Category Archives: Diversity

On the degrading comments made by an engineering society leader

08 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Diversity, South Africa, Unconscious bias, women in engineering, Women in technology

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More girls are starting to choose careers in STEM, and early wins have been made in getting more women into leadership positions, having a hugely positive effect on the situation for other women in their organizations. Despite this, the fabric that these incredible leaders have woven is still thin, and influencers can still negatively impact the struggle against overt discrimination, unconscious bias, and the endless micro-aggressions from family, friends and co-workers that women in STEM face.

My personal experience speaks volumes to that struggle, and the many comments on this blog over the years tell me that I have not been alone in this.

  • In high-school, I had to lie to my parents and apply to mechanical engineering in secret, to avoid them forcing me to do something medical.
  • Instead of congratulating me for getting a scholarship interview at a mining company, a teacher decided to expound on how difficult the working environment would be, and wouldn’t I rather do something like medicine or teaching?
  • Upon learning I had received a full scholarship to study mechanical engineering, a friend’s parent remarked, “But why? That’s so…manly!”

If I wasn’t hell-bent on becoming an engineer, and if my circumstances had not been so fortunate, the ‘social and proximal factors’ around me would have forced me into a career outside STEM, and I would never have known the joy of doing what I absolutely loved, what I was born to do!

It thus sickens me to read that the CEO of a South African civil engineering society SAICE, Manglin Pillay will not be asked to step down from his position, after commenting in a SAICE magazine column (also posted on his LinkedIn profile) that South Africa should stop investing in women engineers.

In the column, Pillay quoted from a study by Leeds Beckett’s School of Social Sciences and the University of Missouri that women in gender-equal societies choose care or people-orientated careers while men tend to choose careers that orient them to things and mechanics.

Pillay’s conclusion was that women prefer not to occupy high-profile executive posts because they would rather have “the flexibility to dedicate themselves to more important enterprises like family and raising children than to be at the beck and call of shareholders”.

Pillay goes on to explain that the sole reason for women leaving the field is to raise children (and not the overwhelming gender discrimination they face every day), and that the gender pay gap does not exist, and if it does, its only because women are so congenial in negotiating salaries – a trait that comes from the “maternal instinct”.

Gosh, I am baffled at the level of ignorance in these statements. Where to even begin?In my years as a volunteer at ASME – the leading global society of mechanical engineers – I could have never imagined any of its leaders making remarks such as this – not least of all because many of them were women themselves, which set an excellent example for the industry.

Pillay’s comments are outstandingly irresponsible for a thought-leader in his position, with the influence he has over the industry, and are a terrible reflection on the organization of SAICE. His comments directly work against progressive organizations like WomEng and SWE, who work to balance the negative influence that society holds for girls pursuing STEM careers.

Worse still, his statements normalize and justify similar beliefs held by men (and women) on the role of women in the workplace, perpetuating harmful societal beliefs at a time when women have barely begun to experience the smallest of wins in closing the gender pay gap and in starting conversations about unconscious bias. One example of unconscious bias: a man leaves to tend to a sick child, he’s applauded as a hero. A woman does the same and she’s sloppy.

In addition to being wildly inappropriate, his conclusions are also horrifically false, and telling of a deep-set belief that women don’t belong in senior leadership roles. 

As highlighted in Professor Alison Lewis (Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at my Alma Mater – the University of Cape Town) in her open letter to SAICE, the research Pillay quoted, “does not, in my view, lead to the conclusion that there should be less investment in attracting women into STEM careers.”

The research clearly states, “that the career and education choices made by girls are a function of both social as well as proximal factors”.

Reading the examples I gave above, it doesn’t take much to understand what “social and proximal factors” influence a girl’s decision not to take science as a subject, despite them excelling at it.

“On the contrary”, Lewis goes on to say, “the only way to fight for gender equality is by inspiring girls about STEM careers, promoting access to STEM disciplines and changing work environments to actively support women’s contributions. The development of women role models in the engineering professions is another vital aspect. This is the only way we will be able to change the real choices that are available to girls. Even “gender neutral societies” are still very far from gender neutral!”

And that pretty much sums it up for me. SAICE – with their all-male leadership team of Presidents and Vice-Presidents – should look long and hard at who they are, because what I’ve learned in my years of serving the C-Suite, is that the attitudes of the CEO are pervasive throughout the organization, and directly influence its culture. In SAICE’s case, the effects of an article such as this could poison an industry.

For some research-backed literature on some structural issues women face in the workplace, check these posts out:

What is unconscious bias?

Mentorship and sponsorship for career adancement

UPDATE:

The SAICE has since decided to sack Manglin Pillay, after calls from the engineering community and its members forced them to do the right thing.  A win for gender equality, although I still believe that having at least one woman on the SAICE Board would have had a major effect on its initial decision to keep Pillay in the position, thus avoiding the embarrassment and member outrage caused.  This is a fair lesson for the Boards of private and social sector companies and non-profits.

