Now it’s your turn! – Girls’ Day 2024 at TECOSIM
Wiesbaden, 1 February 2024. TECOSIM is taking part in Girls’ Day 2024. On 25 April, its five German sites in Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart and Wiesbaden will open their doors to girls in the sixth form.
“We want to show girls how, as engineers, they can really get things moving and therefore overcome gender clichés in technical professions,” says Kirstin Kasper, initiator of Girls’ Day at TECOSIM and herself an engineer. “The aim is to show girls the variety of our profession and to inspire them to consider a MINT course.”
TECOSIM specialises in computer-aided engineering (CAE) and uses this method to optimise components, improve the safety of vehicles and aeroplanes or reduce their weight, for example. The company employs roughly 140 workers, 34 of whom (25 percent) are female. 20 of these women (15 percent) are engineers.
To showcase the diversity of digital engineering, at this event each branch will show different perspectives, which will then be shared with all schoolgirls in a video conference at the end of the day. In Munich, the engineers explain how a raw egg can be packaged in such a way that it survives a fall from a first-floor window. In Stuttgart, they will simulate jumps with electric mountain bikes on the computer, so as to increase their durability. In Hamburg, the focus is on lightweight construction in the aerospace industry, while in Wiesbaden, the schoolgirls will work with the team to simulate the behaviour of a cable car. And in Cologne, they will research the fracture behaviour of chocolate eggs in various “accident scenarios”.
The motto of Girls’ Day 2024 is “Now it’s your turn!” (Jetzt kommst Du). Current studies show that this kind of action works and does encourage girls to enter this profession. In a survey, 78 percent of schoolgirls said that a day at a company was (very) helpful to them in finding out about careers and work in general. Around two thirds of young women surveyed even said that the action days had actually helped them gain a better idea of what they would like to do in future. Likewise, after taking part in Girls’ Day, considerably more girls could see themselves working in IT or computer science (an increase from 12% to 21%).
This initiative is the largest career orientation scheme in the world and creates individual experiences to encourage gender-independent career and study choices. Schoolgirls visit businesses or universities of applied sciences, encounter role models in professions that encourage them, and discover the wide array of careers and courses available to them. Girls’ Day is held in fields in which the proportion of women remains below 40 percent, such as IT, skilled trades, science and technology. Girls’ Day is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSJ) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Registration is via the official website at girls-day.de.
