Question: Do you support the 'get girls into engineering' movement?

Abbie Hutty answered on 9 Mar 2016:

Yes and no.

I support the “get young people into engineering” movement – we don’t have nearly enough people doing engineering after school, male or female, and that is a huge and looming problem for our country, our economy, and our position as a technological world leader.

However, there is an even bigger problem in recruiting new females into the profession than recruiting new males.

There are two sides to the “girls into engineering” initiatives.

Sometimes I think the more we bang on about the fact that there aren’t many girls in engineering, and that we need to have all these initiatives to get girls into engineering, and it actually puts more girls off, as they think there won’t be any other girls in it, or it reinforces the idea that other girls don’t want to do it and so they don’t think they should either. Especially at the age you are taking your choices about what to study, you are trying to fit in and not stand out from the crowd or be thought of as unusual – so to underline the fact that it is an unusual choice does more harm than good.

On the flip side, I think there are lots of things that little by little dissuade girls from considering these careers, that maybe aren’t the same for boys, so girls could do with a bit more support and guidance, and these schemes can do just that. I went on a girls only week at a University during my AS year, to learn about the different types of engineering – and that really gave me the knowledge and courage of my convictions that yes, I was capable of it, yes, I would enjoy it, and yes, this was what I wanted to do.

You have to be very careful how you go about setting up and marketing the schemes though, so that you don’t do more harm than good. A lot of the stuff they try to use is just all pink and make-up and beauty related – and I find that just so cringily patronizing that it makes we want to scream. As if girls don’t find space missions or green energy or providing safe water to developing countries, or new prosthetics for amputees, or medical scanners that detect and help prevent and treat disease, or any other of a million inspiring real-world engineering fields inspiring!? It has to be about make-up to make girls interested? Idiotic.

Sorry, rant over.

But the point remains, there should be more women in engineering. There is no reason that women can’t enjoy these careers, or be just as capable in them, as men, yet there are nowhere near as many women going into them. Something is preventing them, or most likely lots of little things, and those blockers need to be identified and removed, or initiatives put in place to counteract them by positive efforts to highlight to girls what the opportunities are and what they are missing out on. We just have to be very careful how we do that to make sure it has the intended effect, rather than adding to the problem.