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way a spokesperson for ASME or for any other organization. All comments and views are strictly my own and do not reflect that of any organization I may be affiliated with.

Women in technology – what is unconscious bias and why is it important?

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Diversity, Unconscious bias, Women in technology

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I started my career as a mechanical engineer and through an unexpected turn of events, landed up in cybersecurity.  Although this may sound impressive to some, and definitely makes for an interesting story, these two careers are very similar in a pretty uncomfortable way.  I may just be a sucker for punishment, but I essentially left one highly gender-exclusive field for another.

According to SWE, just 7% of mechanical engineers are women (compared with 14% in chemical engineering) and although a whopping 36% of computer systems analysts are women, just 11% of information security professionals are women. Out of all the technical fields I could have chosen, I chose these two zingers!

So why is this necessarily a bad thing?

This weekend, I had the honor of hosting a panel of amazing leaders in the information security field at the AusCERT conferences in Gold Coast, Australia. The topic was “Diversity and Women in Cybersecurity” – embracing diversity to close the growing skills gap facing the industry.

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Globally, women make up just 11% of the information security workforce and this percentage has not changed since 2011.  The stagnation of women’s participation in the workforce is particularly troubling as the gap between available and unfilled positions in cybersecurity is estimated to grow to 1.8 million by 2022. Attracting and retaining more women has the potential to shrink this, but only if they can be hired, trained and retained in sufficient numbers. Not only is diversity key in addressing the skills gap, but in a security landscape where attackers continue to outpace defenders, enriching problem-solving with a diversity of perspectives, could be pivotal in keeping up.

Women are starting ahead but quickly falling behind

The Global Information Security Workforce Study is conducted every 2 years by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education. The latest study conducted in September 2016 surveyed just under 20,000 male and female information security professionals from 170 countries worldwide.

The study found that women are entering the field with higher education levels than men. 51% of women vs. 45% of men enter with a master’s degree. Secondly, there is one women for every 6 men in non-managerial roles, but this drops to 1 in ten at the manager level. So women are coming to the field more educated, but quickly falling behind their male counterparts.

What is unconscious bias and why does it matter?

The study asked men and women about diversity and inclusion. 51% of women say they have experienced discrimination in the workplace, whilst only 15% of men reported experiencing discrimination. Of those women who said they had experienced this, here are the stats:

  • 87% experienced unconscious bias
  • 53% experienced unexplained denial/delay in career advancement
  • 29% said they’d had exaggerated highlighting of mistakes, errors or occurrences
  • 22% tokenism
  • 19% were victims of overt discrimination

Unconscious bias refers to a bias that we are unaware of, and which happens outside of our control. It is a bias that happens automatically and is triggered by our brain making quick judgments and assessments of people and situations, influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences.

Unconscious biases are a major contributing factor in women not being hired for jobs that are traditionally held by men, such as “manager”, for not being paid as much for doing the same work, for not being handed challenging assignments and for not achieving leadership roles at the same rates as men do.

A Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research found that managers are significantly more likely to critique female employees for coming on too strong, and their accomplishments are more likely than men’s to be seen as the result of team, rather than individual efforts. This is irrespective on whether the manager assessing the candidate is male or female.

  • Women received 2.5 times the amount of feedback men did about aggressive communication styles, with phrases such as “your speaking style is off-putting,”
  • Women had more than twice the references to team accomplishments, rather than individual achievements
  • Men also received three times as much feedback linked to a specific business outcome, and twice the number of references to their technical expertise.
  • Men’s reviews contained twice as many words related to assertiveness, independence and self-confidence—words like “drive,” “transform,” “innovate” and “tackle.”

Sheryl Sandburg said in Lean In, ““Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.”

Ok, so that is one study. Is that enough to prove that unconscious bias exists?

A Yale study called “Constructed Criteria – Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination” asked participants to evaluate male and female candidates for the traditionally male job of police chief. Candidates were rated based on 2 factors: education and streetwise characteristics. Although evaluators gave the candidates fair scores for how educated or how streetwise they were, when it came to selecting the candidate for the job, evaluators started doing a very strange thing. They assigned more weight to the characteristic that that male candidate had performed well on.

If the candidate was well-educated and media-savvy, the evaluator saw this as a critical quality for success in the role. But when the candidate was lacking in these qualities, these were suddenly not very important to the role. Evaluators were shaping the criteria to fit the candidate. Unfortunately, the female candidate was not show this favoritism. Male evaluators were shown to be more biased than female evaluators (although both were pretty biased).

What is even more interesting is that evaluators were then asked to rate themselves on how biased or objective they thought they were. The results are even more shocking.

Female evaluators who considered themselves more objective were, in fact, more objective. But male evaluators who considered themselves the most objective were actually the most biased! Among men, there was a clear inverse relationship between shaping evaluation criteria to fit an applicant, and how objective the evaluator though he was.

