The project ‘ENGIE – Encouraging Girls to Study Geosciences and Engineering’ aims to turn the interest of 13-18 years old girls to study geosciences and related engineering disciplines. As career decisions are made generally in this period of life, the project expectedly will improve the gender balance in the fields of these disciplines.

The overall gender pattern in geosciences, especially in the mineral exploration and extraction sectors is definitely imbalanced. It is characterised, more or less, by men and stable male stereotypes in almost all parts of the business clusters, in society and professional communities as well as in education and research. However, studies confirm that diverse teams are more creative and innovative.

An awareness-raising strategy will be developed and an international stakeholder collaboration network will be established. These actions include family science events, outdoor programmes, school science clubs, mine visits, mentoring programmes, international student conferences, publication and awarding opportunities, summer courses to science teachers and production of educational materials.