapable.

Alum now hopes she can eventually play the same role for another young woman.

One day, somewhere in a secondary school, another girl may be wondering whether engineering is really meant for her.

Alum wants her to see a woman who has already walked onto the construction site.

But her story also leaves a challenge for the institutions seeking to close Uganda’s gender gap in STEM.

Young women should not have to depend on extraordinary resilience to overcome ordinary discrimination.

If Uganda wants more female engineers, scientists and innovators, getting girls interested in STEM is only the beginning.

The deeper measure of progress will be whether the country’s education system, public institutions and workplaces create an environment in which women like Mary Alum no longer have to prove that they belong before they are allowed to prove what they can do.