 

Wow, this is really an issue. What can organizations do about unconscious bias?

Its clear that unconscious biases are holding women and other minorities back from entering the employment market as a whole, and advancing in their careers. This effect is only amplified in high gender-exclusive technical fields where the echo-chamber is particularly strong.  As these fields are still dominated by a narrow demographic, it is far less likely for individuals and groups to be aware of their biases.

Some organizations however, are awakening to this and starting to not only realize the untapped potential in a diverse workforce, but are actively working to change their culture to embrace diversity far more purposefully than ever before.

My next blog will talk about some of the things organizations are doing to facilitate these programs and what individuals can do to become more aware of their own unconscious biases.

Mentorship vs. Sponsorship for career advancement

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Career, Diversity, Engineer Chic!, Marketing Yourself!, women in engineering

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As mentioned in my last post, one of the most critical factors to achieving success in the workplace is finding sponsors – the right sponsors – who will open doors for you and actively support you as you grow. Malcolm Gladwell listed this as one of the 3 critical factors for meteoric success in his book, Outliers (along with 10,000 hours of hard work and a large spoonful of luck) and Sylvia Ann Hewitt wrote a whole book about it: Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor

Until lately, this was a pretty new concept for me. Looking back at my career thus far however, I can definitely see how sponsorship has shaped my path. Let me share a bit of what I’ve learned.

What is a sponsor, and what is a mentor?

A mentor is someone who gives advice. She/he is typically a person more senior than you, who has taken an interest in your development, growth and success and tries to guide you as you define and follow your journey, sharing experiences, knowledge and suggesting course-corrections. You can think of a mentor as someone who helps you passively.

A sponsor, however, is a senior person who actively helps you follow your journey (or leap-frog into a whole new journey you never even dreamed about). They would typically hand you a challenging assignment (giving you that chance to show off your fabulous skills and get noticed), connect you to an advantageous person or opportunity or flat out “bang the table for you” when you come up for a promotion or an assignment.

Why is this important?

I know that the engineer in every one of us believes that she/he should be valued primarily on the virtue of his/her work, but that simply is not the case.

Organizations are made up of people, and despite them being governed by policies, are in the end, just a bunch of human beings being human beings. At every level within an organization, irrespective of company culture, there are “politics” at play. People build networks around their interests, gravitating towards people they get along with and people that can/will help them in some way now or in the future. Little communities emerge at the water dispensers or on the weekends. As individuals in a community achieve greater success, they tend to start creating opportunities for others in that community to also succeed, keeping their “followers” close to them at every level.

Very clearly then, in order to get ahead, you need to be doing a lot more than just showing up to kick ass at your daily tasks!

The sponsorship cards are stacked against women

McKinsey & Co. teamed up with LeanIn.org to do some killer research on Women in the Workplace, and discovered some important – and unsettling – facts.

“Women are three times more likely to rely on a network that is mostly female. Because men typically hold more senior-level positions, this means women are less likely to get access to people with the clout to open doors for them.”

 

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Although the number of senior women leaders in a typical US workplace is increasing, senior leadership is still largely dominated by men. This means that a woman is less likely to get access to senior level people who can really open doors for them. This effect deepens the more senior a woman becomes. 20170226_3 201702262

 

So what does all of this mean for you and I?

In the field of engineering, cybersecurity and others, where senior women are still very few and far between, women are even less likely to have access to senior women sponsors. In my last post I talked about how its a total misconception that women don’t sponsor each other. The truth is, they do! What we also need to start doing a lot more of, is actively seeking out male sponsors as well, with the ability to really open doors for us.

It also means that as we progress, we need to be acutely aware that younger women will be seeking us out as sponsors, and that we have the duty to create opportunities for them and connect them to a more balanced network of men and women.

My next post going to be on how to go about finding a sponsor. Stay tuned for more!

 

Women in cybersecurity: building community and sponsorship

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Career, Diversity, Engineer Chic!, women in engineering

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Its been a few years since I attended a “Women in Engineering” seminar and I must admit that I’ve felt quite disconnected from my original purpose for starting this blog. Having left engineering for consulting, and having made a major career change into IT Infrastructure and then into the adjacent field of cybersecurity, I found it impossible to craft and authentic post as a champion for women in engineering. What would I talk about? What life experience would I draw from?

Today however, my mission was reignited at the RSA conference in San Francisco. For the first time in RSA history, there was a diversity-focused session (finally RSA). I spent 3 hours hearing from prominent and inspiring women in my field, about the very real challenges they faced. And guess what? They were exactly the same issues I had experienced as a young mechanical engineering student, and later, a graduate working in mining in the rural regions of South Africa. Sure, the lingo and the working environments may be quite different, but the experience of being a smart, ambitious woman in a male-dominated and highly exclusive field was the same with this group.

