News & Stories

Promoting gender equity is a team effort and the younger generations’ voices matter in driving changes in the future world. In the second part of the Smashing the Glass Ceiling series, a group of business students share with us how they gather momentum to help their female fellows approach the business world with confidence and fortitude.  Women in Business (WIB), one of HKUST’s newest associations for female students, was born out of necessity. Upon returning to Hong Kong in 2020 after an exchange trip abroad, Gillian DEL MUNDO (Global Business and Economics, 2021), found that the existing initiatives on campus lacked what she felt was needed to guide young women starting out in business. 

The notable woman engineer reveals how she developed an interest in engineering as a kid, and what drove her to become an engineer in a male-denominated field.

Mashiat Lamisa (third right) and her teammates Ilana Zimmerman (second right) and Dama Correch (third left) received the Empower Women Through Technology Prize at the cmd-f all-female* hackathon held at the University of British Columbia.

The School of Business and Management of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST Business School) has performed well on its gender balance among the world’s top 20 business schools, according to an analysis by 20-FIRST. 20-FIRST is one of the world’s leading global consultancy firms with a focus on promoting gender balance and organizational effectiveness. The firm believes that business schools are a key lever in the ability of companies to gender balance and their faculty members affect the mindsets of graduates when they join the business world. Of the top 20 business schools accessed, the HKUST Business School scored the highest percentage of female faculty (30% Female / 70% Male), ahead of Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management. 

Two female engineers, who are alumni of the School of Engineering, tell us their fulfilling careers in geotechnical engineering and structural engineering.

Professor King Chow, Director of Interdisciplinary Programs Office A study on boys' and girls' ability in mathematics has placed a centuries-old argument in the spotlight: are men and women created equal, and do they perform equally in math-related subjects? The recent study, conducted by scientists at the University of Rochester and the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, examined cross-sectional gender differences in mathematical cognition from more than 500 children aged between six months and eight years old, focusing on numerosity perception, culturally trained counting, and formal and informal elementary mathematics concepts. To the surprise of many, the study - published in Nature Partner Journal of Science of Learning - found no difference between boys and girls in early quantitative and mathematical ability, which means that boys and girls are indeed created equal to reason about mathematics.

Prof. Jane Zhang, Assistant Professor, Division of Social Science As we all know, International Women's Day aims to raise awareness about the struggles of women the world over and to honor their achievements. While we are still fighting hard for equal pay for women and more female representation at executive levels, we often overlook the role that gender norms - standards and expectations to which women and men generally conform - play in obstructing women from realizing their potential. Instilled and internalized early in life, gender norms can establish expectations that limit what women can or should do. Experimental research has shown that women are less willing to compete than men, leading young women to choose less lucrative areas of specialization in school; women are also less likely to negotiate their job offers.