WES is 100 years old in June - congratulations - tell us why you were founded
all those years ago, if and how you have achieved your goal, and what progress
has been made in that time?
Thank
you! WES was founded in 1919 in response to the pressure women were put under at
the end of the First World War to leave the workforce to release jobs for men
returning from the forces. These women founded WES, not only to resist this
pressure, but also to promote engineering as a rewarding job for women as well
as men.
Our
objects haven’t changed in that time. WES was established to promote the
education, training and practice of engineering among women, to advance the
education of the public concerning the study and practice of engineering among
women, and to relieve poverty amongst women in engineering. We are still promoting
these objects, though 100 years ago WES was emphasising that women could be
engineers, now our focus is more that women should be engineers, and we relieve
poverty by helping women into work.
So, what's next for WES? What are your future goals?
We
want to continue to support women in engineering as our greatest strength is
our network, and we are still making history. We held the first Women
Apprentices’ Conference in 2018 and it was such a success we want to run this
annually from now on. We also formed the University Group Board last year to
support our Student Groups and we are
looking at forming Cluster Groups to support BAME women engineers and Retired
Engineers.
We
have also announced a Census into women’s experience in engineering, and in
future we hope to be the repository for a lot of research on women in
engineering. And we are continuing with International Women in Engineering Day
on the 23 June 2019, our 100th birthday, which we launched five years ago, as
well as celebrating the Top 50 Women in Engineering for the fourth year, with
the theme of Current and Former Apprentices this year.
You did some research a couple of years ago that stated around 20,000 women had
left the workforce to have children now wish to return. Has that number
diminished or grown? What are/can businesses/industry/the Government do to
facilitate their return?
I
don’t have the current figures, but we started STEM Returners in an effort to
make it easier for women to return from career breaks. We advise businesses to pilot
“returnships” to ease returners back into the workplace and get their skills up
to date. In these times of 24/7 manufacturing, every job is part-time and if employers
can arrange working times to suit women’s childcare arrangements, then women
are more likely to stay for a long period.
There
are many other things that help recruit women – we have a gender decoder for
job ads and it’s been shown that ads that are “masculine-coded” are more likely
to put women off applying. Websites that feature only men deter women from applying
to those companies, and often women will only apply for a role where they fit
the essential criteria 100%, whereas men will apply if they fit 60% - and get
the job. Companies are missing out on talented staff as a result, so WES
encourages employers to say, “if you fit three of the following criteria,
please apply”. We also want employers to say that they welcome applications
from women.
Why is it important for the engineering industry to employ (more) women?
Women
are more holistic, so we look not just at the problem in front of us, but at
its wider context. More importantly, the absence of women in engineering
creates a lot of problems for women in the rest of their lives. Caroline
Criado-Perez has written about this in her book Invisible Women. Crash test
dummies are usually modelled on men, meaning women are more likely to be
injured than men in traffic collisions; medicines are tested on men and not women,
when women respond differently; mobile phones are designed for male hands, so
women find it difficult to use them single-handedly, and a recent health app
made no mention of periods – something that affects 50% of the population at
some point in their lives. Bringing women into engineering brings variety into
engineering. I remember Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety from my systems
studies – you must have as much variety in your organisation as the population
you serve.
Our industry survey asked if 'enough is being done to attract women into
engineering'? The results this year or almost identical to last year. However,
fewer people (28% compared to 22%) believe Government and business need to be
doing more - why do you think that is?
I
think that the campaigns to get more women into engineering have been more
visible and there may be a sense that the “job is done”. However, it takes
years to build a pipeline of women in engineering and we must keep pushing.
When I went to university in the late 1980s,
there would be one or two women studying for an engineering degree. These women
are just now beginning to take senior roles because it takes up to 30 years to
get to the right stage in a career – we have just seen Air Marshall Susan Gray
become the highest ranked woman in the military ever. And if women took career
breaks it will take a little longer. So, we are seeing a few women reaching the
top of engineering, with more women coming through below. It’s still not enough,
barely 12% of all engineers are women, so we need to keep attracting women into
engineering.
