National Women in Engineering Day (NWED)

 Guest post by Amina Khalid, NWED Coordinator

NWED

23 June 2015

National Women in Engineering Day (NWED) will take place on the 23rd of June this year and will be celebrated across the UK to help inspire the next generation of female engineers.

Last year, the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) launched NWED to celebrate their 95th anniversary, and as a way of encouraging external organisations and establishments to promote engineering among girls. By uniting thousands of people on NWED, WES aims to bridge the gap between women and engineering, encouraging more girls across the UK to consider engineering as a serious profession.

Over 250 schools and 100 organisations around the UK celebrated NWED last year by hosting their own engineering-related activities and events. The day provides the perfect opportunity to directly dispel gender barriers while promoting diversity and equality in engineering among young people. This is achieved by encouraging as many people, establishments and organisations as possible to host their own engineering-related events and activities in order to reveal the true, exciting and diverse identity of engineering.  After the success of last year’s event, WES are looking to make NWED bigger and better this year and hope to encourage a lot more people and organisations to get involved and help promote engineering to more young women. 

WES’s strong support for women engineers is backed by its rich history dating back to the first war. 95 years ago in post-World War I Britain, a group of female pioneers led by Lady Parsons campaigned against the government to allow women to remain in the workforce and uphold the roles of engineers and technicians that they had once adopted during the war. These women not only challenged the traditional majority view, but they laid the foundations for gender equality and diversity within engineering. They were not content with the government’s decision to pressure women to step down after the war, during which they had played a major role in the running of affairs. This double standard of only allowing women to embrace highly professional job roles during the war prompted the rise and establishment of the Women’s Engineering Society by Lady Parsons.

WES not only campaigned to allow women to keep their jobs as engineers, but also became a driving force in encouraging and supporting women in this industry. Fast forward to the 21st century and we would expect engineering to be the epitome of gender diversity and equality in the UK after the endless struggles and campaigns of early female engineers. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and WES continues to support and encourage more girls and women into engineering.

Although women are not faced with the same legal pressures preventing them from becoming engineers, the shortage of female engineers suggests that alternative pressures, such as stereotyping and societal expectations, mean that engineering is still perceived as a male career. Britain may have been the birth ground of female engineering pioneers and activists, but current statistics shockingly reveal that the UK has the lowest percentage of female engineers in Europe at just 7 percent.

Not only is engineering typically connected to a specific gender, but young people commonly associate engineering with construction sites and hard hats. Although construction-based engineering, aka civil engineering, is respectable in its own right, engineering as a whole should not be defined by this single discipline. Engineering is a vast profession that contains countless exciting and interesting opportunities that many young people, especially girls, are oblivious to. So what can be done to encourage more girls to consider engineering as a serious career?

Follow in the footsteps of early WES pioneers and get involved in raising the profile of women engineers this year. It’s simple but extremely rewarding to get involved in NWED and dispel the negative stereotypes associated with engineering. Not only will you be standing in solidarity with thousands across the country, but you will change British history by contributing to the increase in female engineers! To show your support for NWED, all you need to do is host an engineering-related event or activity and publicise it, using social media (using the #NWED hashtag) and mainstream media. The event could be a short careers workshop about the engineering profession or a talk inviting a local female engineer to speak to young people about rewarding opportunities within engineering. The main thing to remember is that you want the public to be aware that engineering is a diverse and exciting profession suitable for everyone!

Get Involved in NWED

Get involved in NWED 2015

Don’t forget to let us know what you plan to do for NWED 2015 by filling in our Event Notification Form.

For more information on how to get involved for NWED 2015, visit our website and request a free resource pack.

Ada Lovelace Day to be sponsored by ARM again

ARM logoWe’re very excited to announce that Ada Lovelace Day will once again be sponsored by ARM! Not only that, but they have agreed to be the official ambassador to Ada Lovelace Day for the semiconductor industry on a long term basis.

As one of our major sponsors, ARM are supporting the development and delivery of a new educational resource pack for use in schools worldwide (about which more soon!). They will also be helping us to inspire girls and young women to engage in STEM subjects through another project that we’ll announce later in the year. We will be working closely with ARM to help us to spread the word about women in STEM and inspire the next generation of female scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

“Ada Lovelace Day provides an excellent opportunity to inform and encourage women and girls to pursue and explore careers in STEM subjects,” said Jenny Duvalier, executive vice president, people, ARM. ”Our partnership will raise awareness that a career in engineering is an exciting and well-rewarded option for women as well as help elevate the profile this inspiring organisation and celebration globally. We are positive that this long-term partnership will provide engagement for women to kick-start their careers and become successful engineers of the future. Being headquartered in Cambridge where Ada’s seminal work on the Difference Engine took place, adds an additional resonance to our partnership.”

“I’m thrilled to have ARM as a key partner in Ada Lovelace Day, supporting our rapidly expanding efforts to inspire and support women in STEM around the world,” said Suw Charman-Anderson, founder, Ada Lovelace Day. “We look forward to collaborating with ARM to develop educational resources that will inspire the next generation of girls to consider science, technology, engineering or maths as a future career.”

ARM is the world’s leading supplier of semiconductor intellectual property. They design and develop energy efficient processors and technologies for a range of different applications and they very generously supported Ada Lovelace Day Live! 2014. We are pleased to welcome them back!

Wikimedia seeks organisation to host editathon intern

Wikimedia UK is a charity that supports Wikipedia and other open knowledge projects in the UK. It has been running ‘Women in Science’ editathons for the last two years, during which 15-30 people gather for an afternoon to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia. They then create or improve articles about women in science, and other relevant pages. In 2013 their editathons received extremely positive responses from the attendees and in general.

In 2014, Wikimedia UK is seeking support for further Women in Science events in partnership with another organisation that is committed to the issue of the gender gap in science. They are thus planning to create an internship, starting in September and lasting several months, to help organise these events and are looking for an organisation keen to host the intern. The aim of the project would be to run events both in association to the host institution, but also any other organisations that the host is linked to. The events could be linked to the Ada Lovelace day, but can be spread across October and beyond, and they would like to organise a minimum of five events.

Wikimedia UK would provide funding for the internship and as well as past expertise in running Women in Science Wikipedia events. If you are interested please email Daria Cybulska by 17 July.