Shadow science minister Chi Onwurah

In October 1984 I left Newcastle to study electrical engineering at Imperial College of Science and Technology. I was not too surprised that only 12 per cent of my classmates were girls – I knew I was ’a pioneer’. I had a Caroline Haslett Memorial scholarship and an Engineering Council scholarship. I knew that they, and many others, were working hard to close the gender gap.

Twenty-seven years later, women make up 43 per cent of GPs, 41 per cent of solicitors and even 22 per cent of MPs. But the percentage of

engineering undergraduates who are women is still 12 per cent. In a quarter of a century it has not improved at all. Women make up two thirds of biology students and 42 per cent of chemistry students, but their participation in undergraduate physics, mathematics, engineering and technology has not changed significantly.

The picture is no better in the jobs market – engineering is one of four STEM professions that have seen no major improvements in gender balance. Of nearly 13 million women working in the UK, only 5.3 per cent are employed in SET occupations, against almost one third of the UK’s 15.4 million male employees.

This represents a huge loss for us all – the loss to the country in a talent pool half the size it could be; the loss to society of the types of engineering that might come from a nonmale perspective; and the loss to women in not having entry to these rewarding careers.

But there is an additional, intangible, but hugely important loss: engineering will never have the position it merits at the heart of our society and economy if it remains the preserve of such a narrow section of society. Given the economic, climatic and social challenges we face as a nation, it is imperative that engineering graduates from its current position as an exclusively male eccentricity.

That said, there are many organisations doing excellent work to encourage girls into STEM and retain them in STEM careers and many individual engineers are also keen to help. During my career I often worked for brilliant male managers keen to encourage women in SET, but it was never their absolute priority.

As a woman engineer I often felt excluded, but I realised I was just not being actively included. All groups have their common language. I had no problem with the geek speak, but the sporting metaphors I didn’t understand or the sexual allusions I didn’t want to kept me silent when I should have spoken up.

“I acknowledge there’s an element of chicken and egg, but it is not acceptable to blame the egg”

The point is that it’s not good enough to say that girls just don’t like engineering. In India the proportion of women enrolled on engineering degrees in 2000 was twice what it is in the UK and that’s despite the lower rates of literacy for girls there. Are Indian women less feminine?

The UK has the lowest proportion of women engineers in the EU – less than one third that of Latvia. Are Latvian women more left-brained?

I am not underestimating the cultural and social challenges. We suffer from a series of vicious circles where the lack of positive images of female engineers reduces the likelihood of us having female engineers to generate positive images. I acknowledge there is an element of chicken and egg, but it is not acceptable to blame the egg. We need to break the circles and we need to do it now.

I would like to see engineers challenging the BBC and other media outlets for the poverty of their engineering coverage. I would like to see the industry championing engineering as part of our culture – a prize for the best portrayal on TV might be a good place to start. And I would like to see engineers demanding that the government reverses its cuts to the funding of science and science in society.

As CaSE recently said: ’It is time to shift from good practice that encourages gentle change to achieving real and rapid results.’