I will throw a question at you: Why are female engineers so special – and so hard to retain?
- Engineers create wealth for economies and societies
- Leadership is needed to create great organisations
- Organisations are social units that rely on quality relationships between individuals to achieve optimal performance
- Women have a natural social bias and focus on relationships
Female engineers have also demonstrated significant grit and resilience to have simply survived an engineering degree as minority in a male-dominated world.
I think female engineers are gold.
The combination of analytical and engineering skills, social and relationship skills combined to grit and determination makes for high performing employees.
Female engineers are an obvious choice to lead engineering organization; yet, any review of the executive teams of our engineering organisations will identify an absolute dearth of engineering-trained women. There is huge potential for our global economies and communities to cultivate female engineers into leadership roles but why are there so few female engineers leading engineering organisations?
I was recently speaking to the Head of People at a global engineering organisation. She tells me that female engineers are extraordinarily hard to find and retain.
Much has been written on how the majority of our organisations are unfriendly to women. Inherent gender bias (most of it is not deliberate and unconscious) and lack of flexibility to accommodate family responsibilities are key contributors.
Female engineers face additional challenges:
- The nature of engineering work at graduate level is inherently isolating while you work alone on an engineering problem. When I started in my second job, I was introduced to only 2 people in the firm and then was given six months of work sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day talking to no one while I plotted the hydraulic grade lines on drainage designs to specify pipe sizing. I lasted 11 months of loneliness, boredom and frustration. I was crawling up the walls and felt like a failure. I went to work packing boxes in a warehouse which was far more interesting before I went on to travel overseas swearing never to work as an engineer again.
- Engineering cultures are extremely harsh. They are harsh for men and women. They are characterised by aggression and most leadership is done in a non-consultative authoritarian style. People are often treated with a lack of respect; with little consideration to individual needs and sensitivities.
- Needless to say, with so few women in engineering organisations, most of the time you are the only women or you are a significant minority. Women attempt to survive this by either trying to pretend to be a man which involves significant stress by denying who you really are or experiencing the endless discomfort of ‘not fitting in’ – the drive that we all as humans have. The long term emotional toll of this is high.
Of course, the alternative is to quit. They either ‘bail out’ of the workplace altogether and do not return after having a family or they move into other roles. Few of the female engineers that I graduated with actually work as engineers. They work as managers, consultants, in sales or project management. Or in my case, I’m a leadership coach – and I specifically work with female engineers. After all, they are gold and they need all the help they can get.
What benefits are there in retaining female engineers:
- double the amount of talent in the profession through accessing the female population
- avoid the risk of group-thinking and narrow thinking through adding gender diversity
- access to strong talent for current and future leadership positions
So, before we encourage young women into a profession that does not serve them, let’s look after and retain the female engineers we have and:
- recognise the potential talent and differing needs female engineers and invest in them
- build collaborative and equitable organisation cultures for all
- provide female engineer with opportunities for peer support and coaching support
