Engineering news
Dr Hugh Hunt is a Reader in Cambridge University’s Engineering Department. This week he was announced as the recipient of the Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke Award for the public promotion of engineering.
It's National Women in Engineering Day, and the question around diversity in the sector rightly comes again to the top of the agenda. The UK engineering profession is heavily male-dominated: only 7% of engineers in the UK are women. But working with engineers from all over the world, it’s clear that the gender divide isn’t nearly as wide elsewhere. One of my research areas is Climate Engineering, or “how do we cool the planet if we fail to meet our CO2 emissions targets”. That community is substantially more gender-balanced and diverse than others I’ve worked in, and everyone feels the benefit of that.
So why don’t we see this balance more widely in engineering fields? I think that the divide begins much earlier than we realise. I suspect most mums and dads don’t even think of engineering as a career option for their daughters. In fact, the IET’s latest research suggested that this is also true for boys, but to a lesser extent. For me, the biggest concern is that too many people don’t actually know what engineering is.
In schools, we need to make much stronger connections between subjects and real-life engineering. Spacecraft engineers use trigonometry, so why do so many maths students believe that a degree in that subject is your only option? I give talks to school kids studying maths, and it’s clear how excited they are when they see its role in the real world. I’ve also tried to bring engineering to life through TV documentaries and speaking at festivals, but we have more to do. Girls are twice as likely as boys to feel that engineering is simply about cars, and the majority of kids say that they don’t know anything about careers in engineering. According to the RAEng, the number of UK students graduating with engineering degrees has been almost static for eight years!
Engineering has a wider branding issue. For hundreds of years, the work of engineers has shaped our lives, and it was visible to us. But these days we seem to prefer if it’s hidden from view. The workings of a car are completely invisible, and our shiny smartphones give no hint of the technology buried inside! Because of this, the image of engineering is still ridiculously Victorian – it’s dark, dirty and no place for a woman. The reality is far from that, and we need to show our children.
This is where outreach comes in. As engineers, we often just work in the background. But to inspire tomorrow’s engineers, we need to open ourselves up to being role models. Some say that it’s up to female engineers to work to attract women into the profession, but as they make up such a small proportion of the sector, it will always be challenging to be visible enough. So while we absolutely need more female role models, they shouldn’t have to do it alone.
It’s not right for men to use maleness as an excuse for inaction – look at the huge impact that Brian Cox has had on inspiring the next generation of physicists, both male and female. If we really want to change perceptions of engineering, we all need to be noticed - wave our arms about a bit. I suspect if we do that, we’ll have kids knocking at our door.
I’ve seen from my work in climate engineering how important it is that our profession reflects the gender balance of our society. Men and women, we can do it: let’s get all our children excited about engineering!