The
Ada Lovelace Discussion on 10 December is titled ‘Are there sufficient women in
non-traditional roles/careers today If not, why not?’
I’m
mostly familiar with my field of STEM and engineering and based on current
statistics, the answer to the first question seems to be no. The latest figures
(August 2015[1])
for the UK suggest that women make up 14.4% of all people working in STEM
occupations and 8.2% working as engineering professionals.
So
why aren’t there more women? My recent 6 week secondment with WISE (Women in
Science and Engineering) has helped me with this question. Even though girls
continue to do out perform boys at GCSE/A-level STEM subject, many areas of
research suggest that some girls still don’t see non traditional STEM careers
or engineering for people like them and many aren’t progressing with the
subject options, such as physics, that are required for the engineering
profession. Although it’s about 50:50 at GCSE level for boy and girls doing
physics, at A-level it approximately 80:20[2]
and therefore this has a knock on effect in the work force.
Work
force figures are also affected, not only by the limited number of women
entering the profession, but also by retention issues whereby women leave the
profession because of lack of progression/training due to the culture of some
companies.
I
believe that one of the actions we can do to increase the numbers in the
workforce is to try and encourage girls, both at primary and secondary level,
to see engineering as a career for them. As a STEM Ambassador I go into primary
schools and show students (both boys and girls) what civil engineers do, the
varied nature of engineering and the positive impact engineers have on shaping
the society.
Working
with organisations such as SATRO also helps in encouraging girls into
engineering. The company I work for was recently involved in a SATRO programme
where an A-level student was given the opportunity to undertake research based
on an actual project. CGL provided the student a brief based on one of our major
brownfield sites in London and during the 2 weeks with the company she gained
an understanding of what ground engineering (both geotechnical and
geoenvironmental aspects) is all about. I supervised this work placement and it
was very encouraging to see the enthusiasm she had for engineering and she
helped to show me that with the right encouragement more girls could be driven
to consider a career in engineering.
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