Women in Engineering

GMB, the construction union, has revealed it will take nearly 200 years to achieve gender equality in the construction industry. The analysis, revealed at GMB’s annual Congress in Brighton today, shows at the current rate of growth, the number of women in construction will equal men by the year 2194.

With Women in Engineering Day fast approaching, Electronic Specifier caught up with Rosanna Ashworth-Jones, Leading Developer Technology Engineer, Imagination Technologies who explained the importance of influencing people, especially parents. 

In early May, Giant held an event which focused on tech innovation for women’s health, bringing in a wealth of female entrepreneurs. Those assembled took the opportunity to create an open and forward-thinking space to discuss the future of femtech. Among the activities of the day were a series of panel talks, illuminating everything from driving inclusion in health tech to personalised health.

WISE, the campaign for greater gender balance in STEM, is calling for women who are working at the cutting edge of technology to enter its new Emerging Technology Award, part of its annual Awards. The Award aims to showcase women working in ground-breaking technology or producing products that could revolutionise the future for consumers or organisations.

  The leaders of eight of the UK’s leading energy companies, between them representing 56,000 employees, are urging a renewed effort to drive up the number of women at senior levels in the energy sector, to meet the challenges that lie ahead. 

Recent research carried out by the Subcon engineering show here in the UK has suggested that there has been a massive leap in business over the past few years and therefore we don’t need to do anything else to encourage women into manufacturing as a career. In 2018 a similar survey was carried out and showed seven percent of people within the industry believed everything that could be done to encourage women into the field of engineering has been done. Now in 2019 the results reflect very differently with now 56% people thinking the job is done.

Without sounding like a stuck record, if 2018 proved anything to us, it showed that women have definitely come a long way within the tech industry, and as a glass half full type of person, this year looks promising in terms of continuing to encourage females. However, the fact that I am writing this article means that although a battle may have been won, there’s still some way to go to win the war, and so I want to pose the question - is technology inherently sexist?

In 2019 the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) turned 100 years old and celebrated the present, remembering the past and continuing to change the future. 2018 marked the centenary of British women gaining the right to vote, marking the Representation of the People Act 1918. It gave suffrage for most men, and enfranchised women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications.

Cast your minds back to October, Startups Magazine hosted a 'Female Founders' event to celebrate women in tech, bringing together women and men from the industry to highlight female startups and female entrepreneurs in the industry. Two panel discussions were held and one thing that became apparently clear from the audience and the professionals on the panel, was the huge lack of role models in the technology industry as a whole and in particular, sources of female inspiration for young people.

There are several reasons why there are not enough women in tech as we touched on in last month’s last column, however, when does that discouragement process start? My instinctive answer to this question suggests that it begins in school and at a young age. Is there enough encouragement in STEM subjects for young girls, and if so where does it go wrong? Is it that we have created a society with so many stereotypes that young girls are put off without even realising it?