Engineering Diversity for the Future
Ahead of tomorrow’s INWED21 Panel Discussion, Lisa Tytler, AqualisBraemar LOC’s Operations Director, shares some thoughts on tomorrow’s topic: “Impacts of the pandemic on women in marine and engineering”.
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With nearly 200,000 more women working in engineering over the last 4 years, the signs are promising for a more gender inclusive and diverse engineering workforce. This is all the more important today as we progress into a decade of accelerated innovation to tackle climate change. However, despite this seemingly promising uptick, women still make up only 14.5% of the engineering workforce. With seismic shifts around the world in the way in which most of us work since the start of last year, has the pandemic influenced a change for the positive for women in marine and engineering sectors?
Arguably one of the largest changes to our working habits has been a shift to remote or hybrid working. This has presented somewhat of a paradox. Whilst many exalt the benefits of more agile working conditions, it has been reported that women have been disproportionately burdened by the recent lack of childcare and support, including with schools’ closures, over the past year. Furthermore, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has suggested that women in the workplace are significantly more vulnerable to ensuing economic downturns.
Looking more specifically at women in engineering, one could argue that widespread travel restrictions and the shift to remote work could have opened up more opportunities that were otherwise more difficult for women to engage in due to home commitments. For instance, moving multi-national project meetings online, greater flexibility afforded in virtual exhibitions, or even increased digitisation giving those in the office a taste of on-site experience. But to what extent is this actually the case?
Since the pandemic there has been an increase of 11 years to the gender gap overall, with the UNGC now claiming it will take 268 years to close. The increasing prominence of energy transition is arguably having more of an impact in closing the gap between male and female engineers. For example, women make up up 28% of the engineering workforce for the renewable energy market, as opposed to 22% of the energy workforce overall (not just engineering). As we move out of the pandemic with governments collectively putting emphasis on ‘building back greener’, can we expect to see greater progress made in closing the gender gap in engineering?
It is possibly too early to tell categorically how the pandemic has impacted gender diversity in engineering. But what we do know as we look ahead to the future, is that diversity in engineering is needed more than ever to help reach the ambitious climate goals set. After all…
“Diversity drives innovation – when we limit who can contribute, we in turn limit what problems we can solve.”
Telle Whitney
This discussion is not so much about the numbers – rather it is about fostering an environment which promotes equal opportunity to all those with intent and the skills to be part of innovating for the future.
AqualisBraemar LOC are committed within our ESG Strategy to set ambitious targets related to SDG 5 – Target Gender Equality.
Join us for tomorrow’s online discussion and Q&A, 14:00 UK time, discussing the topic from different industry perspectives.