Overcoming the barriers facing

women in engineering

AVIATION • CONSTRUCTION • DEFENCE & GOVERNMENT CONNECTING TALENT, TECHNICAL ENGINEERING • FIXED PRICE • MANAGED SERVICES IMPROVING BUSINESS Women in Engineering

Introduction

The engineering sector is operating under something of a contradiction. In this post-recessionary environment, firms up and down the UK are afflicted by an acute talent shortage. Yet when you consider the statistic from the Women’s Engineering Society that 9% of the UK’s engineering workforce is made up of women – the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe – and that women now make up 46% of workers in the UK, the numbers clearly don’t add up. Despite not having enough people to satisfy demand, the sector is still somehow missing out on almost half of its potential workforce.

This issue is particularly prevalent in technical disciplines such as construction, aviation and IT, which are known for being male- dominated.

Are companies simply overlooking women or are women overlooking engineering? Does the fact that we need to even ask that latter question suggest there’s a cultural divide separating women from potential careers in engineering?

In this insight paper, we’ll discuss the reasons for the shortage of women in these sectors and what companies can do to address this shortage.

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Construction

Papering over the cracks

In perhaps the most stereotypically male of all industry sectors, women currently make up under 10% of all construction employees. In its article “Inclusivity: the Changing Role of Women in the Construction Workforce,” the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) describes the UK’s construction skills shortage as “a threat to the long-term health of the industry” – which makes it all the more astonishing that we’re apparently under- utilising our human resources.

With an ageing workforce and many companies filling the skills gap with cheap labour from abroad, the construction industry seems to have “The lack of women in the adopted a short-term attitude that doesn’t bode industry not only well for its future existence. contributes to the gender

The lack of women in the industry not only pay gap, but also deprives contributes to the gender pay gap, but also us of a considerable pool of deprives us of a considerable pool of talent. We talent.” need to grow and cultivate a skilled, sustainable workforce that will be here for the long haul. We need to grow and cultivate a balanced workforce.

Construction’s cultural conundrum

The answer’s surely a simple one: “To meet the challenge of the skills gap,” says the CIOB, “the recruitment of women is no longer simply a nice thing to do; it has become a necessity.” But necessity doesn’t appear to be the mother of invention in this case. In fact, the reason for the lack of women is very much cultural: “The main factor that unequivocally hinders the absorption of women in the construction sector remains the organisational work culture of the industry, which needs to become more flexible to encompass a good work-life balance.”

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It’s easy to believe when you see the numbers. According to the Office for National Statistics, 44% of female employees work part-time compared to 11% of males. Yet only 5% of all UK construction jobs are part-time.

This alone excludes almost half the potential female workforce. With long hours and a lack of flexible working opportunities, women find it difficult re-entering the construction industry after maternity leave. To keep their existing female employees and attract others, construction employers will have to provide retraining and implement flexible working practices such as flexitime, part-time hours, home working and job sharing.

In construction, there’s still a cultural need to be ‘seen’ at work. Yet elsewhere, more and more companies are judging success on factors other than the number of hours worked. When marketing coaching and consulting firm ConvergenceCoaching asked accounting firms how they measure success, 42% of the 155 surveyed in 2015 said they had implemented non- time based measures, compared to 39% in 2014.

Another 17% were considering doing so, up from 13% the previous year. With companies increasingly using metrics, competency models, evaluations and written goals, they’re starting to recognise that

It’s not the amount of time you spend in the office that’s important, it’s how you use it.

Construction companies will need to assess, modify and modernise their working cultures in order to provide a more supportive backdrop for their female employees.

From the ground up

Steve Burnham, Manager at Carbon60, believes that the problem goes much deeper than flexible working and starts much earlier than attraction: “It’s more complicated than the industry shunning 50% of the workforce. The bigger issue is that the workforce is not a true representation of society. If 100 site managers applied for a job, 97 would be male because there are only three female site managers in the local area. Girls as a whole just aren’t as into technical and engineering at formative ages in school or college.

Companies should consider how they can influence at grassroots – encouraging STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), school visits, work experience – either alone or as part of a consortium.”

