Women in Engineering

This year saw WES (The Women’s Engineering Society) celebrate its 100 year anniversary. A lot has changed for women over the last century, as Electronic Specifier’s Anna Flockett found out at the organisation’s centennial conference. WES’s centennial conference which was held last month, titled: ‘Celebrating the Past, Transforming the Future’, set out to discuss the past, how far women have come, some of our amazing achievements, and crucially what still needs to be done in the future. 

Attracting more women into construction and engineering must become a higher priority for government and employers, urges Develop Training Ltd (DTL). The training company says redressing the gender imbalance is not just desirable from an ideological viewpoint but also a means of helping to tackle the chronic skills shortage afflicting the industry. Two thirds of employers say a shortage of engineers is a threat to their business.

In 2017 Hanson Robotics hit the headlines with the launch of Sophia, a humanoid robot that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), visual data processing and facial recognition, imitates human gestures and facial expressions and is able to answer certain questions and make simple conversations on predefined topics.

Over the last few years we have used up a lot of column inches in order to highlight the burgeoning skills gap within engineering and STEM-based careers, and in particular the discrepancy in the gender balance of individuals choosing that particular pathway.