They say “Necessity is the mother of invention”, but that seems to be one of the only times in popular imagination that a female is associated with engineering, which is what invention almost always entails.
The truth is women engineers are few and far between, no matter which country we are talking about – throughout history and even today.
At present, they make up approximately 16 percent of UK engineers. In other words, the overwhelming majority of engineers in the UK – 84 per cent – are male.
That may or may not surprise some people, but it’s not something that sits well with the Royal Academy of Engineering, which hosted a panel discussion about the subject and debated what can be done to redress the imbalance. [Read more…] about High-powered panel discussion: Why aren’t there more women in engineering?