Interestingly enough, the key take-away from today’s sessions was not the need for women to hone their negotiation skills, nor was it to encourage women to “lean in” and emulate more masculine-like qualities to get ahead (I write this despite my immense respect for Cheryl Sandburg and her organization). No, the one thing that the speakers listed consistently as the key to achieving success in your career is one, ironically, innate to us as women: building a support network, a community within which you can feel safe to speak up, reach out and be bold. The last speaker, Valerie Plume (former CIA agent and role-model for women) said that studies have shown that women are able to build higher levels of trust with others and are generally perceived as being far more trustworthy than men. A young speaker (herself still an intern) gave some fantastic advice to a concerned mother/cyber professional, saying that her daughter should take a friend along to robotics club (even one who had no interest in robotics) to help her feel more comfortable among the over-jealous (and quite possibly highly insecure) high school boys, dubbed the “arrogant geeks”. I could relate. After all, I have been surrounded by them since I was 17.

One woman complained that she had somehow fallen into the role of bridging divides in her team, and that people constantly brought her their issues with others to help them figure out. She wanted to know how to get out of this hole. Valerie however advised that she was in fact in a privileged position and that she should rather leverage that POWER and turn it into success. Having listened to Elaine Seat’s simply outstanding talk “Selling your Ideas in the Absence of Authority” a total of 3 times at various ASME events, I am completely with Valerie on this one! (Look out for another post on this topic). Simply put, women should be looking for OPPORTUNITIES use skills so fundamental to being women – the ability to build trust-based relationships – to their advantage in advancing themselves and others in their fields.

A theme that was touched on, yet not explored in a meaningful way (hint for next year, RSA!) was the idea of mentorship and sponsorship. A common misconception is that women don’t support each other. Recent research on this topic suggests this is true in cases of “token diversity positions”, where there is only one spot for a woman on the team (think early-90’s). This creates heightened competitiveness over the one seat at the table, inevitably resulting in any incumbent being treated with disdain. Once women (and this applies to other minority groups too) are confident that they are not competing for the only seat at the table, they do the complete opposite: they throw their support behind each other, even exhibiting the “mini-me” attributes that men have been using to bring their younger-selves along with them as they rise.

Sponsorship is a theme that I will be exploring in the next few blogs. I have been incredibly fortunate to have found mentors, and more importantly, sponsors throughout my career. I’d like to share some of my experiences, as well as hear from others on how they have succeeded in finding effective sponsors. Please reach out with your thoughts.

#RSAConference2017 #RSA #RSA2017 #womenincybersecurity #womeninsecurity #valerieplume

 

Female Engineers – Winning with the Velvet Glove

31 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Career, Diversity, women in engineering

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So this blog and others like it have exhausted the facts and figured about women in engineering and how wonderful it all is for us to be there. I want to talk about something I’ve experienced that gave a new spin on why companies should hire and promote female engineers. Not all female engineers will agree to this but there is something to say about the inherent soft-skills that women possess and how this can be put to use to the advantage of the project team.

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One of the first female engineers in the South African construction industry told me that a female engineer should always be wearing a boxing glove on one hand, and a velvet glove on the other. Well most of my career thus far has involved me using the boxing glove, in recent months I’ve come to understand what the old bird meant about the velvet glove.

On my first project with my new company, I was eager to earn respect within the team as a project engineer.  Somewhere along the way, I started doing more Client-interfacing. I coordinated and accompanied the Clients team to site-visits, met with people to diffuse difficult situations and managed their (very long) wishlist of changes and corrections on the plant. The more I worked in this role, the more I liked it and the more my PM/ project sponsor assigned me to these tasks.

Was this hard engineering? No – really it wasn’t. The hard-engineering decisions were still taken between corresponding engineers on their team and ours. Yes, I missed the hard engineering of being on site and making things happen, and the pace and impact of project engineering. But there is a certain level of technical know-how required to interact with a technical Client’s team, that made it necessary for an engineer to do this. And somewhere along the way, I guess someone realised that I could be good at this.

Having a really large Client’s team (up-side of 20 individuals) it really was difficult to manage every request and expectation. I flew to the middle of the Northern Cape, as well as to Cape Town several times to meet with individuals and groups to ensure they were being personally attended to. I really put my heart into this as I could see its affect on the project and our image as a company. I find that so often, we forget the impact of the image we portray at a grass-roots level after a project is sold.

I left the Company before the project’s completion and before I did, I had many calls from members on our Client’s team to say goodbye and good luck. Although, truthfully, I probably did less for the project’s execution than any other engineer on the team, it was unbelievable to hear the feedback I received. Contemplating on it, I realise that this is something that maybe is missing from engineering consultancies. Balancing Client relationships with project progress is a PM function, but with the masses of time a PM has to spend on project execution, he/ she can’t also afford to take care of the requests and concerns of an entire Client team as well.

