Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 17 subscribers
  • Views 320 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Online images reinforce engineering stereotypes

Lisa Miles
Reading an article on E&T online about online images reinforcing engineering stereotypes so I thought I'd take a bit of a look at some of the Free stock photography sites, use the search term of 'Engineer' and have a look at the types of photos that come up in the results.


Really pleased to say that there was a HUGE amount of images depicting women in Engineering available (out of the 25 top images over 15 of them had women in them) which leads me to think that its those working in Brand Marketing that need to be taught to break out of the stereotypes?
  • 0
    If anyone would be interested in using historic images of women in engineering, we have a great selection in the archives - some of which can be found on our Pinterest boards: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/ietarchives/


    This one from STC is one of my favourites:

    e58422c61c1b6d1af993315af61ad66b-huge-naest-211-02-28-01---file-3---env-48---image-02---wiring-selectors-etc-1960s.jpg

  • 0
    That's a really great photo Anne Locker‍ !


    What's the story behind it? ?
  • 0
    Lisa,
    You are right, a surprisingly high representation of women in the image search on Yahoo as well.
     Still a disproportionate number of hard hats on show though.
    Maria

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    I totally agree, there is a better representation of women in the images I searched today - still an overuse of hardhats perhaps. I work in marketing communications and recently had to select an image of engineers for an article on engineering apprenticeships. I felt strongly about using a female in the image as such a tiny proportion of engineering apprenticeship passes are female but some of the stock images I had to choose from were not great, they just looked so staged. 

    It's encouraging to see a broader mix of people in the images when you search "engineer" now though.
  • 0
    Interesting - in the historic image collections it's relatively unusual to see a woman in a hard hat, as it would have been more difficult for women to work on site (many were in research or supervisory roles). E.g. the attached image of Elizabeth Laverick, technical director at Elliot Automation Radar (and later Deputy Secretary of the IEE).

    30e2dc3e1bf179679f4c592b2b068510-huge-naest-92-07-04-13---elizabeth-laverick.jpg

  • 0
    Lisa: the first image is from the technical photo collection at STC and is labelled 'wiring selectors 1960s'. Unfortunately, we don't have names for most of the people appearing in the images, as the focus was on the technology!
  • 0
    Historically we didn't have hard hats or any PPE.  That's why my hearing is destroyed!  the first  Health and Safety at Work Act came out in 1974 so before then there was no legal requirement for PPE
  • 0
    I saw this on LinkedIn the other day - thought I would share here as her comments re hard hats seem appropriate to the conversation...
    f3fd67be5ab7372dc051475df0b8a6b9-huge-nails.jpg


Community Rules & Guidelines