'Are there sufficient women in non-traditional roles today?' by guest blogger Keisha Smith

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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[1] https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/resources/2015/09/women-in-the-stem-workforce

[2] https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/resources/2015/08/stem-a-level-and-gcse-statistics

- Keisha Smith

What is it like to complete a SATRO Extended Work Placement? Case Study by Toby Peterken

My name is Toby Peterken.  I am currently a student at Esher College.  For my AS year I studied maths, further maths, physics and philosophy and now, for my final year, I am continuing with maths, further maths and physics.   Following my A Levels, I am hoping to complete a degree in either physics or theoretical physics.  I aim to remain in academia - achieving a Ph.D. and then staying on as a research fellow and with any luck becoming a professor of physics. 

I heard about the SATRO placements through an email from college and applied for a placement for several reasons.  Obviously it looks amazing on a UCAS form or a CV, however that wasn’t my motivation.  My main draw to this placement was that it was the first opportunity I have had to make a real contribution.  With year 10 work experience placements or with 1 week summer academies you learn a lot, however you never seem to do any actual work, whereas my work at SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd) did matter – it was the first time this technique had been looked at on land in such significant amounts, so everything I did was new. 

My project was to analyse the data from a satellite to see if there were any correlations between the strength of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) reflections and the landforms below and by doing this, see if there were any useful applications of this.  The first 2 weeks were spent mainly programming; I had to create the tools that mapped the data onto Google Earth.  Then we realised that there was too much data and the computer kept crashing, so I had to program another tool that allowed me to load only the data in a certain region.  Then I had to analyse the data, discovering correlation with different landforms below and showing that this technique could potentially be used for mapping deforestation.  I also got to reprogram the timing system for the receiver on the satellite.  

The main skill I learned was programming, this includes more than just learning what a particular line of code does.  I had to learn how to break down large problems into small tasks.  I learned how to go through and debug a program with rigour.  I wrote a program in my first week which, although it worked, was written inefficiently and it just felt messy, so during my last week I rewrote it.  From what I had learned initially, I was able to make the code more elegant and I completed it in much less time. I also understood what other job opportunities were on offer, as I had no idea how much variation there could be with applied physics.