Female engineers are ideal for this role that requires charisma as well a technical prowess, professionalism and charm. Being  – for the most part – better communicators than men, less intimidating and more accommodating, women at the Client-interface can reshape the image of a company.  Women with good interpersonal skills can be trained to work at the apex of technical, project and social interactions – perfect for Client relationship-building in a technically-minded industry. Their unique set of skills tied to their femininity can be a great advantage to their careers and this should be leveraged by project managers and sponsors.

Freedom Day in South Africa

27 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by in Diversity, South Africa, women in engineering

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Today marks the 18th anniversary of democracy in South Africa. On this day in 1994, people of colour were allowed to vote for the first time, ending Apartheid and white minority-rule in South Africa, with Nelson Mandela being elected into presidency.

Since then, our country has come quite a way! We now have our third democratically-elected president, equal rights for women and all races live in peace and harmony. Ok, maybe thats a bit too optimistic, but in the short time that we have been free, a lot has been done to further equality in my country.  It’s hard to imagine the very different world my mother and father grew up in.

For starters, it was close to impossible for non-whites to study engineering during Apartheid.  In fact, most of the private-sector was closed off to non-whites due to the harsh racist laws imposed.  Most promising young people went into fields such as medicine and law fields that allowed them to practise their professions within their communities. This is why doctors and lawyers are still highly revered in the Indian community of South Africa. (My dentist told me that he would have been an engineer if he had had the opportunity.)

On the other hand, globally, womens’ rights in the education system and the workplace have greatly improved over the last few decade. Part of South Africa’s Constitution, written shortly after Nelson Mandela became leader of our country, creates a platform for women to have equal rights to men in all regards. Over the last decade in particular, the country have implemented key policies to see this dream manifest. As a result, companies in South Africa’s largest industry – one that hires the most amount of engineers in the country – has started realising the value that women add in the workplace.

Mining in South Africa is by far the most important sector of our economy – a large piece of the pie which until recently had been completely closed off to non-whites and women.  Due to legislation, women have been encouraged and aided into careers in the mining industry – from both a developmental/ technical standpoint, as well as a business and leadership one. Despite the support women get, most still bear the brunt of discrimination in its many forms in the workplace. As elsewhere in the world, this is changing, however slowly.

Working in this space, I have been fortunate to encounter amazing women who have managed to make their mark in the toughest of industries despite real challenges.  So much has changed in the last 18years that its impossible to imagine how my life would have been in those days. I am really grateful to the men and women who sacrificed their freedom, reputation, careers and even lives to bring freedom to me and every other South African.

HAPPY FREEDOM DAY SOUTH AFRICA

 

Transforming the Image of Engineering: Part 2

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Diversity, women in engineering

