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While this message is important industry-wide, it resonates with my own experiences within manufacturing and the lack of gender diversity among senior roles. More female engineers are entering the workforce, but we’ve not reached a point of true equality across the manufacturing industry.
We are, however, working towards change and there is some great support out there. Ahead of lockdown, I attended a week-long course focused on women in leadership. Here I heard from numerous inspiring women who shared their own experience of success, and it got me thinking about my own journey and what advice I would give to an engineer, male or female, entering the workforce.
To summarise, I would say: “Make sure your voice is heard, be as ambitious as you can and keep working hard to show that you can achieve bigger and better things.”
I never envisioned that I would be leading a team. To become a leader, you need to be a decision maker and that is something I struggled with at a young age. It is difficult as a young engineer to have your voice heard and to have the confidence to alter habits and make real change. It is tough when you are not being heard.
Before I moved to Scotland and started as a research associate at the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) 10 years ago, I worked as a research fellow across academic institutions in Russia and Germany, and struggled to adapt to an environment where people wouldn’t take note of what I had to say. I decided that I had to make sure I was being listened to. I needed strong statements with research and knowledge behind me to back them up. Often I would listen in to colleagues and think “I already told you that” – I had made the same point but it wouldn’t stick.
Hard work paid off and now I have a voice at the AFRC, but I have had to work on that throughout previous roles. People across the industry must push for the same. No matter the age, gender, nationality or language, it’s important that we have a diverse workforce that inspires innovation.
We need people from different walks of life, who all approach things differently and achieve varied results. Employees from different backgrounds and education provide refreshingly different viewpoints when devising new ideas, which is at the core of the innovation, creativity and problem-solving that is so fundamental to our industry.
The AFRC bridges the gap between industry and academia, collaborating with large companies and growing firms to help them innovate. As a centre of excellence in manufacturing technologies, R&D, and metal forming and forging research, it is important that we’re constantly pushing the boundaries with a constant stream of new ideas. To support industry, we need to approach things in a new way.
Our last intake of interns at the AFRC was roughly 50/50 in terms of gender. We have significantly more female technicians than when I first started, and it’s definitely becoming more balanced – 40% of the staff at the centre are under 35, half of whom are female. At the AFRC our chief operating officer and chief commercial officer roles are occupied by women, and as part of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland we are led by a female interim chief executive officer.
What’s important is that we make these voices heard and listen to the great ideas that our young people and female colleagues have to offer.
If we are going to ensure that the manufacturing industry has an equal workforce across the board, let’s allow space for change. When we are all on an equal playing field, the possibilities of a shared voice are incredible and we can shape the world together.
For more information on International Women in Engineering Day, visit the website here.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.