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Fiona Dew
Less than one minute read time.
Over the last couple of months The IET has been leading a campaign on Twitter to draw attention to the fact that only 9% of engineers in the UK are women.  Hundreds of engineers have posted photos with the hashtag 9PercentIsNotEnough aiming to inspire the next generation of female engineers.


A handful of the most recent tweets are brought together in this post.


In the Women's Network we'd love to hear what you think, in the year after The IET had our first female President, what will it take to get more women into engineering?  And what will the engineering industry have to do to keep them?


 



Parents
  • Great points All :)



    There is a lot of focus on getting the next generation of young girls interested in STEM careers. Whilst this is a great thing, this discounts a lot of working-age women. I loved maths and science when I was at school, but it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I met my first engineer, and had no idea what engineering was all about before then. You can't pick something as a career if you don't know it is an option, and I think many women of my generation and earlier may have lost out because of this.



    Career breaks and child-care have been raised above as problems keeping women out of the engineering industry, but might career breaks also offer a solution? If a part-time, re-training course was available, perhaps more working-age women who were looking at returning to work from other industries might be tempted to enter the field?



    Looking at groups of women from other industries might also offer a solution. 40% of teachers are leaving their profession in the first year (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11505837/Four-in-10-new-teachers-quit-within-a-year-union-warns.html). The majority of teachers are female. Nurses are leaving their profession too (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/25/the-other-nhs-crisis-the-overworked-nurses-who-are-leaving-in-despair). The majority of nurses are also female. Perhaps advertising engineering careers/courses in NUT or NHS newsletters might be a way to access smart women who are ready for a career change and would be happy to re-train for a career in engineering?



    Of course, one of the barriers to retraining working women would be the financial side (giving up a wage and the cost of studying), so perhaps an investment in training bursaries would be needed in order to facilitate this.



    I think that more companies should offer part-time hours or job-share options as returning to work full time is a big factor that deters women in particular from going back to work or being able to retrain in other areas (NB. This is an issue in all industries, not a problem exclusive to the engineering industry). Full-time study can be prohibitively expensive (whether you are returning to work after having children, or just deciding to embark on a new career), so having part-time study options would also help to appeal to more people so the students may continue to earn enough money as they re-train.
Comment
  • Great points All :)



    There is a lot of focus on getting the next generation of young girls interested in STEM careers. Whilst this is a great thing, this discounts a lot of working-age women. I loved maths and science when I was at school, but it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I met my first engineer, and had no idea what engineering was all about before then. You can't pick something as a career if you don't know it is an option, and I think many women of my generation and earlier may have lost out because of this.



    Career breaks and child-care have been raised above as problems keeping women out of the engineering industry, but might career breaks also offer a solution? If a part-time, re-training course was available, perhaps more working-age women who were looking at returning to work from other industries might be tempted to enter the field?



    Looking at groups of women from other industries might also offer a solution. 40% of teachers are leaving their profession in the first year (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11505837/Four-in-10-new-teachers-quit-within-a-year-union-warns.html). The majority of teachers are female. Nurses are leaving their profession too (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/25/the-other-nhs-crisis-the-overworked-nurses-who-are-leaving-in-despair). The majority of nurses are also female. Perhaps advertising engineering careers/courses in NUT or NHS newsletters might be a way to access smart women who are ready for a career change and would be happy to re-train for a career in engineering?



    Of course, one of the barriers to retraining working women would be the financial side (giving up a wage and the cost of studying), so perhaps an investment in training bursaries would be needed in order to facilitate this.



    I think that more companies should offer part-time hours or job-share options as returning to work full time is a big factor that deters women in particular from going back to work or being able to retrain in other areas (NB. This is an issue in all industries, not a problem exclusive to the engineering industry). Full-time study can be prohibitively expensive (whether you are returning to work after having children, or just deciding to embark on a new career), so having part-time study options would also help to appeal to more people so the students may continue to earn enough money as they re-train.
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