Around 4,000 secondary school students are expected to attend the I Wish Festival, an event designed to raise awareness of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) careers among young girls in the RDS in Dublin on Thursday, February 5th.
The event, now in its 12th year, will place an emphasis on applied Stem skills and career pathways for women, with speakers including International Rose of Tralee and apprentice electrical engineer Katelyn Cummins, Irish Olympian boxer Gráinne Walsh and senior vice-president of Global Human Resource Services at Dell Technologies Marie Moynihan.
Walsh, who competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics and won a bronze medal at the 2025 World Boxing Championships, says she takes “great pride in being a positive role model” for young women, as having a role model was life-changing for her growing up.
“My initial attraction to boxing was just to follow in the footsteps of Katie Taylor,” she says. “I never started thinking, ‘I really want to go to the Olympics’. I just wanted to copy what Katie Taylor was doing, and I think that’s the importance of having a positive role model. That was such a massive life-turning moment for me.”
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Walsh is grateful for the positive experience she had with Stem in secondary school. “I went to a mixed primary and secondary school, and I was always surrounded by male and female people in school. There was never really any disparity between either gender. I did Construction Studies for my Leaving Cert … there was never any kind of weird looks.”
A 2025 I Wish survey of women students’ attitudes to Stem found that access to practical Stem subjects remains lower for girls in single-sex schools, with 5 per cent of those surveyed reporting access to construction studies and 6 per cent to engineering.
Students at the RDS event (registration for I Wish is open at IWish.ie) will have the opportunity to take part in a new dedicated Construction Zone, delivered in partnership with the Construction Industry Federation, which will provide demonstrations, information about apprenticeships and engineering pathways, and engagement with women in the sector.
I Wish co-founder Gillian Keating says that “construction has the lowest female representation of any sector in Ireland, at just over 10 per cent overall, and only 1 per cent on building sites.
“Ireland urgently needs these skills and we must work harder to encourage young women to consider construction pathways. Early exposure is critical.”
Caroline O’Driscoll, who is also a co-founder of I Wish, says that the event was set up in response to “a lot of focus on companies trying to solve the problem of women in Stem, but actually the pipeline was leaky. There weren’t enough girls doing Stem to Leaving Cert.”
She notes the “structural barriers that girls face” within the Irish education system. “They’re in a system in a girls’ school where they don’t have the same choices. What message does that send if you can’t do engineering in your school? What does that say to you?”
O’Driscoll also notes the importance of role models for young women. “There’s just not enough role models visible to them. The idea of the conference is to put women on the stage to tell their story and tell their journey into Stem.
“We now have alumni, so girls who attended I Wish back in the early days, 2016 or 2017, and were inspired to go into Stem and now they’re telling their story. Mary O’Donnell, who’s an aeronautical engineer, went to I Wish back in 2017, and now she’s speaking this year to tell her story.”
Irish Rail will provide free rail transport from 22 locations across the Republic, while a partnership with Translink will ensure accessibility for students travelling from Northern Ireland.
