Epp class1 2015 2016 women in engineering

1. Hide your family and live in the office:
How do women in engineering get ahead
The Guardian. June 2015
National Women in Engineering Day celebrates and encourages women in the sector
but new research suggests the reality is very different.
Today is National Women in Engineering day. The lack of women in the industry has become such a
problem that we actually need to put aside a day a year to remind us to keep addressing it. However,
when today passes will we still be concerned about finding a solution?
Dame Sue Ion recently wrote on these pages about the need to change misinformed and outdated
perceptions of STEM. As she rightly remarked, we can’t afford to put off half the population from the start.
But understanding why so many women view STEM as an arena in which failure is almost inevitable tells
only one side of the story. Just as important is understanding why some women do enter STEM and,
moreover, why they succeed.
This was one of the principal aims of our recent research into the career progression of women engineers.
Working with individuals and focus groups reflecting all stages of the journey, from schooling to degree
study to employment within major organisations, we examined a career pipeline that ranks among the
most notoriously leaky in any professional sphere.
For the findings detailed below we drew on one-to-one, in-depth, qualitative interviews with 50 women in
early, middle and late career. Respondents worked in technical and managerial roles for three leading
FTSE 100 organisations in the UK.
In terms of why some women engineers succeed, our findings can be condensed into five key themes.
1. Work-life balance
The women engineers who took part in our study fully recognised the importance of family life, but at the
same time they felt it should remain largely in the background. They saw it both as a constraint on career
advancement and as a principal reason to quit.
This isn’t to suggest engineering companies are hopelessly devoid of family-friendly policies. Our research
indicates major organisations in the sector are increasingly aware of the need to offer great er flexibility.
But in many cases, according to our respondents, promotion is still linked to the perceived merits of ever-
presence and time-serving – and family life at its most visible and intrusive lends itself to neither of these.
2. Determination
Perseverance was identified as essential to success. Our respondents repeatedly spoke of the value of
seeing tasks through and not giving up in the face of difficulties. Significantly, though, merely having
determination was insufficient: showing determination was also imperative.
Long hours and a focus on work at the expense of one’s personal life were highlighted as among the
sacrifices necessary to give the all-important impression of being able to “cut it” as a woman in a male-
dominated environment. Accordingly, opportunities to undertake more challenging projects – both to
experience tougher work and to increase corporate visibility – were particularly valued.
3. Networking
Social relationships are crucial to women’s career- making in all kinds of professions, and engineering
provides no exception. Many of our respondents described how they managed their interactions to raise
their profiles, show themselves to be “good team players”, learn about opportunities for advancement and
publicise their own successes.
Even so, networking in informal settings poses problems for many women. For some the issues are purely
practical; for others there is a question of “fit” and even legitimacy. On a general note, the lesson that
consistently emerges – not just from this study but from others – is that after-hours networking can be
professionally beneficial on the one hand but reputationally damaging on the other.
4. Mentoring
The women in our study who felt most successful had mentors or sponsors. Bosses and senior colleagues
helped them to understand how their organisations worked, took an interest in their career progress,
advised them on key decisions and introduced them to important people. Most of the time these we re
informal arrangements that had developed over the years.
Sadly, quite a few respondents didn’t enjoy such benefits. They told how, as women engineers, they were
seen as different and “risky”. Only when they had proved themselves could they find a senior male
colleague to take them on – and by then, at least in some cases, they didn’t even need mentors any
more.
5. Merit over “favours”
Perhaps the most important message to emerge from our study was that nothing beats competence. Our
respondents stressed again and again the value of getting the job done – and doing it well – in terms of
career progression. This harks back to the theme of determination and the benefits of giving women
engineers the chance to show themselves capable of the most difficult tasks.

2. The broader notion of a meritocracy is also relevant. Many major engineering organisations champion
diversity and inclusion initiatives, but a significant number of the women who took part in our study
regarded such schemes as unwarranted and unhelpful examples of “positive discrimination”. Junior and
less experienced respondents were especially indisposed towards what they described as “favours”,
preferring to move up the ladder solely on the strength of their capabilities rather than on the basis of a n
employer’s keenness to tick boxes and meet quotas.
Above all, what our respondents really disliked was being singled out as requiring “remedial” help.
Women-only groups that were organic and came from women themselves were accepted, but those
imposed from on high were shunned. An oft-expressed sentiment was that any guidance, boost or
sponsorship should be seen as a benefit to all rather than as a selective “favour”.
Do these survey results reflect what you see in your workplace? How do we change the culture in
engineering? Is culture solely responsible for the lack of women in engineering? Tell us in the comments.
Laurie Cohen is a Professor of Work and Organisation at Nottingham University Business School and the
author of Imagining Women’s Careers, published by Oxford University Press. The research discussed here
was carried out with Professor Joanne Duberley, of Birmingham Business School, and Dr Dulini Fernando,
of Warwick Business School.

