Jessica Weakley on women in engineering
Asked why women make up only 11.2 per cent of engineers currently working in Australia, Jessica Weakley began with a requisite nod to the sensitive nature of what she had to say, then offered a candid analysis.
MORE: https://cecc.anu.edu.au/news/2023/03/...
“I think females tend to care more about the ‘who’ and males tend to care more about the ‘how’,” the 2023 Linard Scholar said.
“I don't know whether this is socialised or whether it's inherent, but women tend to gravitate towards more empathetic people-based professions.”
The problem is a common misconception that engineering is not about people. That will need to change if ANU and Australia are to help cure the gender imbalance in the field.
"Humanitarian engineering offers this really interesting context to be able to do hard technical things, but with a powerful people impact," she said. "That's something that really appeals to a lot of women."
Only 14% of graduate engineers in Australia are women, but the Humanitarian Engineering cohort at ANU is majority female.
"Our Engineers Without Borders executive committee is all female. Our volunteer roster would is 90% female," Weakley said.
Engineers Australia is strongly considering recognising Humanitarian Engineering as its own field, which Weakley says will be “a big step for the sector”.
Not only will it help Australia access the untapped talent pool that includes future generations of female engineers, it will also help develop more socio-technical engineers, which she describes as "engineers with a higher calibre of soft-skills and cross-cultural design capacities".
MORE: https://cecc.anu.edu.au/news/2023/03/...