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Following from the previous post, Transforming the Image of Engineering: Part 1, this post is about showing an existing side of engineering that is far more interesting and attractive to women.
My dad is a doctor and I grew up in a rural Kwa-Zulu Natal town in South Africa. It was my dream to be a doctor and work for Doctors Without Borders. When my dad asked me why I wanted to follow that path, I said simply, “Because I want to help people, Daddy.”
Back then I had no idea about what an Engineer was. Buildings, roads and machines just appeared. You picked up a sewing machine, or a washing machine from a shop and sent it in when it broke. My medically-orientated family were not much help in this respect. I used to get into a world of trouble for taking apart the vacuum cleaner and sewing machine. When I figured out how the damn thing worked and started making my own clothes at 12, my parents were not impressed. They wanted me to become a doctor, not a dress maker!
They looked a little like this:
Okay, my parents look nothing like that. But they were strict Indian parents nonetheless so you get the picture!
Looking back now, I laugh at how much engineering actually goes into making clothes. You have to design for manufacture and assembly, considering the fabric properties: texture, flow, pattern. Then you need to cut the shapes leaving enough space for machining (sewing seams). Finally, you have to use logic to determine what order to assemble the pieces together to create a seamless and neat finish. Sound familiar? 
I was an engineer, it was clear as day. But my parents just didn’t know enough about engineering to recognise this. And my father wondered how I was going to match my philanthropic dream up with a technical career. I wondered too. But I stuck to my guns and it wasn’t until my final year of engineering that I figured out how I could help others and be and engineer! An opportunity to lead an Engineers Without Borders project landed on my lap (by some miracle and thanks to the wonderful ex-chair of EWB-UCT Brennan Hodkinson) and everything started to align. The project involved finding cooking alternatives for people trading in Nyanga Informal Settlement in Cape Town. (Their methods were harmful to their health). After countless site-visits where we sought to understand people’s needs, we came up with high-efficiency stoves. (These were developed by our Technical Head MD together with Honeycomb Homes in Durban who develop green technologies!)
From there, I discovered that instead of a purely technical thesis, I could propose my own thesis project that sought to improve process-flows within a public hospital on the notorious Cape Flats. I used techniques developed in car manufacturing to ensure critical medical equipment was available to patients when they needed it.
(My dad was very proud and started telling everyone he could that his daughter was an engineer!)
I was incredibly lucky to have an awesome supervisor who understood what I wanted to do and helped me realise it. Not all universities allow this, but that too is changing. EWB-UK operates a program for undergraduate engineering students where external community development organizations and NGO’s submit research projects to universities. Those projects that pass the bar are made available to final-year students who work directly with these agencies – benefiting from the real-world experience this offers.
EWB-Australia has implemented a similar program, introducing all first year students to development through their “EWB Challenge”, and to a full research project based on community involvement in their final year. Each year, more female students than males take on these final-year projects. This amazing initiative was itself implemented by a woman – EWB-Australia’s CEO Elizabeth Webb Brown, who was then Director of Education, Research and Training.
 So I say, why not?  Why not make this unconventional but increasingly important side of engineering visible to students? Why not teach them that design isn’t confined to the little book of Shigley’s Machine Component Design? Why not give mechanical engineering students the opportunity to design a solar-powered, Ghandian-Engineering torch rather than another battery-operated one, for a fraction of the price. Why not highlight in our university brochures the fact that civil engineering students are busy designing storm-water drainage systems for informal settlements?
Why not make developmental projects and opportunities available to our students, teaching them early on that engineering isn’t only about space ships and fast cars? (which, let’s face it, are traditionally masculine). Why not show that engineering is as much about designing high-efficiency wood stoves by understanding community needs, and still involves thermo-dynamic design for the heat transfer, fluid mechanics optimization to channel air to the combustion chamber and smoke away from the user and a good dose of materials science for insulating the combustion chamber against the elements during cold, rainy Cape winters. If we showed this picture of engineering, how many more females would want to choose engineering then?
A transformation is happening in engineering: a transformation towards sustainability and an increased emphasis on the role of the engineer in alleviating poverty.  This picture of what a engineering is, is not only far more appealing to women, but when introduced to engineering students has the potential to improve their communication and leadership skills whilst developing them into socially-conscious, change-agents – something my country can use a lot more of.
So remember when I told my dad that I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to help people? Wouldn’t it be great if little girls replied to this question with, “I want to be an engineer because I want to help make the world a better place?”

Engineer Your Life

19 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by in Diversity, Engineer Chic!, women in engineering

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Engineer Your Life is an amazing organisation that looks to inspire girls, into careers in Science and Engineering by changing the way they think about the field. If this is sounding familiar to you, you’ve probably read someone else ranting about this goal…like me perhaps?

They have actually been dealing in depth with the issue of image, and trying to find the best ways of -wait for it- marketing the profession to girls! Basically, you wouldn’t buy a house if the estate agent only told you all the bad bits about the profession and left out the fact that its actually a really great investement and it will give you the freedom to follow your dreams. Would you? So why would you want to go into engineering if the only engineer you knew told you all about how awfully difficult the degree was and that you needed to get straight A’s in maths and science, but left out how amazingly broad the field was and that it opened so many doors?

So the Engineer Your Life task force came up with four great messages that are perfectly truthful and positive ways to look at what the field of engineering can be! For anyone who criticizes the messages below, I have added comments from my own experiences (remember I graduated 7 months ago).

•Live your life, love what you do. Engineering will challenge you to turn dreams into realities while giving you the chance to travel, work with inspiring people, and give back to your community.
(I have travelled to the USA 4 times and will go to Mozambique next month for engineering conferences, I’ve met inspiring and incredible people along the way and through EWB and my thesis-project, have given back to my community. Above all, I LOVE what I do!)

•Creativity has its rewards. Women engineers are respected, recognized, and financially rewarded for their innovative thinking and creative solutions.

(In my work, I get the opportunity to be creative. In uni all of my design-projects were female-orientated-for a torch-design project I designed a lantern that was easier to hold on long walks; for a multi-tool, I designed one that was suited to women’s needs and could be carried around safely in a handbag-no sharp edges.  I didn’t do this to be a feminist-its just what made the most sense to me as a female. I love tinkering around at home and wish someone would actually get me a cute, pink multitool for my next b-day! Hint hint! There is definitely scope to bring creatively new feminine ideas to even mechanical design)

•Make a world of difference. From small villages to big cities, organic farms to mountaintops, deep-sea labs to outer space, women engineers are going where there is the greatest need and making a lasting contribution.
(I have worked with bringing clean-energy and sustainabile technologies to some of the poorest people in South Africa through Engineers Without Borders-SA. Compassion is a must for this line of work-and this is something not limited to women. I am really proud of the other young engineers-male and female-that are carrying my project forward successfully now that I’ve graduated!)

•Explore possibilities. Women engineers often use their skills to go into business, medicine, law, or government. An engineering education will prepare you for many different careers.


