Helen Wollaston welcomes input from CIHT members to start a national discussion around women in engineering and technology to encourage more girls into the profession. Billboard advertisements, enlisting role models and providing new opportunities for existing staff are among strategies being developed to increase the number of female engineers in transportation.

 

She would like to see posters placed around the transport estate – from construction sites to highways and on buses – to get people talking, and young women thinking, about engineering and technology as career options.

 

Helen suggests the sector agrees on a powerful slogan or memorable phrase that could be repeated in thousands of locations to attract attention. Ideas can be sent via twitter @thewisecampaign

“The transport sector has a massive opportunity to promote career opportunities for women,” she says.

 

“We all need to start a conversation about the sort of people who work in the sector to help shift stereotypes and challenge public perceptions.”

 

Helen would eventually like to see a 50:50 gender spilt across the science, technology, engineering and mathematics workforce.

 

But as a first step the goal is for females to represent 30% of the skills base, she says. This would see the current number of women involved in STEM occupations go up from around 860,000 today to a million by 2020.

 

“Research shows that when you reach 30% it becomes a tipping point; women will no longer feel in a minority and the number of females entering these professions will start to grow organically.”

 

In the meantime, companies can do more, she says, to make positions more appealing to women and to word job descriptions carefully to increase the pool of applicants. Further opportunities are needed to help women receive training after the age of 19 and firms should also do more to help women returning to work after starting a family, she adds.

 

As for encouraging the next generation of female engineers she says more effort is needed to demonstrate to schoolgirls that engineering is not always a physically demanding career, often makes use of exciting technologies and can be a force for good in helping to address big societal issues.

 

“We need to present engineering in a way that resonates with the interests of young people and show how it can be used to create a better world,” she says.

 

Female role models in the early stages of their careers can also help to inspire girls to follow them and to point out the “purpose and the bigger picture” of the work they do. One engineer recently spoke to a school about how the work they do helps to reduce road casualties and another described the pride she felt when a geotechnical project of hers meant that trains could run again on a stretch of line affected by a landslip.

 

WISE has a scheme called ‘People Like Me’ where girls complete a personality based quiz and pick adjectives that best describe their personality. The idea is to encourage girls to see how their attributes may suit different jobs in engineering and technology.

 

But more broadly, Helen is keen to encourage as many schoolgirls as possible to continue their studies in technical and science related subjects, so that as many opportunities as possible remain open to those who have yet to decide on the direction of their future careers.