Bucking the trend: why the civil sector has more female engineers

It can be easy to get lost in headline figures on the lack of women in engineering. But dig a little deeper, and some surprising results emerge. For instance, in The Engineer’s very own salary survey (see page 42), civil engineering is revealed to be a relatively attractive sector for women.

Despite a very low level of women in engineering overall — around 5.6 per cent  of the workforce — the survey of 4,365 engineers revealed that the gender balance is unusually positive, or at least better, in the civil engineering sector. Around 15.3 per cent of the civil engineers responding were women — a figure that is reflected in other industry studies.

The UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers compared with the rest  of the European Union at less than 10 per cent.

According to a recent report by EngineeringUK, mechanical engineering has the lowest proportion of female applicants, ranging from 6.4 per cent in 2009 and 2010 to 8.4 per cent in 2012 and 2013. During the same period, the proportion of female applicants to aerospace engineering declined to 7.6 per cent. The proportion of female applicants in general engineering and civil engineering was similar in 2012 and 2013, at around 16.4 per cent and 16.5 per cent respectively.