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Regina Moran, enterprise director with Vodafone Ireland, believes that girls in primary schools should be told stories about the benefits of a STEM career 

It was while on a visit to a primary school that Regina Moran (pictured), Enterprise Director with Vodafone Ireland, first realised that persuading more women to work in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) would require delivering the message to girls at an early age.

“We were conducting an experiment with a group of 4th class kids where you connect a lemon to a copper coin to create a battery and light a little LED,” Moran recalls. “Even though it was a co-ed school, the boys all jumped up first to connect the lemons. Even at this early age, the girls in the group deferred to the boys. When offered a prize of a packet of Haribo for the team that lit the LED first, then the girls stepped forward.”

The lesson Moran learned was if you want to convince girls that a career in STEM subjects is a viable choice, they need to hear it before society tells them otherwise. “Fifty per cent of the population is female but we certainly don’t see women in fifty per cent of STEM roles. We’re not attracting enough people into STEM in the first place, and the proportion who women just isn’t good enough,” she says.

Electronics Career 

Moran studied electronic engineering at Waterford Institute of Technology and specialised in micro-processors at Cork Institute of Technology. “I wanted to do something different and I went for it,” she explains. “When I went down to Cork for the diploma class, I was the only girl.” Moran’s career spanned roles in Amdahl and Fujitsu before she joined Vodafone in 2017 as Enterprise Director. “Telecommunications and IT were converging and I wanted to learn more because I do really believe in the notion of learning all the time.” 

Since Regina Moran started her career, much has changed for women in her sector, and there are now many more role models for young women to look up to. “There are people like Anne O’Leary in Vodafone, Cathriona Hallahan in Microsoft Ireland and Louise Phelan in PayPal – women who have come up through the ranks in those organisations and have attained leadership positions. When I was growing up, that wasn’t the case.”

In Association with

For young women embarking on careers today, connected technology is familiar thanks to the smartphone and the internet. However, Moran believes that fostering interest in STEM sector employment has to start much earlier than is currently the case.

Catch Them Young

“We’re not grabbing attention early enough in the education cycle,” says Moran. “We need to go right back into primary school, to the point where there’s a level playing field between boys and girls. By the time secondary school rolls around and they’re 14 or 15, the children have adopted ideas about what jobs boys do and what jobs girls do.”

Moran adds: “Kids love stories, so the question is how can we create stories about the positive impact of STEM involvement? The word ‘STEM’ sounds boring, so how do you bring it alive with YouTube videos, cartoons and mechanisms that children will look at to learn how exciting it is? STEM careers are a passport to anywhere in the world, and you can change the world with science and technology and engineering. But quite frankly I don’t think the imagery around STEM is sufficiently positive.”