Placement difficulties faced by young female engineers in Hungary

This article presents the situation of young female graduates in the field of engineering, showing Hungarian trends and presenting experiences of a few graduates in mechanical engineering. In the Hungarian labour market for young graduates, the separation of preferences in the choice of profession by gender can be easily observed. While men generally choose the fields of technology, IT, sales, logistics and production, women tend to prefer marketing, human resources, sales, finance, and media-related jobs.For a young female graduate at the present time, getting a better-paid job with prospects of a rising career is already often equal to giving up the dream of raising a big family, early child-bearing. Moreover they often also suffer from other forms of gender-specific discrimination, for example in situations where interviewers are not embarrassed to ask so-called "forbidden" questions at job interviews.The Best Workplace for Women Award has been given in three categories annually since 2007 for companies and institutions which best fulfil the requirements of fair work conditions, career opportunities, physical and mental health preservation, improvement of skills, and provision of opportunities to co-ordinate work and private life.The interviews with participants of Europlacement project display rather depressing picture of the job seeking situation for graduates in the countries involved. In Hungary, graduates in the field of biomedical engineering were faced with preference of men, the requirement of at least two-year professional experience in the narrow field of the desired jobs, or they were offered positions which did not suit their formation at all (e.g., sales of medical equipment) beside very low salaries. Though there remain occasional or second jobs, and further lack of experience so the vicious circle is started.