• Question: In your career as an engineer is there a divide between male and female engineers and do men and women bring ideas alike to the industry?

    Asked by laughingtougnes to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by grace, hannahgrimes.
    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yes they both bring ideas. And no there is no divide. There are many more males working in engineering, but this is changing slowly. I don’t think that you would tell whether female or male did a certain design, report or calculation. You can say how good it is, but not the gender of the author.

    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yes, I believe that there is a divide. However, I would call it a “difference” in that women and men have different ways of approaching a problem. Sometimes the direct approach (bull in a china shop – male engineer ?) may be best, but at other times, it may be better to consider how each solution is likely to affect the users (more likely to be the approach of a woman engineer). They each have their own particular value.

      Perhaps it would be ideal if each problem was considered by both a male and a female engineer so that the best of both approaches can be used ?

    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      I haven’t really noticed a divide – although some of the men in my office swear a lot less when there is a woman in the same room!

      My first boss was a woman and she was a fantastic engineer who trained me and had confidence in me that made me what I am today.

    • Photo: Harriet Fletcher

      Harriet Fletcher answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I think that male and female attributes are not entirely defined by your gender. In my view all of us sit somewhere on a sliding scale between being very manly and a girly girl obviously most men are towards the male half (more thinking solutions) and most women are towards the female half(more empathetic feeling solutions). I have met some men who are much more effeminate in their thinking than I am.
      I have never been aware of a divide between men and women. I think the senior women tend to look after the younger women a bit more because it probably was quite tough being a woman engineer in the 70s but now more and more women are becoming engineers.
      My department, process engineering, has more women than men and this is not unusual.

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