Creating a healthy workplace – supporting and retaining female talent

• Margaret Cooke ^[1]
  1. [1] BSc
• Localización: The Structural Engineer: journal of the Institution of Structural Engineer, ISSN 1466-5123, Vol. 99, Nº. 6, 2021, págs. 39-41
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • International Women’s Day, International Women in Engineering Day. I suspect my equivocal attitude to these ‘days’ is shared by many. A bit gimmicky maybe? Lip service? What are they actually for? I have used the occasion to refl ect on where we are as a profession and have found my refl ection challenging, as a female engineer, as an employer and as a colleague.

    As a profession, we are making progress in attracting women. There have been greater numbers of women entering the profession in recent years and this is borne out by IStructE membership statistics: the proportion of female members at Student grade has increased from just 9.9% in 2008 to 26.5% today, and women now make up 18.3% of Graduate members.

    This is a great step, but overall female membership remains low at 15% and even lower within the professional grades. Time will gradually improve matters as the greater female cohorts of students and young graduates advance in their careers, but it takes 10 years for a student to progress from university, into practice and through graduate training before becoming professionally qualifi ed.

    We must think about how these women will fare in a male-dominated profession and we should consider how their experiences will aff ect eff orts to increase the number of young women enrolling on engineering degrees.

    We cannot rely on the small number of professional females to be the role models for every girl, and we also cannot rely on these women to change our workplace culture to make it attractive. It is the overwhelming majority of senior male colleagues who have to create that cultural shift.