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Burnham also sees “significant barriers for women” in getting into senior management or leadership roles “because most construction MDs tend to be engineers that have risen through the ranks. Boys who played with Lego, studied maths and engineering, became a site engineer, then site manager, then project manager, then project director, then contracts manager, then regional director, then managing director.”

While buying girls Lego might feel like a slightly churlish solution, the point is a salient one. Construction needs to become engrained into female minds as a viable career option, one where they’ll be valued, fulfilled and have the potential to grow. Aviation

Appearances deceptive

At face value, it appears that women are pretty well- represented in aviation. Around two-thirds of ticketing and sales personnel in the UK are female, meaning a person could book, prepare for and board a flight with predominantly female assistance. But the story beyond the pre-flight façade is very different. Figures from the 2004 Labour Force Survey show that around 11% of aerospace employees are female.

Clare Walker, Chairman of the Royal Aeronautical Society's (RAeS) Women in Aviation and Aerospace Committee, believes the lack of visible role models is hindering female numbers in the sector. Continual exposure to successful role models would make more young girls believe non-traditional roles are achievable. So why would an airline apparently consider women for only certain roles?

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Failure to launch

Figures from the RAeS show that the number of boys and girls taking STEM subjects is fairly even up to the age of 16. But only 11% of those studying STEM subjects in higher education are female. Girls seem to undergo a significant change in attitude between secondary and further education, which educational institutions and employers alike need to understand and help address. Mireille Goyer, an airline pilot and aviation educator, believes “that a key barrier to women’s participation in the air and space industry is the common perception that the field is ‘for men.’” To allow women to get their aviation careers off the ground, we therefore need to prepare the runway.

Airbus is at the forefront of these efforts. The aviation giant runs frequent events to encourage interest in STEM subjects and to attract girls to engineering. It has also launched a three- month Industrial Cadets programme to teach girls about aeronautical engineering and aviation. To help prepare women for senior management positions, Airbus has devised a dedicated training programme called GROW.

Numerous industry bodies have also introduced training initiatives to help girls and women get started in aviation. Women 1st, which aims to make serious change at boardroom level, runs a pre-employment programme called Step into Aviation, providing specific training on the skills needed to enter the industry. Women in Aviation International, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the encouragement of women in all aviation career fields, offers learning programmes to educators, aviation industry members and young people, including Girls in Aviation Day for girls aged 8-16.

Taking to the skies

But it’s not just about the theory. According to Michelle Bassanesi, founder of Aviation and Women in Europe (AWE), “more programmes like Young Eagles, KidVenture and Women Soar which give young women the chance to get hands-on flying experience, are key to inspiring them into taking up careers in the sector. It was with this in mind that Mireille Goyer established Women of Aviation Worldwide Week in 2011.

Taking place annually during the week of 8th March – International Women’s Day and the anniversary of the world’s first female pilot license – Women of Aviation Worldwide Week is a global outreach initiative designed to raise awareness of aviation opportunities for girls, while celebrating the accomplishments of female aviators. As of March 2015, over 96,000 have directly participated in the annual celebrations and 21,656 documented ‘Fly It Forward’ flights (introducing a girl or woman to flying) have taken place across five continents. It’ll take more proactivity, more involvement from key industry players and more initiatives like this to bring about widespread and long-lasting change. But the subject matter certainly helps.

Offering the opportunity to take control of a marvel of engineering and soar thousands of metres above the Earth, aviation is by its very nature an aspirational, transcendent pastime like very few others. If companies can’t excite women about aviation, perhaps they’re not doing enough.

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IT

Technology lost in translation

The House of Lords Select Committee’s report on digital skills says that bringing more women into technology would generate £2.6 billion for the economy.

Yet women make up under 30% of the ICT workforce, comprising around 20% of computer graduates and under 10% of app developers.

The academic breakdown is even more concerning: fewer than 6,000 female students are currently enrolled in university computing courses, compared to just under 25,000 male students, suggesting the immediate talent pipeline will only add to the current level of underrepresentation. With a shortage of talent and huge growth forecast for the sector, it’s crucial that the industry finds more ways of encouraging young women to pursue a career in IT.

