I have worked with many wonderful and talented engineers over the years and many have been women.  The gender is of no importance to me, simply the ability to work together and to do, hopefully, good engineering.  Whilst the ratio of male to female engineers, in my opinion, is unnaturally skewed I do find some of the campaigning disturbing.  The wording often makes me feel that, being male, I am being blamed for the shortage of women in the engineering; or in some cases worse, that I am no longer wanted in engineering!  I think that there is a real danger with many of the current approaches that the gender balance will be achieved not by increasing the number of women entering engineering but by decreasing the number of men (after all, rightly or wrongly, 'only women need apply' is the message coming across) - i.e. leading to fewer people entering engineering.  On another note; I have a daughter who is very good at science and mathematics, she would probably make a good engineer when she is older.  I have encouraged her to do engineering type things, and if that is the way she wants to go then she will get all my support, but at present her aims are in other directions - I am not going to force her into engineering simply to make up the numbers, indeed I would not be able to.  I guess my plea is; make things attractive for women to join engineering, by all means, but in the process do not make them unattractive for men - we need engineers from all walks of life.

I have worked with many wonderful and talented engineers over the years and many have been women.  The gender is of no importance to me, simply the ability to work together and to do, hopefully, good engineering.  Whilst the ratio of male to female engineers, in my opinion, is unnaturally skewed I do find some of the campaigning disturbing.  The wording often makes me feel that, being male, I am being blamed for the shortage of women in the engineering; or in some cases worse, that I am no longer wanted in engineering!  I think that there is a real danger with many of the current approaches that the gender balance will be achieved not by increasing the number of women entering engineering but by decreasing the number of men (after all, rightly or wrongly, 'only women need apply' is the message coming across) - i.e. leading to fewer people entering engineering.  On another note; I have a daughter who is very good at science and mathematics, she would probably make a good engineer when she is older.  I have encouraged her to do engineering type things, and if that is the way she wants to go then she will get all my support, but at present her aims are in other directions - I am not going to force her into engineering simply to make up the numbers, indeed I would not be able to.  I guess my plea is; make things attractive for women to join engineering, by all means, but in the process do not make them unattractive for men - we need engineers from all walks of life.