Minority report

Jayne Bryant

Engineering and technology director for Defence Information Solutions and Services (DISS), BAE Systems

With responsibility for around 600 engineers spread across 10 different sites, Jayne Bryant is BAE Systems’ most senior female engineer. And during a fascinating career with BAE (and its former companies) that stretches back 35 years, she has witnessed first-hand great social and technological change.

While at school, Bryant thought her aptitude with numbers might lead her to be an accountant or maths teacher, but instead she was drawn to industry. At the age of 17 (knowing next to nothing about the computer technology that was just beginning to make its mark) she joined GEC Marconi as a trainee software engineer.

She came into an industry that was rife with sexism. ‘In my early career it was dreadful,’ she says. ‘There were a lot of people in the business who thought a woman shouldn’t work, if you walked through the main factory you used to get wolf whistled at, and there were pictures of naked women all over the offices.’ It must have been an intimidating environment for a young woman at the start of her career, but Bryant either ignored the idiotic jibes, or fought them with humour. Her response to the calendar incident, for instance, was to put up a calendar with naked men on it.