‘Engineering’ Careers is a verb, not a noun!
It is a great day to celebrate — it’s International Women in Engineering Day! It is also a day we should contemplate what this means. While we verbalize this celebration, let’s take time to also ‘verb’-alize engineering careers for women — where we take a closer look at how women are doing at engineering their careers in engineering!
While STEM education has made inroads into engineering, as well as medicine, life sciences, computing and math, the fact that we are still describing this as ‘inroads’ and that we have to generate special programs like STEM, amply indicate women are still considered atypical in these fields, despite the progress we are repeatedly told is being made. So, in 2021, has anything really changed significantly?
What do some studies in this area identify –
1. Many work environments and industry sectors see women in the minority in work groups, where they are still forced to navigate outdated stereotypes and are challenged by long-held gender biases
2. Women holding Engineering and other STEM degrees often choose to work in areas such as healthcare and education rather than the STEM-related sector, while representation by women in STEM education has been described as uneven across the various sectors
3. There are work-related factors limiting career progression, with numbers of women leaving their STEM careers either permanently or through career breaks, including where diversity initiatives elicit ‘prototypicality’ threats from their male counterparts.
While these issues cannot be underestimated in influence or significance on women’s career progressions, we celebrate this day also cognizant of what is perhaps one of the most impactful negatives for women in Engineering or STEM-related roles — that of the limited number of female role-models. Once in the workforce and particularly at senior organizational levels, women lag considerably in comparison to men as a 2017 study states, “a combination of factors reduces the proportion of women at each stage of a scientific career”. Accordingly, educational attainment for women as a career strategy has improved access, at least up to middle-levels of management, but equity as represented in gender wages and attainment of executive level positions for women in Engineering and STEM-related roles remains significantly less accessible.
So, while we celebrate Engineering today as an education and job choice for women internationally, let’s look at the reality of women in engineering overall, and collectively work to ‘engineer’ engineering careers for women at all levels of an organization from technical roles through to executive and board positions. This is not about women achieving equity in their education, careers and salaries, but about women obtaining what they have a right to by choice not by program or quota; not being limited by gender or bias; or, adhering to a traditionally masculine-prescribed hierarchy of career progression. Remember, engineering an engineering career is a verb not a noun and what better time to orchestrate this than in the transformative and empowering age of the energy transition era!
About the author- Denise Mannix
Denise is an active Board Member of Lean In Energy, with over 30 years of international experience in Organizational Development, Leadership Development and Coaching. She is currently completing her PhD, researching women, education and meritocracy in the workplace, with a specific focus on women achieving executive and board positions in the 21st century workplace.
If you are interested in the studies mentioned here or a discussion, please feel free to contact Denise at denisemannix@hotmail.com
