Share
Stuart Nathan
Features editor
The Engineer
Communication key to gender balance
We’re working on our upcoming Women in Engineering supplement at the moment, carrying out interviews ahead of producing the supplement itself next month. Some of the issues being raised by our interviewees give an interesting insight into how far the engineering sector has come with respect to addressing its gender imbalance — and how far it still has to go.
The main argument for attracting women into engineering is an extremely simple one. A sector which draws only on one gender is exploiting half of its available talent pool. It’s ridiculous to imagine that the skills and talents needed to become an engineer are restricted to men, and many women are being denied the chance to use their abilities in a field which needs all the innovative people it can get.
But talking yesterday to one of Britain’s most senior women engineers, Professor Julia King, vice-chancellor of Aston University, brought home just how many issues the sector is going to have to tackle before it can truly exploit the full potential of its female members. King, who spent ten years as a senior director at Rolls-Royce and has also been the Principal of Imperial College’s engineering faculty, believes that the problems begin in the education system and carry on all the way to the top of the profession.
Prof King believes that the problem in education isn’t with engineering per se, pointing out that Imperial’s medical engineering course is 50 per cent female. ‘We’ve seen something similar happening with medicine over the decades,’ she said. ‘When I was growing up, it was very, very rare to have a woman GP, but today, medical courses in the UK usually have more women on them than men. I’m a little bitter about that,’ she admitted, ‘because medicine’s nicking all the science-literate women that I’d like to see on engineering courses.’
The problems of sexism and laddishness that women face on shop floors are well known and must be tackled, King said, but there are still communication problems which have nothing to do with overt sexism but still form a barrier to women contributing in engineering environments, she said. ‘Conflict management is hugely important and not well enough understood,’ she said. It can be difficult for women to find their way onto project teams, she explained, because senior engineers tend to be men — purely because of the legacy gender split of the profession — and there is a strong tendency for people to recruit ‘people like themselves’.
But this isn’t the best way to go about things at all, she said. ‘Diverse teams are usually the most creative ones, and that’s because they tend to disagree with each other, and out of that disagreement we get ideas. But it has to be managed very carefully, and in particular you have to use conflict management to get that creative tension going but stop it short of confrontationalism.’
Interestingly, a trip last week to BAE Systems’ Govan shipyard revealed a shopfloor environment which seemed very female-friendly, with a good proportion of young women working through their engineering apprenticeships on the Aircraft Carrier project. The relatively large number of women on the shop floor might have been a factor in itself — King pointed out that women still tend to feel isolated until they make up at 20-25 percent of any group. Another factor might have been that many of the Govan girls are the daughters, sisters and nieces of male shipbuilders, many of whom work alongside them in Govan.
Not every girl going into engineering is going to have that advantage. But Julia King, who’s seen life as an engineer from several sides and levels, is adamant that we’re going to have to rethink a lot of attitudes if we’re to reach the goal of a workforce where everyone, regardless of gender, can contribute to their full ability.
Readers' comments (8)
Megan Raisbeck | 24 Aug 2011 12:32 pm
In the Twenty First Century there still remains an imbalance of genders in certain professions. The Institution of Engineering and Technology revelled that women were very under-represented in engineering, as only 6% of the engineering workforce were women. It begs the question; why does the disparity exist and what can be done about it?
The industry is traditionally viewed as manual or dirty labour which is not valued as skilled work. It is this misconception which may have led to women not seeing engineering as an appealing career. However, this view does not take into account the many other aspects of engineering which are not manual, a great level of skill and expertise required in intricate manufacturing processes.
In the design engineering field women are able to add real value to projects as they see things from a different point of view. When looking at a problem or a task this becomes very useful, as different perspectives allows for increased innovation.
Haughton Design employees a female design engineer; Lisa Wolseley Hext. Managing Director, David Mills, reflects upon his recruit. “I did not consider her gender when she was employed, but she fits in very well into a predominately male team. Very few people have the ability and confidence to deal with projects in their entirety but Lisa has managed this on more than one occasion.”
More needs to be done to encourage women into engineering. Simon Griffiths, Chief Executive of the Manufacturing Advisory Service – West Midlands stated “There is a massive role to play for education – schools, colleges and universities – to do more to get young women interested in a possible career in engineering. We need more women role models to talk to young people.”
E
arlier this year The JCB Academy ran a two day event encouraging local school girls to see engineering as a credible career. Wolseley-Hext attended the event “I spent a fantastic day with the local school girls completing various engineering challenges. For many of them engineering was a very grey area by the end of the day we were able to shift misconceptions the girls had, and put the industry on their radar as an interesting and exciting career prospect.”
Haughton Design is proud to champion women in engineering and present it as a challenging and rewarding career.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 24 Aug 2011 1:01 pm
I graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering 7 years ago, and am about to start my third position as a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer.
I remember my first interview aged 18 for a gap year position with a forging company in Lincoln. The interview started with a brief outline of the company, followed with various rhetorical questions such as "You do know you won't be able to wear skirts and pretty clothes to work?", and "You do realise that you'll get dirty?". I awaited the technical questions that my (male) friend had been asked at the same interview the day before, which didn't arise. Needless to say my friend was offered the job, and I felt it was a complete waste of my time given they had no intention of offering the job to a female.
