‘We want women to have role models’: how Sydney University is enticing more female academics to engineering

Sydney University environmental engineering lecturer Dr Jacqueline Thomas hopes the recruitment drive will show female students that ‘these pathways are possible’. Photograph: Sarah Rhodes/The Guardian

When Dr Jacqueline Thomas started her academic career in civil engineering a decade ago, she was one of just two full-time women in the school. Thomas had returned to Australia after a stint in Africa to teach a new humanitarian engineering major at the University of Sydney, the first of its kind in the country.

“It was crazy, it really took me by surprise,” she said. “When I started, I just thought, ‘great, I got the job, perfect’. And then I realised.”