Help inform our next campaign

Andrew Ince: 
 

Elizabeth Morgan: 
 

Hello all. Whilst we do welcome and encourage an honest and frank exchange of views, may I please remind you to be civil and respectful of the opinions of others. 

Hi Elizabeth

Totally agree. I was trying to reply to Rob Eagle but the post has been removed. I'm including my response as it does address his negative comments in a civil way.

 

The poster mentioned expresses Twitter-length contrarian comments on a variety of issues. On another thread, he is currently casting doubt that anthropogenic CO2 emissions contribute to global warming, something that has been established science for 125 years. 

One should perhaps be aware of the existence of bots. I have been encountering them regularly on my excursions into Usenet and then Internet discussion groups for 35 years. They have been around since the late 1960's, but then until into the mid-1990's, when the WWW took off, they were mainly a matter of AI research. There are bots active in these forums also. Most forum bots are not very sophisticated.

Most of the important issues in this world cannot be effectively discussed in Twitter-length to's and fro's. The relative lack of women in engineering is one such.

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.

That said, there is a large number of women who are becoming more aware of engineering skills and engineering careers now that STEM is taking a bigger role in the school curriculum. Women who were not encouraged into STEM careers are now learning about STEM careers through their children. Unfortunately, many of these mothers (and fathers too) have no knowledge of or access to STEM topics themselves and are perhaps not best placed to encourage their children in these fields. Perhaps the IET could run more access courses for adults, rather than relying on growing the membership through a new generation of young graduates and apprentices. 

In this vein, there are many other talent pools that the IET could recruit from. The number of people leaving the teaching profession in huge, and many of those leaving may have advanced STEM skills bubbling under the surface that might need just the slightest nudge to switch careers - perhaps the IET could try recruiting in the NTU magazines with conversion/access courses? Same too for other female-dominant professions, such as nursing, which has a high number of educated, capable people, leaving in droves and looking for a change.

Elizabeth Morgan: 
 

Hello all. Whilst we do welcome and encourage an honest and frank exchange of views, may I please remind you to be civil and respectful of the opinions of others. 

Hi Elizabeth

Totally agree. I was trying to reply to Rob Eagle but the post has been removed. I'm including my response as it does address his negative comments in a civil way.

The Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) took a very different opinion to Rob Eagle when recruiting for Bletchley Park in 1938. GCHQ continues that tradition today, recognising that engineering excellence is not the preserve of a few white, middle-aged men. Without the success of Bletchley Park we may may all be living under a very different regime without our freedom.

We are in a global economy and to be successful need to inspire the next generation to consider science, engineering and technology as an exciting career option. This may be an obvious choice for some, especially if they have parents with a science or engineering background. We should not exclude other children from aspiring to become engineers and scientists just because of their personal circumstances, gender, race or other differences. Many successful people cite an inspirational teacher or mentor that put them on their path to a successful career. If we are to compete in the world then we need to encourage more youngsters in to engineering and that requires a cooperative effort to promote it. It will still be down to individual choice and ability at the end of the day but let's not handicap our profession by excluding all possible talent.

Andy

Hello all. Whilst we do welcome and encourage an honest and frank exchange of views, may I please remind you to be civil and respectful of the opinions of others. 

Hi Natalie. I entered engineering as a profession mainly due to my hobby interest in Amateur radio. I trained originally as a geologist and was quite dismayed on graduating to find many of the jobs in prospecting required electronics or physics degrees. I always had a keen interest in science and took Physics, Chemistry and Geography at A level back in the 1970s. I was part of a trial in 1972 for a subject called Project Technology at that time. It was only run for a year but I believe led eventually to CDT and similar technology subjects now offered.

The core issue is providing experience to youngsters at school of the fantastic range of well paid and interesting career paths in engineering. There's probably unintended bias by teaching staff to associate engineering careers as a choice for boys , not realising that it is just as suitable for girls. My experience with “career advice” at school was very negative and poor quality. I'm not sure if much has changed. It is much easier to research careers today with on line resources which should help schools provide high quality careers advice. Given that I was a budding engineer from a very early age better advice and encouragement from teachers would have greatly helped direct me sooner. I do not regret my experience as a geologist which is a wonderful science and does indeed incorporate much engineering knowledge.

