Women in biomedical engineering and medical physics in the Czech Republic

Abstract

In last decades the effort to increase the number of women applying for studies at technical universities, and consequently for a job in the field of technology, can be seen in European countries. We analyzed the situation in the Czech Republic and found differences in ratio of females in individual engineering disciplines. We can see a positive trend in biomedical engineering and medical physics where the percentage of female students almost reached 50% in bachelor and master study. However, in PhD study and in research in general the number of females is lower. Successively, it is also lower in jobs in the health care sector. Although the jobs are on the border between engineering and life sciences, they are considered more as engineering jobs. And employment of women in any field of engineering is still considered nontraditional. We discuss the position of females as employees and present their potential advantage in biomedical engineering and medical physics jobs. As a potential support to professional development we propose mentoring and show its positive impact on personal and professional growth.