For 30 years, the engineering profession has tied itself in knots over the issue of gender imbalance, insisting that something needs to be done but achieving very little. During that time, one damning statistic has remained constant – just 9% of engineers are women.
Step forward Naomi Climer, the new president of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), who thinks the time for talking has come to an end. She proposes a radical, and controversial, solution for the lack of women engineers – the imposition of quotas.
It’s a desperate approach to a stubborn problem, she admits. But, despite the best efforts of many industry campaigns, there has been such little progress in attracting more women into engineering that Climer believes that the time is right to consider enforced action – through either all-female selection lists or specific gender targets.
“Even when I started out as an engineer some 30 years ago, there was talk of what we were going to do to deal with the lack of women,” she recalls. “Quotas were proposed then, and I was violently opposed to them, as they felt like too dramatic a measure. But I have jogged along for 30 years, assuming things would get better. So it’s a shock to see that gender statistics haven’t changed. I’m despairing. This won’t fix itself.”
Climer is keen to point out that she doesn’t see quotas as the only means of addressing gender imbalance. The IET has collaborated with the Prospect trade union to come up with a series of recommendations for employers on how to recruit, promote and retain more experienced women in science, technology and engineering roles. She also thinks that companies should measure and publish diversity statistics on recruitment, retention, promotion and pay, and then benchmark themselves against other firms in the sector.
But she thinks these softer measures might not be enough in isolation, and suggests that quotas could be used in tandem to provide a rounded framework of gender best practice. “Quotas are a blunt instrument, a hideous tool, but there is evidence that they do work if you want a quick step-change in numbers,” she says. “They do make me uneasy and I know that they can be incredibly divisive and hugely unpopular. If we could get some genuine shift in attitudes and effort without them, that would be great. Quotas are an absolute last resort, but I think they should remain on the table.”
Courting controversy
Climer knows that quotas are a controversial subject, and are bound to attract a lot of flak from some members of the profession. One criticism is that quotas are ineffective if there simply aren’t enough women engineering graduates.
“There are fewer women engineers in the workplace than there are at university. So there’s definitely an improvement that could be achieved. Companies would tell you that they are doing everything they can to recruit women, but sometimes they just don’t apply. If there was this loud, screaming pull from industry, that would help,” she says.
Start in the schools
Climer isn’t alone in thinking that quotas could be the answer to gender imbalance. Peter Finegold, head of education and skills at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, also thinks they should be considered. He agrees that the percentage of women engineers in the UK – the lowest in Europe – reflects pretty badly on the profession. But his primary solution to the issue is a greater focus on the way that engineering is approached in schools, so that more girls and boys choose routes into the profession.
Finegold points towards the IMechE’s Five Tribes report, a significant piece of research carried out into how engineering is perceived by the young. This found that not enough focus was being placed on the areas of engineering that girls are most interested in.
“Our research, as part of the Five Tribes: Personalising Engineering Education report, showed that young women tend to have a greater affinity with engineering connected to design, medicine, sports and the environment. This really should be reflected in the way Stem subjects are presented to them in school,” he says.
Another area of focus, he says, should be the creation of an academic environment that maximises the chance of girls pursuing careers in engineering.
“Research by Professor Louise Archer and her team at King’s College London has shown that girls who choose physics A-level are often academically very able, come from families with a strong background in science and engineering, and are proud to be ‘different’ from other girls. One way of building this resilience in other girls would be to delay the point at which they make their subject choices. This is one of the recommendations emerging from the recent IMechE/Royal Academy of Engineering expert workshop on Big Ideas in Engineering Education.”
Further along the line, Finegold says more needs to be done to keep women engineers from leaving the profession. “We need to focus on retaining female engineers once they have started their careers, for example by recognising different needs and mechanisms to manage extended leave, such as maternity leave,”
Whatever the best means of addressing gender imbalance, doing nothing is not an option. Climer from the IET says it isn’t sustainable to be attracting talent from an ever-diminishing pool. “Diversity is good for the bottom line because mixed teams – whether of race, gender or age – are more creative and better able to come up with solutions for problems,” she says. “So it’s frustrating and disappointing that the sector’s glaring gender disparity has not been fixed.”
Not everyone thinks quotas are the answer
The idea of using quotas to deal with the issue of gender imbalance is not meeting with universal acceptance within the industry. The main objection is that it will produce ‘box-ticking’ recruitment, which doesn’t always lead to the best candidate getting the job.
Richard Selby, director of Monmouthshire-based construction and project management firm Pro Steel Engineering, sums up these concerns. “While I agree that we need more women in engineering, I don’t think quotas are the way to go. When you start setting targets, positions are opened and hires are made purely to fill numbers rather than on the merits of the candidates.
“As a director in the industry, I am not seeing enough women applying for roles, which makes it hard to level out a gender imbalance. We need to focus on the early stages of education, combat gender stereotypes and encourage young girls into science, even at primary school level, to foster an interest in engineering.”
Selby adds that the industry needs to do more to welcome women. “There is a lot of press about how the industry needs a greater female presence, but I don’t see much about how specific companies are creating an environment that is attractive to that demographic. We should hold up the women already working in our industry as role models, instead of lamenting about how there are not enough.”
Sexism was rife, says experienced engineer
Dr Lucy Rogers, an IMechE fellow, can remember her first shocking encounter with sexism within weeks of becoming a newly qualified graduate engineer.
Having gone to a girls school and dreamed of entering the profession, she won a placement at one of the biggest engineering employers on Tyneside. But after sailing through her training, she was in for a surprise. “I finished the graduate scheme, and was immediately told that I was not allowed to attend the Christmas party, as it was for men only. Soon it became clear that my main role was going to be filing, even though I had done all the training and met all the grades. So I went to another firm where I was told I wasn’t expected to pick up a spanner. Some of this was to do with gallantry, while others thought that I simply wouldn’t be able to physically manage it. Eventually, I left to set up a consultancy.”
Despite these experiences, Rogers is unconvinced by calls for quotas. “I can see why such calls are being made,” she says. “It at least means that women’s CVs get looked at. I hear shocking stories of how female engineers leave their first names off of job applications, as they are concerned that gender will stop them getting in the door.
“But I can also see how quotas could backfire. It provokes comments along the lines of ‘you only got the job because you’re female, so we don’t trust your capabilities’. Quotas are not necessarily a catch-all answer. That said, there is still a lot of conscious and unconscious gender bias in the profession.”