There does seem to be some good role models for women in engineering if the IET magazine is to be believed. Before retiring I worked in IT with the NHS and it was about 50% female staff in IT and the culture was very inclusive in all aspects.

Possibly more opportunities for well structured work experience while at school will help bring more to the profession. I think hands on practical experience is superior to any amount of passive learning. Geology as a subject required a large element of practical field work with trips during the “holidays” taking 16 weeks during my degree studies. I suggest that other disaplines follow this example and provide much more practical experience. I studied evening classes in electronic servicing with the City and Guilds to enhance my hobby and this was very much a hands on learning experience. It resulted in working as an Avionics engineer showing there are other routes to a career in engineering. 

I think perhaps when we are younger we view learning as something you do at school or college. In fact what you learn at school or college is only the start and it is a continuous process that never stops even after retirement! In today's world there is so much choice of career path and it is daunting to decide and specialise at a young age, perhaps before we even know where our main interests and talents lie. It should be possible to have the choice of a broader science and engineering education to degree or technical equivalent level with taster options available to get hands on practical experience in various fields. 

Quite a ramble of perhaps slightly disconnected thoughts but may provide some food for thought in your quest.

Cheers Andy

I think some of the commentary here highlights the need to do more work to educate on the necessity of EDI, and the extent to which it is integral to the “hard sciences”. There is sometimes discussion of divorcing the human aspects of engineering from the technical, but to use a trite example one only needs to look as far as Turing to see the devastating impact that institutionalised prejudice can have both on the individual and on the progress of technology (that is to say, had his life not been cut short at 41, who knows what further contributions he may have had to offer). I'm not so sure that the human and the technical can be neatly compartmentalised - after all, it's humans who ultimately use the technology!

On a personal level I was delighted to see Neurodiversity be on the IET's EDI agenda, as someone with ADHD myself, and would love to see more work in that area. There is some evidence that the prevalence of neurodivergent conditions is higher in Engineering disciplines than in others, yet it is often one of the most overlooked aspects of EDI and accessibility.

“The I.E.T. should just stick to engineering and science. 

Z.”

Hear hear.  I am totally fed up with the IET social engineering to the point I am thinking of withdrawing my membership.  It is becoming far too ‘Woke’.

Zoomup: 
 

The I.E.T. should just stick to engineering and science. 

You disagree with the Foothold program of financial assistance? And the financial support for apprentices and students? 

Also, if you believe (as I do) that math, science and engineering talent is largely gender-independent, then it follows from the male-heaviness of the profession that women who would be talented and capable engineers are choosing other careers instead. Is it not part of “engineering and science” to encourage capable people to do engineering and science?

Further, and this is a very big thing, women engineers are still highly disadvantaged when they wish to raise a family. (It is not just engineers of course.) Career hiatus and resumption should be part of the normal human lifecycle, but it still very much isn't for half the population. That happens in engineering and I see no reason why the engineering professional society shouldn't take an interest in this issue of great importance to (what should be, but isn't yet) half its engineers. 

BTW, the male-heaviness is very much worse elsewhere. I have worked in electrotechnical standardisation in Germany and IEC for more than a decade. In Germany, I have probably worked in committee with up to some 200 electroengineers. Two of them are women. On the IEC 61508 maintenance teams, numbering some 120-150 delegates, I think there are three women. I conclude that, in Germany (and generally elsewhere) half the potentially talented potentially electrical engineers are choosing some other career than electrotechnology. That is obviously not helping engineering. 

The I.E.T. should just stick to engineering and science. 

Z.

James Smith: 
 

Given responses to previous posts in this community I feel we need to discuss why we need these initiatives - it is not universally accepted that there is even an issue, let alone a need to take action.

Agreed.

Z.