Women engineers – breaking the barrier of stereotyping
It is an established fact that diversity in workforce is a necessity, considering the requirement of filling the vacuum of skills everywhere and also a diverse workforce at all levels bring lot of benefits to the business. In recent years, although there has been progresses in many sectors, but a lot many professions still remain impenetrable in terms of gender diversity. Engineering is one such profession, which is primarily still a male bastion. Worldwide around forty percent of women engineers usually leave their jobs at a very early stage, and their presence in core engineering jobs is very less.
Interestingly, the gap in the field of STEM education has been reduced significantly, especially if we talk in Indian context, where the number of female students in STEM education has increased by more than 100% in last 8-10 years. But the industry is yet to tap the full diverse potential of this development over the years. Engineering industry in particular is still very much the men’s domain even in view of few women who are insiders there.
Though lately there are consensus initiatives to build a gender diverse organization even among the engineering industries, but not a very significant progress is seen in this area. Among the barriers for women in engineering industry, stereotyping women as technically incompetent, perceiving them in terms of sexuality and appearance are few.
But even in those organizations where there is a conscious effort to increase gender diversity and policies to recruit women engineers or women in STEM, the career progress is very poor and many women tend to leave eventually. As a result even after years of having policies to recruit women, the percentage of women engineers is very low.
Experts think that there is a male dominance in overall organization culture in engineering industry, which never actually accommodates women engineers and impedes growth in their career. Implementing policies alone without changing the culture will never help to improve gender diversity in engineering industry.
There has to be an effort at all levels to include women engineers in the organization. The micro level inclusion is most important of all. Often women are discouraged and ignored by their immediate colleagues or bosses.
A positive micro environment has to be ensured for women engineers by the colleagues and especially the team leader. The policies of organization need to be formed with these consideration.
Often men in question stereotype women without testing their competence, judging them by perception. Such male bias and aggression becomes eventually instrumental in creating lack of confidence in women themselves. Thus, either they are not provided with enough exposure required for their growth or they themselves grow a lack of confidence preventing them to grab opportunity or self-promotion.
Immediate bosses or team leaders with women engineers in group should be made to provide support and encouragements, necessary exposure to women engineers helping them to grow confidence in themselves. This may be a part of their key performance metrics to promote gender diversity in the organization.
As a small group women engineers need lot of peer support. Networking plays a very important role. But it is often seen that networking group of women engineers are underrepresented. For one reason that these women do not think that they need support from peer group, and another reason may be that they consider it to be sort of against the organization norm and would not go well with management. But fact of matter is that micro group needs to be together to make themselves heard!
Also role models help women engineers and it is the duty of organization to provide correct role models which would encourage these women engineers to aim for high and develop to their full potential. But often, in these organizations women role model in true sense does not exist as women who achieve senior position tend to emulate men and other women do not relate to them.
The policies and measures that are being taken up for gender diversity in engineering industries are not actually working well, as these are macro level efforts. These organizations need to listen to the micro group of women engineers and take HR actions at the micro level, to improve gender diversity!
@WEI