more-in Stating that women had potential to become leaders in diverse engineering fields, Anna University Vice-Chancellor M.K. Surappa said that there was a need for increased contribution from women in engineering fields, particularly mechanical engineering. Speaking at a sensitisation programme organised to encourage Class XI and XII girls from government and government aided schools to take up career in mechanical engineering, he said that there was a wrong perception that engineers always had to work outdoors on highways and construction sites. He said that technological advancement had enabled a lot of engineering work, involving design and other aspects, to be done indoors with the help of computers. He said that though the country had a healthy ratio of girl students in educational institutions, the ratio came down in the workforce. “There is a view that a women’s professional career ends when she enters into a married life, which is wrong,” he said, adding that government had made a number of policy decisions, including increased maternity leave, so that women could continue to work. The sensitisation programme, ‘Women in Engineering Mechanical (Win-Mech)’ has been launched jointly by the Centre for University - Industry Collaboration (CUIC) in Anna University and Renault Nissan Technology and Business Centre India (RNTBCI). T. Thyagarajan, Director, CUIC, said that the idea was to increase the abysmally low enrolment of girl students for engineering courses in different mechanical streams. “Though there are more than 13,000 students studying in mechanical streams in engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu, the percentage of girls is in single digit,” he said. Highlighting that the initiative was being organised as part of the number of corporate social responsibility initiatives done by RNTBCI, Anantharaman Prakash, Deputy Vice President (Engineering) of TNTBCI, said that the automobile industry needed more women in the workforce since they were better innovators. Around 1,600 students took part in the event hosted by K.L.N. College of Engineering with the support of School Education Department. S. Gopidass, Chief Educational Officer, Madurai, and T. Kalaiselvan, Additional Director, CUIC, also spoke.

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