Study to examine gender equality in mechanical engineering

Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and Nile University in Egypt have received £25,000 through the British Council’s Gender Equality Partnership scheme, to identify the factors that influence career choice and progression.

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) the participation rate for women in mechanical engineering degree courses rose from eight per cent in 2012 to 10 per cent in 2016. This is against a background where the number of women accepted into full-time STEM undergraduate courses rose by 49 per cent between 2010 and 2020.

This 12-month project - Unblocking the Equality Pipeline in Mechanical Engineering - will form two parallel networks in the UK and Egypt and includes 100 women at various stages of the career ‘pipeline’ from first year undergraduates to the most senior levels of the profession. The networks will be complemented by 100 men at similar career stages. Once formed, the networks will share their experiences of the challenges and opportunities they have faced in their careers, underpinned by periodic surveys aimed at identifying the ‘blockages’ in the pipeline. The UK part of the study is being led at Heriot-Watt University and the findings collated alongside the work carried out by academics at Nile University.

The UK network will be formed from undergraduates, postgraduates and graduates of Heriot-Watt University. As well as including the current undergraduate and postgraduate students and staff in mechanical engineering, the research team will reach out to alumni stretching back to those who entered the University 40 years ago. A sub-project includes staff and students at Heriot-Watt’s campuses in Dubai and Malaysia, offering the opportunity for cultural comparisons to complement those between Heriot-Watt and Nile Universities.

In a statement, project lead, Professor Bob Reuben from Heriot-Watt’s School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: “This project gives us a chance to identify, in a quasi-longitudinal fashion, if equality of opportunity exists for women. By simultaneously engaging with both ends of the pipeline, complemented by published historical national benchmark data we hope to be able to form some conclusion about if, and how, things have changed in mechanical engineering.

“Currently, we don’t see anywhere near as much growth in participation rate amongst women in mechanical engineering even when compared with other areas of engineering. We want to unpack equality of opportunity and participation rate and, if we can, break any negative feedback loops that we can identify by publishing our findings and raising awareness through our network which we hope will become self-propagating at the end of the study period. 

Prof Reuben continued: “Do female university applicants not see modern mechanical engineering as a potentially fulfilling career? Is there a societal bias about the subject? Has the environment in peer groups at school, university and in the workplace changed over the past decade? We’re not sure but we want to know so that we can try to accelerate the pace change as it affects our subject.”

The findings are expected to be published at the end of 2023.