Little has changed

If football commentators think women can’t be referees we don’t have a cadre of members who think that women can’t be engineers

I was most interested to read your Editor’s Comment on encouraging women into engineering (PE February). It is a subject near to my heart. My mother was the second ever engineering graduate (1922) at Edinburgh and one of the few who took up a career in the front line of civil engineering. I am astonished how comparatively little things have changed for women since 1922 compared with almost everything else.

Currently I am an assessor – interviewer – mentor for the institution. In performing these jobs I am depressed by the tiny number of women coming forward for professional recognition and disappointed at the jobs that most do in contrast to the men. I may have been unlucky but with one exception the women in my several years of interviewing have all been doing “back office”, “support”, “coordination” jobs rather than creative, hands-on or front-line jobs. Not for want of ability or desire, I’d judge, but perhaps a reflection of what managers or employers (men?) perceive are the kinds of jobs suitable for women; and not much of a role model for other potential women engineers. If there is anything in this then the profession is part of the problem and can we be sure that if football commentators think women can’t be referees we don’t have a cadre of members who think that women can’t be engineers!

The arguments attributed to some women engineers and others that the kind of work done by Wise and UKRC is unnecessary and possibly patronising I do not buy into. We shouldn’t design our systems just for the clear-sighted, pushy or well-connected, otherwise we miss maybe 40% of the potential, or more given that girls are apparently doing better in exam results than boys.

I do not think that the activities of Wise should ever have been linked to government except in the loosest, facilitating of ways. In my view selling the profession to the young and to young women in particular is for the profession to deal with. Indeed I bet that the charters of the institutions require it. Your phrase “dedicated organisations which have worked in tandem with employers, professional bodies, education institutions and other groups and networks” sounds like a lot of scope for unnecessary costs and doing lots of business with ourselves with more acronyms to confuse our target audience.

For me the issue is clear. We must be more successful at getting women into the profession (and men as well, of course). We do not necessarily need to spend more money and certainly should not be reliant on government handouts. If we need more money then the profession as a whole should pay – even a short-term levy on members should not be unthinkable to sort the problem. I’m sure it is the kind of job to be led by a person whose stock-in-trade is creating and building and restoring brands. (And I think I know the man to start with.)

Roger Lindsay, East Horsley, Surrey