If the caps fits: Hard hats are not necessarily always worn by qualified engineers
Engineers still get misrepresented in the media, despite top-down efforts by organisations such as the Institution of Mechanical Engineers to change inaccurate perceptions of the profession. That can lead to an ignorance in some sections of society about the varied and important work that engineers do and the massive contribution they make to our economy.
In fairness, there are plenty of decent engineering-related programmes on TV these days. BBC One’s Bang Goes the Theory and BBC Two’s How to Build a Jumbo Jet Engine are recent examples of high-quality output that has portrayed the profession in a positive and accurate light. And engineers, on the whole, benefit from a far more favourable profile than other professionals, certainly bankers and lawyers, for example.
But outdated perceptions do still occur. The term engineer is still misused in the media, whether it is a TV presenter referring to a car mechanic as an ‘automotive engineer’ or a British Gas advert telling us they will send round one of their friendly ‘engineers’ to fix our broken boiler. This will often be in a bid to make a job title sound more prestigious, at least signalling that engineers retain a high standing in the public’s subconscious.
Over the years, the casual misuse of the word engineer has watered down its meaning and made it a term synonymous with ‘mechanic’. While mechanics perform valuable roles, there is no getting away from the fact that this is a wildly incorrect representation of the complex and creative work that engineers carry out.
Misrepresentation can occur in different forms – stock photos of ‘engineers’ stood around on building or industrial sites wearing oil-stained overalls, steel toe-capped boots and the humble yellow hard hat abound.
Perpetuation of this stereotyped image prompted the Sainsbury Management Fellows’ Society (SMF) to carry out a survey whimsically named the Hard Hat Index, between October 2011 and April 2013. The society monitored the appearance of hard hats in carefully selected engineering media for 12 months and in the national broadsheets for 18 months. While the SMF admits that this was a lighthearted piece of research, it still gives a revealing insight into the media’s representation of engineers.
The survey found 185 depictions of engineers wearing hard hats in 16 engineering titles (118 adverts and 67 editorials). Nine national newspapers featured 940 hard hats: 258 adverts and 682 editorials.
Too often the media confines engineers to the typically masculine realms of construction and manual jobs. Industrial design engineer Helen Marshall collaborated on a report on public attitudes to engineers for the Royal Academy of Engineering and discovered a worrying trend. She says: “The quantitative survey findings showed that people’s ‘top of mind’ associations with the word ‘engineer’ vary widely. The most frequently mentioned related to construction and mechanics – associations that put the profession into the role of building or fixing things rather than design, innovation or creativity.”
We can see how this media bias has a direct influence on the public’s perception of the profession when combined with the findings from SMF’s YouGov poll of more than 2,000 people. Of those asked, 63% believed the hard hat is worn by engineers on an average working day. Engineers were perceived to work mainly on construction and industrial sites, with only 40% believing that engineering can take place in an office. In other words, the public’s perception of engineers leans closer to that of Bob the Builder than James Bond’s engineering mastermind Q.
People’s ‘top of mind’ associations with the word ‘engineer’ vary widely. The most frequently mentioned related to construction and mechanics
Some in the profession may care little that their industry is so widely misunderstood and meet such statistics with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders. Or else they believe that worrying about public opinion is nothing more than vanity, and it has little real impact on their industry apart from an occasional case of bruised pride when the latest technological innovation fails to grab headlines. But a growing number view the incorrect portrayal of engineers as harmful to the industry.
Showing in mainstream media the diverse and exciting work that engineers do should see the public caring more about issues affecting the industry and not overlooking the key role it plays in our society.
SMF president David Falzani explains why building a better brand identity for engineers is key to attracting new and diverse talent to enter, and stay in, the profession: “The institutions and educational establishments are doing good work to encourage more young people into engineering,” he says, “but the industry is neglecting the impact of the visual identifiers they use for engineers. Whether this neglect is due to a lack of awareness of the importance of this issue or sheer laziness, ‘brand engineering’ needs a radical overhaul. We must better understand the importance of image to Generation Y and replace outmoded images with more dynamic and appealing ones.”
The good news is that there are engineers out there actively talking to the media, taking great steps to change the public’s perception of engineering and becoming prominent media figures in their own right. One of these is chartered engineer and fellow of the IMechE Dr Lucy Rogers. She has been on BBC radio, written a popular science book – It’s ONLY Rocket Science – and was shortlisted for last year’s Rooke Medal by the Royal Academy of Engineering for her innovative promotion of the profession using social media.