I got myself sponsorship and a graduate job with an excellent company, that I learned a lot from. I worked at factories all over the UK, usually the only female, and even though I was eventually accepted as "one of the lads", I would always get treated differently when visiting new places. I remember visiting a factory and changing the cams over on a machine, and the guys brought a piece of carpet for me to lie on so that I didn't have to lie on the floor...!
I then moved on to a second graduate job, where I later had my application for a promotion completely ignored due to being on maternity leave, despite being told that I'd be interviewed along with the other internal candidates. I wasn't best pleased when they gave the position to a man who didn't even apply, given I was the only candidate. I also had no pay rise in 3 years, despite working on the company's top priority project with £Millions invested, yet saw male counterparts get pay rises.
I'm about to start my 3rd job with a company who seem to value their employees, and are interested in people that will fit well into the company, so hopefully, for the first time, I'll be allowed to just get on with my job and be treated equally to my male counterparts!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Mike | 24 Aug 2011 2:16 pm
“I did not consider her gender when she was employed, but she fits in very well into a predominately male team."
This is the problem, as in employers saying does the candidate have the prerequisites for fitting into my team. A flimsy argument for wanting drones and should not be a requirement in the first place.
There are many good engineers, both male and female, but they all suffer from the same employer and dare I say agency mentality of a narrow minded set of values, from people with a god complexes.
An engineer should be valued, no matter what sex, and individualism can bring many attributes to the working environment, this includes what people say is female logic. A different perspective that can give added value to a workplace, and one that is rejected by agencies and employers alike with their teams of clones. :)
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Ken R | 24 Aug 2011 2:35 pm
The predominance of women in professions such a medicine teaching and to some extent law seems to be directly linked to the status these professions have in society. Although the training and education to become an engineer is similar to the aforementioned professions we have not enjoyed the same status. Partly through bad PR on our part, but also the status of the term “engineer” is not protected. If I was to pose as a doctor teacher or lawyer without being qualified, I would be arrested. However any one can be a “waste disposal engineer” The diversity of the roles the term engineering is used for also is confusing. Electronics engineer Mechanical design engineer, etc. What is needed are more generic terms such as those used by Doctors GP, Brain surgeon, Gynaecologist. This defines the role and makes it more attractive as a vocation for not just females, but all. Having told my next door neighbour that I was an Electronics Engineer the first question she asked was “can you fix my HI FI” I did my profession no favours by going round her house and doing as she had asked.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 24 Aug 2011 2:36 pm
I started my career in engineering in 1968 and am currently in my 4th job, working here for 27years in the design office. All through my engineering career I have felt I have to prove I am a capable engineer. Always being overlooked for those 'dirty' jobs of which I am capable of doing. Until this very 'male' environment wakes up to the fact women are as good as men I do not see there will be a change.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Ray Edwards | 24 Aug 2011 3:40 pm
Back in the 1970’s I was working as a tool room Manager in a large precision manufacturing company.
We took on apprentices on a regular basis; 5 year indentured, day release at collage, the intake was varied skill wise.
At the time I felt females were being overlooked in engineering.
No I was and still am not an activist or call it what you may but I proposed interviewing a female candidate.
God the furore that one word created, with management, Unions and even the EITB as the training board was then.
But I stuck by my guns and we interviewed a young lady named SB.
She out shone all other applicants by miles; she shined at school and came over that she had a real bent for wanting to learn engineering.
This was the applicant for the job!
To placate arguments from the union in as much as she could not manage moving heavy tooling and equipment, the work being dirty “men’s work” I put her under the wing of the departments shop steward.
The first year was a roller coaster SB managed to ride it out not without some tears but she proved herself every day, a woman in a man’s world.
She shone and shone and slowly fitted in with the all the department and became one of the boys.
However in the 4th year of her apprenticeship she handed in her notice and left before finishing her apprenticeship, to this day I don’t know why, a sad loss to engineering a sad loss to the company.
Over the years in various positions I have employed staff of both sexes but sadly so rarely do women apply in any but the most menial positions.
The problem is not new and comes down to narrow minded management and lack of applicants.
Wake up all of you!!
I don’t know the answer to the question but I for one tried so don’t let it stop others, employee or employer.
SB wherever you are I wish you well you were a sad loss to the company.
Ray Edwards
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Chris Wheatley | 24 Aug 2011 4:09 pm
I have worked in engineering for over 30 years and have seen very few female engineers. Most Engineering Managers are men, men in their forties or fifties. I would counsel against seeing the men in these senior roles as 'the enemy'.
There is another major 'gap' in engineering - the Age Gap. Young MALE engineers see the older men as old-fashioned, out of date, poorly informed, bigoted, opinionated, etc. and this is what young women will also see. The world has shown that, however good you think you are, you have to allow for the experience of older people - this also applies to women. By definition, women can't get senior jobs until they are senior and that takes time. It will not happen overnight and, if it did it would be a disaster.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Emmett Redd | 24 Aug 2011 7:44 pm
Here is a recent report of some US National Science Foundation funded research: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/pdf/August11/ParkRomanticAttitudes.pdf ?
This is from its abstract, “…women… who viewed images … or overheard conversations … related to romantic goals reported less positive attitudes toward STEM and less preference for majoring in math/science compared to other disciplines.”
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment