• Question: are there more males in your line of work currently if so how would you suggest to get more young females into engineering

    Asked by Queen_Rae to Abbie, Melanie, Paul, Stu, Tom on 9 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Abbie Hutty

      Abbie Hutty answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      There are more males, especially the more senior engineers, as historically it wasn’t as common for women to become engineers, and even less common for them to stay engineers after they’ve had a family. That’s changing though- the younger end of the workforce has far more women coming through- it’s just going to take us a while to work our way through the companies into the senior positions. But we’re here, and we’re on our way!

      I think the biggest problem to getting more people into engineering- male AND female, is actually educating the general public about what engineering is. Parents and careers advisors and teachers and grandparents all help to shape young people’s views about what jobs are out there and what they would be best suited to – and a huge proportion of them don’t understand what engineers do, or what engineering means, as they’ve never met one. Why would they know? So things that people encounter in everyday life – teachers, doctors, shopkeepers, lawyers, accountants, people know what they do, and can advise young people about those careers. But engineering isn’t as visible and prevalent in everyday life – our designs and projects might be used by people every day – transport, energy, mobile phones, the internet, bridges, buildings, but most people don’t realize they were designed by engineers. And if teachers and parents and people have the wrong idea about what engineering is, or don’t support young people to look into those jobs, it’s sometimes very difficult to find out about it by yourself.

    • Photo: Stuart Inglis

      Stuart Inglis answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Males definitely outnumber females in engineering, however there are a number of schemes and programmes going on to try and change that and we are definitely seeing the effects of them.

      I think the best way to change that is to get all young pupils, regardless of gender, is to get them into the engineering workplace so they can experience it for themselves and make an informed choice.

      What would inspire you to aim for an engineering career Queen_Rae?

    • Photo: Melanie Zimmer

      Melanie Zimmer answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Yes, there are – just to give an example: when I started to work for my company I was the only female engineer out of 23 people. Now we have 3/34 – I think we are getting there. 😉

      What helped me the most in making my decision, was to speak to younger engineers and not just to people who have been in the job for 40 years. It is definitely very important to have these experienced people in the company, but back then at uni I wanted to hear what people just a few years older than me do at work and what their career paths were so far.

      An idea I quite like and I took part as a participant myself is to have workshops for girls led by women working in the topic area. I got a lot of useful advice there and met girls with similar interests to mine – and with some I’m still in contact even after 3 years. 🙂

    • Photo: Paul Webb

      Paul Webb answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      I have a team of 13 engineers with 1 female apprentice it’s rare for women engineers like Abby said its not really well advertised so most don’t consider it a option that they could achive I suppose

      But as long as the person I’m interviewing is interested and has a willingness and a can do attitude they will always pass the first interview for me, that doesn’t matter male or female as long as they want it and are willing they will succeed as an engineer

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