Update from Engineers Australia’s Western Australia Division President, James Westcott FIEAust CPEng EngExec NER APEC Engineer IntPE(Aus).
In recent months I’ve been particularly encouraged by the efforts at both state and national level to highlight and address the ongoing gender bias we have in the engineering profession in Australia.
Only 12% of our engineers working in the profession are women.
As a long-time advocate for gender diversity, Engineers Australia has now launched a new Diversity and Inclusion Action Statement: A Profession for All. This call for an inclusive profession is critically important – for industry, government, academia and Engineers Australia as the peak body for the engineering profession. Achieving gender diversity and inclusion in the workplace takes effort and commitment by employers, employees, governments, and the engineering profession-at-large. It is not something that can be done by any one organisation or sector of society alone—every little bit counts.
For at least 25 years the WA Division has been committed to encouraging females to become engineers and removing barriers to their career progression. I’d like to acknowledge the significant amount of effort invested by many committed and passionate people, both men and women. Initiatives include:
- STEM engagement through school visits and workshops
- Women in Engineering committees
- Special women-centric employment drives
- Women-focused networking
- Highlighting the achievements of women in industry
- Collaboration with specialist academics
- And many, many more
A number of these initiatives will continue as they successfully open opportunities for women to study and work as engineers. However, given the current low levels of participation, we are calling for a rethink.
At an Office Bearer Forum hosted in mid-2017, we challenged our traditional thinking about diversity of participation in engineering and asked our most senior volunteer leaders to explore new ways of approaching this issue. The discussion focused on the historically intractable issue of increasing the numbers of women participating as engineers in Australia, which has only seen a modest increase over the past 25 years.
Last month, we held an industry roundtable session at Georgiou’s case study room. A broad cross-section of stakeholders were invited to discuss the importance of increased gender diversity and consider what may need to change to achieve a stronger impact.
Participants agreed that divergent views as well as challenging norms and traditional paradigms can benefit productivity, safety and innovation.
One of the points raised was that increased diversity in other professions has brought about a better working culture and other benefits to all participating. Medicine, law, accounting and other professions have had greater success than engineering at addressing gender bias over the last generation or so.
There are other countries achieving great success in expanding women’s participation in engineering. For example, Iran has 50% or higher female participation in some of their engineering schools.
Personally, I work in an engineering consultancy in Perth where about 25% of our people are women, many in senior engineering roles. I am a very strong advocate for increasing the participation of women in our profession, and I think it’s up to all of us to play a part.
I welcome any further comments on this issue. You can contact me directly at [email protected].
Best regards,
James Westcott FIEAust CPEng EngExec NER APEC Engineer IntPE(Aus)
President, Western Australia Division
Engineers Australia
Image: Snapshot from the Engineers Australia WA Division Gender Diversity Roundtable.