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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Really, the IET is becoming so much like a student union, maybe we should rename it the Nelson Mandela Institution in recognition of all the sterling work done by student unions up and down the country towards social justice over the decades.

James Smith: 
 

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.

Hi James,

I suspect the issue is often rather more complicated to address than this. All of us have a particular world view, for all sorts of reasons, and any threat to that results in huge cognitive dissonance. The human brain has a huge capacity to invent reasons to justify its world view in the face of all the evidence - when you've spent years accepting a particular position our subconscious will do its utmost to defend the patterns it's set up. There's a Nobel peace prize waiting for anyone who can find the solution to that one! Given that it relates to many issues far more existentially important than this one.

(Taking a far more trivial example: I hereby humbly apologise to all those who I bored rigid in pubs in the 80s and 90s with my rants about why analogue audio was better (and always would be) than digital. Which of course was because a: I was an analogue audio designer and b: all my close colleagues were analogue audio designers. So part defensive, and part groupthink, but all subconscious. P.S. Neither are better, they're just different. And from my later career, I hereby accept that axle counters are at least as valid a mechanism for train detection as track circuits - even if I do have to grit my teeth while writing that! ? P.S. Neither are better, they're just different!)

As is well known, the best solution we do know of is for individuals to get themselves out of the echo chamber. Which neatly brings us back to the point - the greater the diversity of views, attitudes and approaches in, say, the world of engineering, the greater the range of views, attitudes and approaches that are acceptable. It's a snowball effect. And of course it works the other way - most of us will have come across companies where everyone thinks the same way as the CEO, anyone who doesn't is either not recruited in first place or doesn't stay long (through their choice or the company's). If you do think the same way as the CEO then everything's fine and it's everyone else that's wrong. And when the company goes bust it's the rest of the world that's at fault for not appreciating how wonderful the company was (the first company I ever worked for was a superb example of this).

Then once out of the echo chamber a healthy evidence based debate can start…and I'm sure our approaches to and opinions on this issue will change as new evidence comes to light. Which again, takes us back to the original question.

I do often feel in situations like this that there are two engineering professions operating in parallel universes (and I've switched between both through some portal during my career): the one based around innovation, creativity and constant progression, including an awareness that the underlying science itself is constantly developing, and the one based around the principle “I was told this as a student / apprentice so that will be true until the end of time”.  Which is comforting to the individual, but not terribly helpful to anyone else. Oh dear, I've gone grumpy old engineer again…

“How many psychotherapists does it take to change a light bulb?” “Just one but the light bulb really has to want to change!” Ahhh…it's good to have an excuse to get that one out again ?

Cheers,

Andy

Thank you to everyone for your contributions so far. To reiterate - it really is important to us to get as broad a set of viewpoints as possible, and we do value the diversity of thought and experience shared so far.

Please do continue to share your perspectives on this thread, and share with your colleagues and friends within the industry. The more input we can get, the more we can understand the landscape in order to develop campaigns which are representative of the UK and the wider world, and also which are truly inclusive and able to drive meaningful conversations and change as required.

If you have a thought you'd rather submit to us anonymously, you can do so using this form.

And if you're free over the next week and would be willing to participate in a more detailed interview, please enter your details for consideration via this form.

Many thanks!

Fantastic idea - “Campaign to challenge outdated stereotypes”.  My assertion would be that, as a Chartered Engineer (of a certain age), I now spend time in schools trying to inspire the future generation of scientists and engineers.  The primary, in my opinion, stereotype that needs resolution is the term “engineer”.  Pretty much everyone - who hasn't worked in “STEM” (ie many teachers, parents and children) - have a very blinkered view on “engineering”.  This is often reinforced by those “in the industry” who continue to “badge engineering” as hard hats, overalls - or “the bloke who comes to fix the dishwasher (notice how I included another stereotype).  ”Engineering" can absolutely involve people in hard hats etc but it can also NOT involve people in hard hats.  We need to turn this around, describe better what “engineering” can be and get “engineering” to be a revered profession (that ALL understand) such as a doctor or lawyer.  Work to do!

The Royal Academy of Engineering review on the STEM education landscape - 

https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/uk-stem-education-landscape

which provided an update to the original review by Sir Gareth Roberts concluded  that there are many factors including structural barriers that prevent young people from engaging in STEM careers. 
From my own experiences, as a female engineer and as someone who has been promoting engineering consistently throughout my career, I can see that there is still much to do. 
Whether people like to admit it or not, there are still huge barriers. I now look after numerous engineering apprentices at L3 and L4 in FE. I am working with local employers and the community to grow the number of apprentices from significantly under represented groups primarily to eradicate the academic snobbery that permeates the education system (and sorry to be blunt, but the Institutions themselves fall into that bracket too). I  had an apprentice, who through no fault of his own, lost his apprenticeship (COVID related and downturn in business), he wanted to continue with his L3 engineering qualification but fell outside all the free funding criteria mostly because of his age and the fact that he already had A Levels (not in STEM subjects). I tried ALL my networks to try and secure funding for him, but to no avail. I ask why???? As an Institution we have a number of incentives to support undergraduates and graduates but little if anything to support those who choose an alternative route? Why?
We have to ensure that we are accessible to ALL, no matter their route into or through engineering.