All posts filed under: women in engineering

young women who love engineering

April 29, 2014
by barrie weaver
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career guidance / engineering heroes / explaining engineering / image of engineering / royal academy of engineering / shortage of engineers / the status of engineers / women in engineering

Engineering envelops every aspect of our lives, yet here in Britain it is much undervalued by a huge percentage of the population. According to a study by the Robert Bosch Group only 23% of the young think Engineering is of any importance to our economy. So why aren’t the young, and girls in particular, being attracted into Engineering? Last year only 400 girls completed engineering apprenticeships, whilst 58,600 studied Health and Social Care. The image of engineers as greasy […]

David Cameron, a rivet, and the casino culture

February 6, 2014
by barrie weaver
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career guidance / engineering heroes / explaining engineering / image of engineering / royal academy of engineering / shortage of engineers / the status of engineers / women in engineering

The banking fraternity’s casino culture destroyed any true balance of reward for effort. It created a get rich culture that imploded.   In this humorous yet serious clip Stephen Bayley argues that we must return to a society that understands and values engineering and manufacturing. Engineering is grounded in a respect for human skills. Engineering underpins every aspect of our day to day lives, yet as a nation we seem to take it for granted. […]

‘a hell of an engineer’

January 29, 2014
by barrie weaver
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career guidance / engineering heroes / image of engineering / shortage of engineers / women in engineering

Whilst the establishment might frown at this over the top celebration of the challenges and excitement of engineering we should not underestimate its impact.   Let’s remember that this 115 sec clip has been viewed over 3 million times on You-tube since August 2013. It has radically raised the profile of Georgia Tech as an exciting place to study, reinforced the idea that studying engineering can be fun, may have swayed undecided students towards engineering……… […]

dyson; the example to follow

January 23, 2014
by barrie weaver
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engineering heroes / explaining engineering / image of engineering / shortage of engineers / women in engineering

      News today that James Dyson is planning to invest £250M in a new R&D facility. Creating the building and facility is one challenge; finding the engineers to fill it is another.     “It will be impossible to find the additional 3,000 engineers needed unless the Government makes engineering a more attractive career choice”, said the entrepreneur. “As a country, we need an extra 87,000 engineers a year to meet demand.”    […]

an engineer in VOGUE

January 21, 2014
by barrie weaver
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career guidance / engineering heroes / image of engineering / royal academy of engineering / shortage of engineers / women in engineering

Excellent article about Jo da Silva, a civil engineer at Arup, in the latest issue of Vogue.       If engineering is to attract greater numbers of women into the fold it needs more articles like this to break down the preconceptions of what engineering is about. Glamorous, intelligent, articulate and talented female engineers like da Silva are pretty rare at the moment – but they need not be. Articles like this demonstrate the […]

a new president

January 20, 2014
by barrie weaver
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engineering heroes / royal academy of engineering / shortage of engineers / the status of engineers / women in engineering

My congratulations  to Dame Ann Dowling on becoming the first female president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. I concur with her that there is no reason why there shouldn’t be more women in Engineering, but am slightly worried that she can’t see why there aren’t.  One of the key reasons is that our engineering community is very poor at communicating what they do and why they do it to the general public. With the exception […]

lack of female role models in engineering

October 16, 2013
by barrie weaver
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explaining engineering / women in engineering

  Belinda Parmar cites the lack of female engineering role models in her upbringing. Whilst I understand her point the truth is that here in the UK there is lack of role models, be they male or female, for engineering and technology. If you were to ask the man or woman in the street ‘How many UK engineering businesses you can name?’ – you’d be lucky if they knew 2 or 3. Likewise, ‘How many […]

attracting women into engineering

October 15, 2013
by barrie weaver
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career guidance / explaining engineering / shortage of engineers / the status of engineers / women in engineering

Robert Lea in The Times  BAE  sponsors a think tank to try to puzzle out why few women, and in particular ethnic minority women venture into engineering. Sadly it’s always the same big companies BAE, JCB, Rolls Royce, Land Rover etc that get quoted whilst the real employment opportunities lie in the other 400,00 + small to medium British engineering companies.   The big problem for the majority of these SMEs is that they do […]

are we really surprised only 400 girls chose engineering?

June 22, 2013
by barrie weaver
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career guidance / shortage of engineers / the status of engineers / women in engineering

Rosemary Bennett Social Affairs Editor Efforts to get women into better jobs must begin at primary school, accord­ing to MPs who claim that careers advice is failing to break down persistent work segregation. While consider­able government energy had gone into addressing the absence of women in the boardroom, little had been done to tackle the dearth of girls taking up apprenticeships in industry and science. Only 1,200 girls were enrolled in IT apprenticeships last year […]