Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Women in Professional Engineering

Abstract

There have been many calls to increase the participation of women in the engineering workforce and recommendations that, in order to achieve this, cultural change was required within the engineering profession. This paper first examines the research published in this area over the last three decades. It then considers the progress made in this regard in the Australian context, by comparing the findings of two national surveys of all female members and a matched sample of male members of the national society for engineers that were conducted in 2000 and 2007. The comparison showed that significant progress had been made, particularly with regard to the provision of family-friendly work practices in many engineering workplaces, hence two steps forward. However, these improvements had not yet had any impact on retention statistics, gender pay gaps or experience of discrimination, findings which suggest that the underlying issues of engineering workplace culture are yet to be addressed, taking us one step back.