3. Where are all the female innovators?
The Guardian. April 2015
The dearth of women in STEM careers isn’t from discrimination but a perception and visibility issue, says
Dame Sue Ion
Women now make up 24% of FTSE 100 board positions and are increasingly represented in high profile
science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles. Both the Royal Ac ademy of Engineering and the
Institution of Engineering and Technology have appointed female presidents in the last year; Dame Ann
Dowling and Naomi Climer respectively. The Institute of Physics has Frances Saunders at the helm,
and Louise Kingham is Chief Executive of the Energy Institute.
Many women are also at the cutting edge of innovation. Women such as Professor Eleanor Stride at the
University of Oxford, who is developing new treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s using microbubbles,
are pioneering new technologies to change our world. Asha Peta-Thompson is creating revolutionary
electronic textiles for military uniforms to help save soldiers’ lives, and Dame Wendy Hall is involved in
pioneering work towards the semantic web in order to make the data on the web more useable and
interlinked. These are just a few of the hundreds of amazing female innovators from across the STEM
sectors.
So, why is it, with high profile female innovators like this, that STEM is still often perceived as a career
more suited to men? The Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) “Engineer a better world”
research recently highlighted that a staggering 93% of parents would not support their daughter in
pursuing an engineering career. With that in mind, it’s perhaps not surprising that only around 13% of
STEM professionals in the UK are women.
I don’t believe that discrimination against women once they choose these STEM paths is responsible for
these stark figures. In over three decades in engineering, I have never personally experienced
discrimination, and I doubt the women mentioned above have either. The primary challenge is that, even
after years of efforts to change them, the public perceptions of STEM are largely misinformed and
outdated.
Science and IT suffer from the idea that they are geeky and solitary professions, which can be off -putting
to many girls and their parents when weighing up career options. Engineering, my own profession, is
often mistakenly believed to be all about engines, cars and bridges. In reality, it encompasses a vast
breadth of areas, from biomedicine to renewable energy, which is what makes it such a great career.
I believe we need more female STEM stars to reach the public conscience. For example, I’v e recently
taken on the role of Chair of Judges for the Royal Academy of Engineering Mac Robert Award, which is
widely recognised as the UK’s premier innovation prize. It’s the Oscars of the engineering world and the
perfect platform to show the public the very best of British engineering – but we need to see more female
faces in the teams applying.
There is no doubt that this fantastic female talent is out there, but I believe there can be reluctance
amongst women in STEM to stand up and shout about their accomplishments. This so-called “confidence
gap” is not unique to STEM (a frequently quoted statistic is that men apply for a job when they meet 60 %
of the qualifications while women apply only if they meet 100% of them) but it is particularly visible in our
sector. And for me, this unwillingness to promote ourselves really sums up the problem with the visibility
of female innovators.
Female scientists and engineers are few and far between in popular culture; they are novel, not the norm:
TV show sofas and news and science programming are filled by male innovators like James Dyson and
Mark Zuckerberg and high profile scientists like Brian Cox. A young girl seeing only male scientists and
technologists on TV, could be forgiven for thinking that these options are not open to her. It is only by
raising the profile of female innovators that we can change this.
Recent IET research suggests that having role models similar to them would have a huge impact on the
perception of STEM amongst children. For this reason, it is so important that we increase the visibility of
female innovators in popular culture. The more female role models we present in a diverse range of STEM
areas, the better chance we have of recruiting more women in the sector.
The media has great power in influencing young people’s life choices. In 2009, research into forensic
science degree programmes revealed that a third of students cited media influences and coverage of
forensic science as a reason to study the subject.
Imagine what a similar programme featuring female engineers or IT professionals could do to spread the
message about the diversity of STEM. As such, I’d urge my female peers to put themselves forward for

4. high profile awards like the MacRobert Award to ensure their work is publicised. Outreach activities are
vital too. Organisations like STEMNET are already doing great work in getting early career female
scientists into schools as ambassadors, and are always looking for more. You will make more of a
difference than you realise.
Innovation is key to the growth of our society and economy. STEM professions face a looming skills
shortage that threatens to hamper our ability to innovate as a nation. We can’t afford to put off half the
population from the start. We need more female innovators to stand up, shout about their successes, and
show the next generation how rewarding and enjoyable a job in STEM can really be.

5. Activity:
In pairs.
Student A reads the first article, Student B, the second one.
Each of them identifies the main points in the article, looks up the words they don't understand online
and write down a brief summary of the article.
They then explain the contents of their article to each other.
We view the video and they answer the following questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEeTLopLkEo
Which points from the articles does Debbie mention?
Do you agree with her?
Do you think her idea will indeed inspire the next generation of female engineers?