The foreword of Engineers Australia’s (EA) August 2022 report, Strengthening the engineering workforce in Australia, makes for disheartening reading: “Australia is experiencing perhaps its greatest-ever engineering skills shortage.”
The report canvasses a range of challenges that confront the present and future of engineering in Australia. It posits immediate actions governments, industry and the tertiary sector can take to assist in alleviating the problem.
Over the coming weeks we’ll unpack some of the key findings and recommendations of the report.
First up we take a look at what it says about the representation of women within engineering – or more accurately, the lack thereof.
Women engineers present “an opportunity”
The report noted women comprise only 11.2 per cent of the engineering workforce.
Furthermore around 16 per cent of engineering students and 13 per cent of qualified engineers in Australia are women. The data is drawn from Women in Engineering, a research report published by EA in June this year.
Strengthening the engineering workforce restates the earlier report’s key findings likely because increasing the participation of women is seen as a relatively straightforward way of increasing the overall engineering workforce.
“Of all the women we surveyed who didn’t choose to study engineering, 90 per cent of them said they didn’t even consider engineering or barely considered engineering,” Engineers Australia Chief Engineer Jane MacMaster told Create in August.
“That’s … alarming. But it’s also an opportunity, because the most commonly cited reason for not considering engineering was a lack of awareness of what engineering is and what engineers do.”
Changing perceptions of engineering
The report strongly suggests engineering has an image problem among women.
It notes a lack of positive perceptions about the profession, including perceptions around engineering being “too difficult” to study and being male-dominated.
This is despite the fact female engineers often reported high job satisfaction compared to women in all other fields.
“We need to bust some myths about what an engineer is,” said MacMaster. “Engineers can sit all day in front of a computer, they can work outside, or anything in between.
“Engineering is a profession that allows you to contribute to making the world a better place.”
Getting this message across to girls and young women considering a career in engineering comes down to finding ways to celebrate and promote the stories of women in engineering.
Campaigns like International Women in Engineering Day (held each year on 23 June) do help. But MacMaster also spruiks a more personalised, grassroots approach.
“Sharing stories about engineering work with young people in your family and friendship circles is a powerful way to raise awareness about engineering,” she said.
“Using storytelling to help more girls understand what engineering is, is what the research tells us is the most important thing we can do.”
Changing the culture of engineering
Still, it’s going to take more than advocacy and storytelling.
The report found non-inclusive workplace cultures and unequal opportunities remained issues in many circumstances, with two-thirds of female engineers who left engineering roles stating these as their reasons for doing so.
Women engineers also had a high rate of imposter syndrome (doubting their own abilities and achievements), with half reporting experiencing this compared with a third of male engineers.
These thorny cultural issues will be trickier to untangle. Increasing women’s participation is one thing, making sure they are supported to remain and flourish in the profession is another.
“What I’ve seen in my career is that women aren’t always that good at putting their hand up and being confident,” said MacMaster. “There is sometimes the feeling that if you get something wrong, it will be related to the fact that you’re young and female.”
Research exploring high attrition rates among women in STEM industries found women crave equal opportunities to grow, advance and be recognised within their organisations.
For that to happen, government initiatives to encourage more women to pursue STEM careers and an industry-wide commitment is required. However, there are a number of things employers can do right away, such as understanding and addressing the biases women experience at work, as well as the value of having a diverse workplace.
Whatever it takes, increasing the participation and retention of women in the engineering workforce is one clear path to overcoming the challenges facing the profession. Employers therefore have a significant role to play in advocating for women in engineering during every stage of their career.
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