Since its birth in the early 1900s, International Women's Day has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration across developed and developing countries alike. For decades, IWD has grown from strength to strength annually.
 
All around the world, International Women's Day represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality.
 
CIHT is celebrating international women’s day (8 March 2015) and encouraging more women to take up careers in highways and transportation.
 
Analysis of those working across professional engineering shows that women make up 51% of the UK population but only 8% of the engineering workforce. As regards ethnicity, while 20% of UK resident graduate engineers are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, they represent only 6% of the engineering workforce. These figures indicate the potential to address the skills gap of the UK’s industrial sector, which is expected to need 1.28 million science, engineering and technology professionals and technicians by 2020.
 
CIHT is working with the Royal Academy on a project that is looking at ‘Routes to Diversity and Inclusion’. This project aims to produce a good practice toolkit that will show how improvements can be made across the sector and beyond. The project will report later this year.
 
CIHT is a signatory to the Engineering Diversity Concordat committing to address the gender, ethnicity and disability gap affecting the profession.
 
Led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Concordat is a voluntary commitment by Professional Engineering Institutions to take action to attract, recruit and retain people from increasingly diverse backgrounds into professional membership and registration.
 
Chief Executive, Sue Percy said, “As an inclusive Institution that is committed to valuing and respecting the diversity of individuals we are very pleased to support this great initiative. We encourage and support people of all ages and backgrounds to join both CIHT and the engineering profession.”