Women in Engineering: a force to reckon with
The annual celebration acknowledges the outstanding achievements of female engineers throughout the world. Picture: Pexels.
Women in Engineering Day is not only an international awareness campaign that raises the profile of women in engineering. It also offers career opportunities and guidance to females who aspire to be part of the industry.
The annual celebration acknowledges the outstanding achievements of female engineers throughout the world.
Started by the Women’s Engineering Society, a charity which began in 1919 following the end of the First World War, as many women had undertaken engineering jobs during the conflict and wished to keep working.
Evolve
The engineering industry is continuing to evolve in leaps and bounds and has the benefit of making life easier, living in better homes and using better means of transport – and that’s just to name a few.
Even though we live in a modern and progressing time, some may see engineering as being a male-dominated sector.
Women in Engineering Day reminds us that this is actually far from it. In fact, this is a sector in which women are creating massive waves and causing ripple effects.
The aim of Women in Engineering Day is to encourage the growth of women within the engineering sector.
According to the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), equal recognition of women and men in the engineering sector is paramount to transformation in South Africa.
In 2017, Naadiya Moosajee, co-founder of WomEng, a South African social enterprise now operating in 13 countries, shared that only 11% of all engineers globally are female.
Lack of recognition
This to some degree has even led to researchers accounting the low number of female engineers in the sector to the lack of recognition of females.
Encouraging great opportunities for women in engineering is an important part of this observance, especially since there has been a shortage of access to those with engineering skills in recent years.
Women being encouraged into pursuing engineering careers are essential for making the industry entirely inclusive – something which is incredibly important for modern-day businesses – and to be sure that engineering jobs of the future are filled by today’s best and brightest.
