Our anonymous blogger contemplates the limitations of industry’s current approach to driving up diversity
I was recently talking to friends about the new “W Series” motor sport championship where all the drivers are female. The discussion regarding whether there is a need for this and what it might – or might not – achieve soon turned to the lack of women in engineering and science. Thinking about it that was probably down to me, but the current dearth of female competitors in motor sport in general and F1 in particular can be used as a parable for industry in the wider sense. There are some women, but not very many at all.
Although there will always be those with antediluvian views I cannot think of anyone I’ve recently worked with who would openly object to more women working within engineering. Some may mutter darkly behind closed doors or patronisingly mock in private but so long as they keep it to themselves and don’t adversely influence a woman’s career path then who cares? In addition there has been much effort put into getting girls at school interested in science and engineering. So given that there appears to be no real resistance from the workforce, backed up by a programme of active encouragement generally, how come I’ve only worked with a couple of female engineers in the past decade or so?
So far, so familiarly perplexing. What made this particular conversation more interesting though was the input from a friend who happens to be transgender. She highlighted a slightly different view that I had sort of been aware of but which I hadn’t yet fully formed as a coherent thought. The problem isn’t so much that there aren’t enough women but that engineering has a very high percentage of white, straight and male people working within it. Again, not exclusively so but enough for it to be noticeable. To give some context, although the brevity of these pieces mean that I can only give pointers, women account for just under half of the UK workforce in total whilst 1 in 5 staff in the NHS are “non-white.”
Why is this a problem? For a start there is no section of society that holds a cast iron monopoly on engineering excellence and we are therefore failing to tap into a valuable resource. Solving the problem of a Spitfire’s engine cutting during “negative g” manoeuvres? A woman did that. The founder of computer science as we know it? A homosexual. The BBC computer that was pivotal in making Britain “computer literate?” You can thank a transsexual for that one. So it goes on with many examples from just about any group other than white, male and straight. By pushing out from the standard pattern of “the engineer” you also gain a positive in that you open up the chance of insight and opinion informed by experience and culture outside of the current norm. Those of us who correspond to the stereotype of the engineer generally work as part of an organisation to produce items for everyone. However we cannot be helped but have our decisions and interactions predominantly informed by our own viewpoint. This is a distinct limitation.
We have been wringing our hands over a lack of women within our profession for so long that I fear we’ve lost sight of the real issue. What is perceived as a specific failing regarding resource is in itself, and by its definition, limiting in the scope offered by the 21st century society we inhabit. What is needed isn’t the target of pulling people in from a second group but rather the move away from a single group. I’ll freely admit that, given how it should be through actively spreading the net wider rather than discouraging those already most likely to join our ranks, I’ve no idea how to achieve this. What I do know is that simply saying “more women should be in engineering and science” wilfully ignores the reality of the world we are living in.
In my experience, management is even more polarized to big, bald, middle aged blokes. So any women making it through a STEM education is confronted by a panel of these at each job interview. Puts me off.
I hesitate to add to the Secret Engineer’s and/or our editor’s bulging ‘bag’ that deals with this area: perhaps the thought which has recently come to me is at least worth defining: even if there is no immediate answer/solution. “Necessity is the mother of Invention!” and whoever happens to be at the point of needing a solution to an issue (gay, straight, trans, male, female, young, old, educated or untrained, lay or learned) will develop one: or in the most extreme case(s) not need a solution because they will be gone! Well won’t they. Perhaps it is necessary for our society to place folk of all circumstances and situations into danger (or at least to the extremes of wherever they are) and then give them the opportunity (and some tools) (*) to show their inventiveness.
(*) I do recall a boss many years ago who deliberately did NOT give Design/Drawing Office the full specification at the start of a project. He wanted to ensure that those ‘below’ him did NOT simply follow his ideas -he wanted to encourage their thinking too: management is a project for steering wheel, not the brake!
The solution arrived at may not be the best possible (hopefully that is the province of the expert in whatever topic) but it is probable a workable one. That can be enhanced over time. That is if the time for such is not ‘terminal’ . Didn’t Dr Johnson say that ‘the prospect of death in the morning does concentrate the mind wonderfully!’
The same exasperations of focus lead me to set up InterEngineering to connect, inform and empower LGBT+ engineers and supporters in 2014. We now have over 1,000 engineers in our membership and 6 active regional groups across the UK running events.
My current venture is my business is EqualEngineers providing a full suite of interventions on equality, diversity and inclusion through our recruitment, events, media, training and consulting services. I spend most of my time having this very conversation. Check out our Masculinity in Engineering survey from 2018. Results will be published at our Equality in Engineering Conference on 4th October. Let me know if you’d like any more info.
All the best,
Mark
Surely the point is not whether an engineer (insert other job role here) is male / white / straight / Christian / old / insane / etc., it is whether they can do the required job. Splitting up the population into artificial and irrelevant groupings is pointless except when you are looking to falsely justify why you failed to achieve something. Women in Engineering / Men in Primary Teaching / Straights in the arts / Whites in sprinting and so on – just pointless excuses for moaning. If you are good enough you will succeed, just don’t go looking for an easier path because you are what you are. The rules are the rules.
I agree with the point that a job should be awarded irrespective of what you are. However if you want to encourage and retain people outside the stereotypical engineer, just go and look in your average engineering building for a simple example-how many female or gender neutral toilets and washing facilities are there? It may seem trivial, but it underlines a basic principle that the career can be an uphill daily struggle for others from a comment such as ‘use your feminism wiles to get this made’, to having to ask for the toilet key that is located in another building. All managers should be looking at levelling the playing field, making the work place welcoming to everyone and making sure that comments based on sex/gender/race/religion-no matter how trivial they seem, are stamped on. No-one wants to get a job based on filling a quota, but some help is needed to make them feel accepted.
The Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Acop 1992 specifies the numbers of toilets and washbasins for business down to as few as 1 employee. It classifies Mixed Use with Women to do this, with a separate specification for Men, to include Urinals. And frankly, any employer using a lack of toilets as an excuse not to employ someone is probably not someone you would want to be working for.
So, as opposed to the view in the article, your opinion is that mostly “white, straight and male” people have the abilities to be an engineer?
Nobody is advocating fulfilling quotas.
The UK is in need of 200,000 engineers a year (figures from Engineering UK https://www.engineeringuk.com/research/data/2019-excel-resource/ ). We are not managing to recruit anything like that number. Imagine if we could DOUBLE the pool of school leavers that wanted to be engineers by encouraging women to be part of that pool. There are now more female GPs than men, women can and do excel in technical subjects, what is it about engineering that puts them off? Lack of role models is one reason. I do a lot of STEM outreach and the notion that women can’t be engineers is commonplace, along with the notion that engineers are car mechanics.
I find engineering a fantastic career, and I do everything I can to make sure more school kids know that it can be well paid and rewarding. I do loads of STEM events and find that the girls are often more engaged when it is a girls only event, there is something about a mixed crowd that can make girls take a back seat.
Diverse teams are also better at delivering (figures from Edinburgh Napier Uni https://www.napier.ac.uk/~/media/worktribe/output-171639/equatediversityinconstructionreportfinalpdf.pdf)
If you don’t think diversity is important, perhaps a healthier bottom line will convince you?