While Rogers is quick to play down her media standing, referring to herself as an “accidental role model”, she is keen to stress the importance of having positive public figures for engineering in mainstream media because, in her own words, if you don’t see it, you don’t think to become it.
Rogers says it would be good to get ‘proper’ engineers in the soaps and sitcoms: “The Big Bang Theory [US sitcom] is good for scientists,” she says, “and to have an engineering comedy programme would be fantastic. But how I suggest that to the media is a slightly hard sell.”
While we may not be watching Rogers’ sitcom on our TV screens any time soon, she has made much better progress promoting the profession on our computer screens. Documenting her life as an engineer on Twitter has given people the chance to see the creative, fun and exciting sides to the career.
Rogers just talks about her life as an engineer and lets the public do with the information what they will. This alone, perhaps combined with the fact that she’s a lesser spotted female engineer, has been enough to capture the public’s imagination and gained her more than 8,000 followers – and counting.
“I just tweet the stuff that I find interesting and the stuff that I do,” she says. “I’m not hiding the fact I’m female but I’m not pushing the fact either. I’m just saying ‘hey, I’m me and I’m doing this’. From that, people say ‘Oh, a female engineer. They’re not all car mechanics!’.”
Dr Shini Somara, a qualified mechanical engineer, is also making great strides in overhauling the profession’s image within the media and has forged a separate career as a TV presenter. She has made appearances on the BBC’s The One Show, and is currently working for Al Jazeera America as the resident engineering expert on its show Techknow. With a degree in classical ballet, a qualification in aerobics instruction and occasional forays into the fashion world as a model, she certainly isn’t the kind of stereotyped engineer that we are used to seeing on our screens.
Somara hopes that just by making regular appearances as an engineer on TV she can help to alter people’s preconceptions. She is also keen to show the public that engineering doesn’t always have to be seen as a masculine profession. “For me engineering can be very graceful and elegant, for example the Millennium Bridge in London,” she says. “It’s so fragile looking and there’s an elegance and refinement to the bridge, and yet what holds it up are very masculine principles of tension, stress, and forces.”
Somara is passionate about publicising the exciting developments in technology and science but agrees that so much more can be done to glamorise the world of engineering to capture the public’s attention. For instance, she asks, why wasn’t more being done to publicise the engineering expertise that helped our athletes at the London Olympics?
She understands the reticence of some engineers to talk about their work, having experienced it herself. “When I was doing my PhD I was so in the thick of my research it was like having academic blinkers on… you do become quite pedantic about your work,” she says.
For Somara, the solution was attending a week-long course as part of her engineering doctorate. This covered how to talk to journalists, simplify terms to make them media friendly and find ‘hooks’ to engage the general public.
When it seems so vital to spread the message about the great work of engineers, it begs the question whether there should be more media skills taught as part of engineering degrees and doctorates.
Someone who may agree is engineer and materials scientist Mark Miodownik. He is a firm believer in the power of the media and the importance it has to play in the industry, particularly if companies want to attract new talent. “The media is where all the agendas get set for young people,” he says, “so if you’re out of the media you’re out of the game.”
Miodownik came to this conclusion when working as a professor in the mechanical engineering department of University College London. He felt there was a correlation between the distinct lack of British PhD students choosing to study engineering and the absence of positive role models for the profession in popular culture.
He decided to show the public and others in the industry that being an engineer doesn’t mean you’re confined to a back-of-house function. He has since presented a host of BBC programmes, including the popular How it Works series, has written the widely celebrated book Stuff Matters, and is the resident engineer on comedian Dara O Briain’s Science Club.
Miodownik also takes a far from sympathetic view of the plight of the engineer in the media, believing there’s no one to blame but the engineers. He sees the need for a shift in attitudes about dealing with the press within the industry, stressing that chief executives should be responsible for initiating the change from the top down, as too many don’t see the value in talking to journalists or don’t believe it’s part of their role.
He says: “People think that because they make an amazing mobile phone or a motorway that they don’t really have to talk about it, because there it is. ‘It’s there, drive on it, it speaks for itself’ – but it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.”
Miodownik stresses that it’s time the engineering world chooses to utilise the influence and power of the media and takes control of the public’s perception of the industry.
He is adamant that there are no lack of amazing stories to tell, it’s just about deciding to tell them.
More people in the industry are waking up to the importance of how engineers are represented in the media, and many more are deciding to step into the limelight to change the public’s perception. The question is, how long will it take to start changing such deeply ingrained stereotypes?