(This is true. A great number of women do go into other fields. Many engineers I know now work for banks and marketing companies (FMCG). My thesis was in the medical field-it turns out a lot of hospitals world-round are learning from the engineering world. Engineers are sought after for their problem-solving abilities. They can apply these critical skills to practically any field.)



Too young to be mechanically minded?



I personally think these messages are a great way to promote the field by showing how positive and necessary engineering is/ can be. Sure, candy-coating it has its pitfalls. It is still a difficult degree to get through. But my aim is to attract the top female students to engineering as their FIRST CHOICE. (And not just because they couldn’t get into medicine). For this, we need engineering to be as attractive as possible-attract a higher caliber of female student-and look forward to a diverse and innovative future.



I will be talking about engineering at Durban Girls’ College this Thursday (my old high school), so thanks EYL for the inspirational messages to share with the girls!

Dinner isn’t the only thing women bring to the table

01 Friday Apr 2011

Posted by in Diversity, women in engineering

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There has been much fuss about this whole diversity thing. Yes, we want women in the workplace now. Yes, women are slowly infiltrating and you see more and more of us wandering around the plant or lab. Yes, its all “PC” and everything. But is there a real benefit to having them around? 
Lets just look at some of the counter-arguments for a second (which I have heard first-hand):
1. Women cant do the heavy lifting or the physical labor men can- fair enough, there are exceptions, but mostly we don’t
 2.  A company spends money training an employee and at some point, they all leave to go have babies– true, but thats because of poor flexibility of work times for mothers (and of course the stigmatism)
   3.  There is no real, definitive benefit in diversity. A woman is just as good as a man, so whats the point of pushing women into fields for the sake of having them there?
Now, although I would love to rant on and on about the first two points, this past week I had an interesting conversation with a female engineering colleague KN which really got me thinking about the third!
So KN and I noticed that our section of the plant had a very poor safety training program. This is necessary for all new personnel on the plant. Its an overview of the processes, machinery and all the ways they can kill you (and trust me, there are many!) Its to ensure you are aware of the hazards and work as safely as possible.
So we went to our engineering manager to request that we revise the safety induction. Using our engineering skills and hands-on experience, we started by identifying the major hazards on the plant.  Next, we thought about how we would communicate these dangers to people who had no understanding of the plant, and didn’t speak much English either. We used simple, clear words, explanatory pictures and are planning on holding focus groups to figure out where the gaps are. This took a whole bunch of skills that you didn’t learn at campus-skills we call ‘soft-skills‘. Men have soft skills too, but these come more naturally to women.
One male engineer and mentor I knew said that women were inherently charismatic. We have certain gifts, attributed to our caring and nurturing nature, that sometimes make us better listeners.  The time of the aloof and condescending professional engineer has ended. People have realised that to be able to work better, you’re gonna have to build relationships with and communicate well with the people on the ground! And in a workplace that can kill you in 100 ways, its absolutely important (for people’s lives and well being as well as the company’s reputation and legal interests) that everyone work as safely as possible. For these reasons, women are not only as capable, but actually have a slight advantage!

    ASME’s Vision 2030 stated something interesting:
“In response to polls showing.. students generally have a poor understanding of what engineers do, [the NAE] identified, tested, and disseminated a small number of messages intended to improve public understanding of engineering.
and guess what they found?

Out of five different messages tested, the survey responses revealed that girls found the following two messages the most appealing: Engineering makes a world of difference (boys also rated this highly), and, Engineering is essential to our health, happiness, and safety (boys did not rate this highly).  [Not considered to be appealing by any of the survey populations was the message “Engineers connect science to the real world.]” 

Andrew Lamb, CEO of Engineers Without Borders UK said in an interview (see link): 

JR – So would you say that female volunteers have a unique role to play in international development?
AL – Definitely… In many cases, even though there are vast differences between cultures, women tend to spend most of their time working in or around the home. As a result, if we were working on a clean water project, it makes sense to talk to the women in the communities, because they have to collect the water every day and will have a far better idea of what the issues are. By simply being a women, we find that female volunteers can often build trust with women in these communities a lot faster than male volunteers, and gain important and accurate information.
I honestly believe that KN and I are making our workplace a safer place due to the fact that we’re women. And it looks like women everywhere are realising that engineering is a way to make the world a better, safer and happier place!
 So to all who don’t see women bringing any significant benefits to the table, all I can say is that the proof is in the PUDDING!

Approaches to diversity: Part II

29 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in Diversity

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I had promised to follow up on a previous post: Approaches to Diversity from a few weeks back, and so here it is!  Now this is an interesting issue really close to my heart and I have had the chance to look at some of your comments and discuss this further with a few people, so I’m going to try and encapsulate some of it with this post. 

