Help inform our next campaign

Great find Andy, encouraging to see this come from a place on the political spectrum I'd not always find myself agreeing with. Reassuring to see that the desire for greater inclusion can sometimes bridge political divides, rather than widen them!

I'd be very curious to see how those diversity statistics are shaken up next year when the census results are published.

Thanks Andy, as you say it makes a clear case for why diversity and inclusion should be encouraged.
I can only guess that those who fight against it may be fearful that their own careers and achievements were not won fairly.  Although this might be true to a certain extent, there is more than enough space for anyone within engineering given the historical, current and projected future shortages.

Useful background here below from an authoritative source (and a rather “small-c” conservative source, although they won't thank me at all for saying so!). Very well and thoughtfully presented, along with the other associated pages and reports.

Rob whilst we disagree about several points you have raised I have personally argued that you should have the right to express them.
Without such debate, many members who are not so active in these forums would not appreciate how much needs to be done.

Amber Thomas: 
 

I think part of the reason that women aren't entering the profession starts such a young age. At school in the 90s, I was very interested in STEM topics and yet the career guidance I was given was to go into teaching, so I could teach STEM topics to others. It wasn't even suggested to me that I consider a STEM career myself! Until my late 20s, the only engineers I had heard of were people who came to fix the boiler or those who performed constant delays on train lines. I had no idea of the breadth of careers that engineering held. If I knew then what I know now, I'm sure I definitely would've considered engineering as a career path.

Absolutely. We have a major challenge in engineering that as children we simply do not come across professional engineers unless we happen to have one in the family. (The same must be an issue for, e.g., quantity surveyors!) I've run an exercise a few times now of asking engineers I work with whether one or both parents were engineers: almost universally the answer was yes, and where it wasn't there was some other STEM based background (the software developer who's parents were accountants, the engineer who came from a medical family but who had an aversion to the sight of blood!). With a bit of thought we shouldn't really be surprised at this - it's unlikely to be because of an engineering “gene”, much more likely that no-one else has a clue what an engineer is, so wouldn't even think of it as a career.

It's well known in genetics that incest is a really bad idea, what we end up with in engineering (and I guess quantity surveying etc) is career incest. 

P.S. Don't get me started on (UK) schools careers advice. It's not the schools fault, they have no budget these days to provide a wide range of effective careers advice - I've seen this collapse in the 20 years I've been voluntarily involved in STEM support activities. Personally I think it was a ridiculous decision to make schools responsible for delivering this, without funding to do so: teachers know about being a teacher, they don't know what they don't about any other profession (and there's no reason why they should).

That all said, I don't know, Amber, what your experience was, but I've found that Primary schools these days are fantastic at giving a huge range of experiences to all children, and generating real enthusiasm, irrespective of pretty much anything. (This is based on my STEM volunteering experience, which of course could have selective bias.) But sadly I agree that at Secondary schools the stereotypes all start cutting in. And it's not necessarily anything to do with the schools. I had a particularly stark example of this when I used to run an after school engineering club that bridged the primary / secondary years. For the primary children the club was often 50/50 boys/girls. As soon as they went up to secondary the girls would come for a couple of weeks and then disappear. Subtle enquiries showed that the girls were coming under peer pressure from their new friends from other schools: “you do what on a Wednesday night, why do you do that?” (I think I posted somewhere else on here about some really interesting recent research on this?)

In the end, as you say, it's going to just take a lot of work to interest any children (again irrespective of anything) in engineering (or indeed most other aspects of STEM, except medicine), just because what we do is invisible in day to day life, even to adults. As suggested above, personally I find the first huge task is to even convince schools that such a career as e.g. design engineering exists (i.e. something beyond car and boiler repairs). Once you can break through that and speak to individual children they're fine - some aren't interested, some are, and in my experience which are and which aren't has nothing to do with gender, race etc, except where peer pressure is over-ruling everything.

