Engineering change takes all of us - yes, you too! (image (c) Institution of Civil Engineers) |
From valuing women and men's contributions equally to challenging bias, we can all contribute to a fairer workplace |
Although I still (annoyingly frequently) get older people declaring "Ooh, that's really unusual" when I tell them my profession, as a female engineer, I generally enjoy myself at work and I rarely notice the gender disparity.
For one thing, I studied in a cohort at Clare College, Cambridge where 5 of the 9 engineers in my year were girls (unfortunately, other colleges have considerably worse ratios and the overall course ratio is approximately 25% women). For another, I've chosen to work in the field which most interests me, ground engineering, where the deficiencies of civil engineering departments to attract sufficient women have been made up by geology courses which appeal equally to men and women, so my immediate colleagues have always been 50:50.
However, looking wider shows that this is not universal. I worked for a large engineering consultant in Leeds where 200 people delivered highways, flood defences, buildings and a range of environmental disciplines. Again, the presence of ecologists, archaeologists, architects and planning consultants made up for the low ratios in some of the teams, noticeably highways (why are women more likely to work in buildings and flood defences than highways?)
The York office of the same company was a different story, being solely rail (signalling, electrical, track and civil engineers). For over 12 months, I was the only woman regularly in the office other than the receptionist.
The office expanded and more women joined, but half of these were in lower status roles such as project management (with apparently few opportunities for training in the civil engineering which they were managing) and document control roles. (Tip: one of the best ways out of the skills crisis is to train your existing staff - night school and day release should be as available to a 40 year old wanting to diversify from HR or project management into engineering as a 22 year old apprentice!)
What does inclusive language look like?
Clare Brint is proudly supporting International Women's Day |
These are all examples of "unconscious bias", where we have a picture of what we expect a certain role to look like, and in engineering it has an uncanny tendency to ALWAYS look like a man (unless you're talking about the receptionist or admin assistant who just as frequently is assumed to be a woman). The English language doesn't help here, since we have no gender-neutral singular pronoun (it's repetitive to say "he or she" all the time, and some people object to "they" in the singular, although you could make a good argument that "the contractor" or "the client" is always a team anyway). My challenge is this: one day every week, I'm going to deliberately try to break the habit and use "she" or "they" as standard, except where the person is known to me personally (in which case, I could use their name!) What will YOU do? Here's how to make your own pledge.
Liked this?
See my new Business Book Club at: www.EdBucks.co.uk inspired by women who want to talk business!
See also:
- Fantastic TED talk from engineer Yassmin Abdel-Magied which illustrates unconscious bias beautifully.
- ICE Engineering Change - join the debate and watch inspiring short talks about how we can transform the construction industry's culture
- Inspiring women on our book blog EdBucks: Malala Yousafzai, Elaine Storkey and Waris Dirie.
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