As a quick recap, in the previous post on this topic I talked about the low intake rate and even more dismal retention of women in the field of engineering. In recent years, we have seen a steady increase in intake rate, but a large percentage of these young women are leaving engineering soon after they get their degree, choosing instead careers in business or management. So why are we seeing this happening? Should the government just keep spending money for engineering departments to churn out graduates that are not going to eventually lead to the high numbers of engineers we need to develop our country? What can we do about it?

Afriquanwoman said: 

“One approach is reaching out in schools, from a very early age. Support networks are great too, I have found them valuable is anchoring myself in the profession, especially after having maternity leave.”

 I agree with Emang here, we need to get to girls early enough for them to realise that careers in science and engineering are real possibilities and can be fun! This is something that is personally relevant to me as well. When I decided on studying mechanical engineering, my parents, teachers, and many friends all advised me against it! After prize-giving, when it was announced that I’d be studying mechanical engineering on full scholarship, one mother came up to me and said, “But isn’t that a very manly thing, Rhea?”


So definitely, educating people on what engineering can be (not just grease and big machines) is important in changing the perception of the field to young women. I love www.EngineerYourLife.org for the work they do, giving girls a platform to grow as young engineers.

Naadiya, co-founder of the awesome and amazing SAWomEng wrote: 


“At SAWomEng, we are in the process of solving or at least putting together platforms to discuss and solve some of the critical issues facing the attraction and retention of women in the engineering industry. This year, from our GirlEng group, about 75% of the girls will be studying engineering next year for the right reasons – to be an engineer. It is exciting times as we aim to “build the staircase” to fix the problem. Watch this space…

So yes, there is a definite trend towards changing the perception of the field, and everyone agrees that ‘the engineering flame’ must be lit early on, But what about the retention of these girls in the field? I spoke to a lecturer in my department, a particularly old-school professor who had strong (and well known) views on women in the field…(note, I’m paraphrasing here)

Prof C: “I have no problem with women in mechanical engineering. If they feel comfortable being here, they can come! But I wouldn’t want people to be in a career that makes them feel uncomfortable.” 

(Well Prof, I can tell you right now, being in a class of mostly males is daunting and very UNCOMFORTABLE for most girls!)
Eng-Chic: “But what about the value that diversity adds to the class? What about the fact that having a diverse spread of people will generate a greater range of ideas then if you only had one demographic of students with identical backgrounds?”

Prof C: “Well, in my years of being a design lecturer, I’ve observed that most students, no matter their backgrounds, will produce a very narrow range of ideas for any assignment. Unless there is absolute proof that diversity benefits mechanical engineering students, I don’t see the value. I don’t think we should take women just for diversity’s sake. And I don’t agree with the quota system because it means we end up taking students who are not the best performers, or only applied here because they couldn’t get into medicine or business”.”

Okay, so this approach was clearly not working. How do you get through to someone who disregarded soft-skills to such a great extent. He’s an engineer right, and engineers are logical...

Eng-Chic: “Yes, I get that with the push for a higher intake of female students or the ‘quota-system’, we end up taking students that are not necessarily top performers. But women are coming and that is a fact. Things are changing and I think the industry needs to change to facilitate it, to help it along even.Women are not taking over from men in the field, we are expanding its scope, adding to what mech eng is and what it can be.”

Prof C: “Well, as you say, change will happen. So let it happen naturally. I don’t think we need to do anything actively to facilitate it.”

Eng-Chic: “No, we must actively change. We have to make the industry more attractive to women. Like the Engineering News magazine for instance. Its interesting and important, but completely male-focused! Its painful for me to page through, but the articles are really great. Women respond to colour and design and are being put off by the how the engineering world portrays itself. We need to let the women know that not only is there a space for them, but an entire platform for them to mold and shape the field, bringing in their femininity and being who they are! This way, we will be attracting the girls who would have applied to medicine and business, the top performers. They will come here, to engineering, first, and not as a third option. We need to make this a valuable and attractive career for a woman to pursue. Otherwise, we’ll keep just getting women for the sake of having women doing the course.”

Prof C: “Hmmm…So make the field more attractive to woman and attract a higher caliber of applicant that actually wants to be here? Wow, you’re right. You’re absolutely right! I suppose we do need to change.”

And thats how Engineer-Chic won….

Just kidding. It was a small victory, but I’ll take it. B.H., founding member of EWB UCT and ex-Chair did his thesis on “Challenges in Producing 21st Century Engineering”…I’ll get into this one in the next post but for now, I’m trying to have an open mind about things. 

I’ll leave you with one last thought from Naadiya that really got me thinking that maybe I need to open my mind even further to the way I view engineering:


“But as we move into the future, and after experiencing the African Leadership Network, I met many engineers from MIT, Harvard etc, many of whom are not practicing engineers, I realised that they still have immense value as they own their own companies creating job opportunities, working in development banks etc…and this just shows the flexibility of our degrees and the ability for engineers to change the world.“