Personal note: My children are both interested in sciences and arts. However, my daughter followed her strongest passion and moved into the sciences, I'm delighted to say she's just been given a post-doc position, and there was a key point that helped her ace the interview (the question makes sense in context): “will you be comfortable developing this equipment?” “if it helps, I spent most of my childhood developing and programming robots!”. Meanwhile our son studied philosophy and music, and has just completed his training as a music teacher. The point is, if they had gone through the educational and social environment my wife and I did they would almost certainly have ended up in opposite roles, which would have been a waste of their talents and would have probably made them less happy (and therefore less good at their jobs).  Conversely, if my wife and I were our children's age, with the more relaxed expectations that are now present, I might still have followed the same career path (although I might have gone down a psychology path instead, who knows?), but my wife would definitely have studied more science if she had not been told by her teachers that girls didn't do that. (How do we know that? By a twisted route she ended up in science editing and writing, and realised that was where she wanted to be, but of course with the huge frustration that she has to rely on others for the science knowledge.)

Without positive intervention the self-fulfilling prophecies will continue.

Cheers,

Andy

To be really contentious, I tend to find that left leaning people, people who feel that they occupy the moral high ground, are the most intolerant of all, they have no regard towards other people's point of view and use whatever means they have to try to shut them down.

I was responding to your rather rude assertion that I was a “Bot”, an “unsophisticated” one at that, and yes, I stand by what I said, you can read whatever you like into it but nevertheless I stand by it.

Rob Eagle: 
 

I am not a “Bot”, I am an individual with an informed opinion.  

Your informed opinion on women in engineering is that

IET social engineering….. is becoming far too ‘Woke.’

Could you maybe explain

• having said this is “informed”, on what information this opinion is based? and
• what you mean by “Woke” in this context?

I don't agree with social engineering however well intentioned, it is discriminatory and may potentially lead to a lowering of standards which is not in the interests of our profession.  

Some of us have written that encouraging talented women into engineering will lead to a raising of standards. Can you address the arguments that have been made for that, to show how it would lead instead to a lowering of standards, as you claim?

 

Also, I don't believe in spending billions of OUR tax money fighting climate change 

This isn't a thread about climate change.

The world has changed since i entered engineering in the 1970s. To be attractive to teenagers today the option of engineering as a career needs to be clearly described as it is now. An 18 yr old girl i know has no interest at all in eng or tech beyond mobile phone and social media.  SChool failed to describe or enthuse her with an eng option. She is not unusual, so much depends on teachers own interests. We need to get interest going. Sort of thing that could inspire is engineers in games software development, or artificial intelligence, or practical hands on say heat pumps, green energy. 

There is also the way of thinking that is at the heart of the profession. I was trained as an elec eng, developed avionics, ran projects, managed sw dept, business development, business change consultancy. I approached all of these as a professional engineer, really using systems engineering ..hard and ,'soft'. However business, marketing, management, change management are not seen as engineering so for much of my career i felt the iet was focused heavily on the early years of a career..not me. Even though I was designing and implementing businesses using sys eng ideas and later business development with a strong sys eng focus on customer needs and so on as well as PM. The point here is that the principles of systems engineering can be widely applied and perhaps we need to find a way to be able to show the variety and scope of work possible in an engineers career..make it interesting, varied, show what it can lead to…Which makes me wonder about the scope of the IET…but most of all there is a selling job needed…to all teens ..on what is in offer in engineering and benefits to them..using todays world examples. Are young engineers hot on social media, of course they are, but i have not seen engineering influencers mentioned with millions of followers.

Longer reply than intended, I'm isolated with covid so had some time to spare.

I am not a “Bot”, I am an individual with an informed opinion.  Just because I don't agree with the current narrative on many issues does not mean I should be cancelled.

I don't agree with social engineering however well intentioned, it is discriminatory and may potentially lead to a lowering of standards which is not in the interests of our profession.  Also, I don't believe in spending billions of OUR tax money fighting climate change when realistically it will have absolutely no effect globally, yes, morally it is probably the right thing to do but unless there is a concerted global effort it is absolutely pointless and will impoverish us.