We also asked 'What do you think needs to be done to encourage more women to
consider manufacturing or engineering as a career?' One of the options was 'no
more needs to be done'. Last year, 7% of respondents opted for this. This year,
54% had. Why do think that's the case?
For
similar reasons as above. There is a greater focus on gender pay gaps, on women
in the workplace, and now that women are becoming more visible through
campaigns such as “#MeToo” there is likely a backlash. Men are having to
reconsider their workplace behaviour and it’s easier to say they don’t want any
more women than to change the culture.
What do women bring to engineering that's different to men?
Women
bring collaboration and teamwork, attention to detail and a willingness to ask
questions and possibly fail. If engineers don’t make mistakes, they don’t make
anything, and I think women are much more likely to say, well, that didn’t
work, let’s try something else, whereas men might be less inclined to admit
they got something wrong.
Engineering
is much more collaborative now and we are finding that women succeed in newer
fields such as environmental engineering and where more than one area of
engineering overlap, e.g. Mechatronics – electronics in mechanical vehicles. A
good friend of mine has just set up her own company and her expertise is in
mechanical, aerospace and chemical engineering, which means she can provide a
great deal for her customers.
What’s your personal experience of being a female engineer at Rolls Royce?
I
wasn’t an engineer at Rolls-Royce, I was an adviser on lobbying government to
support the trade unions at Rolls-Royce. I used my systems engineering background
to devise a strategy with the government to get three new factories built in
the UK and secure 800 jobs.
Did your gender create obstacles that weren’t there for male colleagues?
Well,
having to go outside the building across a site road to another building for
the loo was an experience! I don’t think it’s my gender that created obstacles,
I think that obstacles are there for women because men don’t encounter the same
experiences and don’t think about it.
I’ve
spent my life among men. I have three brothers, and there are only 3.5 years
between all four of us. I’ve worked in male-dominated industries like IT,
politics and engineering all my life, so I’m used to hitting obstacles. I was a
Board Member of the East Midlands Regional Development Board in charge of
millions of pounds of public money, surrounded by very powerful Council Leaders
and leaders of industry (some of them women) and I was asked why I wasn’t more
recognised. In the course of the discussion that followed, a man commented,
“it’s because good men get promoted and good women get side-lined”. I have
found that to be the case, so I’ve generally just found a way round it.
It
has been very difficult at times, though, and not every woman wants to be a
trailblazer or a role model, they just want to do their job. At the time it
didn’t feel like trailblazing or role modelling, but it seems I did do that. This
led to quite a patchy CV, so it was important that I construct a narrative that
explained my progression. Men often just have a logical career progression
which is easily explained.
What advice would you pass onto young women engineers just entering the
profession?
It’s
a great field. If you like problem-solving and working on your initiative, it’s
a great career and you’ll never be bored. Build you network, because you never
know when contacts from years ago will be useful in the future. Join WES as a
Student or Apprentice and maintain your membership because we provide a great
network from early career to retirement. Get your Chartership because it shows
that you have the expertise necessary to do your job and will get you
respected. Apply for jobs you want even if you don’t think you can do them. Pursue
every opportunity you get, don’t take no for an answer and follow your
curiosity. The field of engineering is changing, and you want to be at the
cutting edge.
Every
year the age where women first encounter sexism gets higher and for many women
I hope they won’t encounter it at all.
What role can senior, male engineers play in
driving gender diversity?
A
lot! We instituted a Men As Allies Award
in 2017 and we award it to the man who has encouraged women into engineering.
Men
have always helped women get into engineering, and some of our very first
Associate Members were men. Join WES! Get your company to partner with WES!
Employ
more women, it will help your gender pay gap and your need to have more women
on your Board.
Change
your recruitment process, and if you see a woman on a shortlist, try to make it
a conversation rather than an inquisition.
If
you see a young woman that you believe can be excellent, then mentor her,
promote her to your colleagues, give her opportunities to shine, support her in
meetings and don’t let her male colleagues take her credit.
Finally,
all this will benefit your bottom line – we know that mixed teams work better
than either male or female-dominated teams.
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