In its Women in Technology Project Research Report 2015, Tech Women UK found that women were hindered by: a “lack of appropriate careers education;” the sector being “very much seen as a male dominated environment with very few, if any, visible female role models;” “lack of early engagement in technology;” and teachers and parents “not confident and knowledgeable in technology themselves.”

Coding DNA

Clearly, all these factors are closely related. Girls need to be educated, engaged and encouraged about technology from an early age – even “in nursery and primary schools” according to Tech Women UK – so that they don’t approach it later in education with any preconceived notions about its relevance to girls or their ability to pursue it as a successful career.

With digital skills becoming more and more important and IT permeating almost every conceivable industry, there’s no reason why girls shouldn’t approach IT in the same way they do English or art. Tech Women UK believes that “parents and teachers play a critical role in influencing future employment options for all young people.” Accordingly, statistics from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) show that 28% of parents of boys, but only 6% of parents of girls, regard engineering as the career their child would be most interested in. Perhaps education is just as important for parents and teachers as it is young girls.

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Perhaps as adults become more and more comfortable with technology, future generations will do a better job of projecting girls into such subjects. Perhaps when adults start believing, girls can start to believe too.

Turning the techno tide

When it comes to providing that inspiration, few organisations do more than STEMettes. Collaborating with schools and major corporations such as Accenture, STEMettes aims to inspire the next generation of females into STEM fields with panel events, hackathons, exhibitions and mentoring schemes.

They aim to make STEM participation something to be proud of, something subversive – even selling t-shirts that allow girls to wear their interest in STEM like an academic badge of honour that revels in and challenges traditional perceptions.

Many of the industry’s giants are doing a lot to address the lack of women in IT. Capgemini runs a range of initiatives under its Women@Capgemini programme, including their Women's Business Network, which attracts inspirational female speakers. The Cisco Women's Action Network aims to develop female leaders through mentoring and discussion.

Fujitsu’s twice-yearly event, Women in Technology, brings leading female professionals together to discuss how to get more women into technology jobs and how to nurture the next generation of female leaders.

There’s a lot happening to change things in the sector. “The UK and US governments, industry and not-for-profit organisations have developed (and funded) a range of formal and informal learning and networking initiatives to encourage young people to explore coding and digital technology,” says Tech Women UK. By “encouraging girls and women to code through enrichment programmes and out of school initiatives” and “providing mentorship and role models,” the foundations are being laid for real change in the sector. But all these parties will need to continue devising, running and acting on these initiatives – and many more key industry players will need to get involved too – to permanently alter perceptions for girls from an early age. Conclusion

The foundations are laid, the runway’s clear, the code’s been written

The overly male nature of the UK’s engineering industry is very much deep-set. Bringing about significant change will require not only the adoption of suitable methods of attraction, motivation and coaching, but also the changing of an entire mind set – for girls as well as for parents, teachers and hiring managers. It will require education, encouragement and nurturing. The signs are that governments, companies and industry bodies have started to recognise their responsibility to bring about change and are taking steps to alter perceptions and open doors.

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But in order for these doors to open wide enough, these groups will need to work together to maintain girls’ interest in STEM subjects from primary to higher and further education – to make STEM as attractive as the arts subjects.

And once women are attracted to careers in engineering, companies will need to provide the rewards, progression opportunities and flexibility they need to stay there.

Sources

“Inspiring the Next Generation of Engineers” – Institution of Engineering and Technology

“Inclusivity: the Changing Role of Women in the Construction Workforce” – Chartered Institute of Building www.wes.org.uk

“The Future for Women in Aviation and Airspace” – The Royal Aeronautical Society www.womenofaviationweek.org www.women1st.co.uk www.wai.org www.convergencecoaching.com/how-does-your-firm-measure-success

“Make or Break: the UK’s Digital Future” – House of Lords Select Committee on Digital Skills

“The Women in Technology Project Research Report 2015” – Tech Women UK www.stemettes.org

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