At the Royal Academy of Engineering, we mark International Women’s Day each year not only to celebrate the role and contribution of leading women engineers, but also to highlight the practical ways we are working to make engineering more inclusive. We know that our profession is broad and full of opportunity, but still only 12% of professional engineers in the UK are female. This must change, and so we are working not only to encourage more women into engineering, but to also develop inclusive cultures that will help attract and retain all engineers, accelerate their progress, and result in greater benefits for society through the impact of their work.
Our strong commitment to providing the insight and resources to build inclusive cultures is founded in research and experience that shows such environments are vital to ensuring that diverse teams can thrive – and it is diverse teams that find the best solutions. Such solutions are the best way of meeting society’s needs, and they are needed now more than ever as the world grapples with some of the most complex challenges it has seen. Whether those challenges are achieving net-zero emissions or manufacturing vaccines, engineers will be a major part of the solution.
Last week, our annual diversity and inclusion conference focused on the opportunities to create sustainable change for society in 2021 and beyond, through the lens of leadership, systems and people. Titled Engineering Change, our programme opened with a panel discussion chaired by Academy CEO Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE on leading change, where our panellists discussed how a focus on diversity and inclusion supports stronger business outcomes. As this focus helps businesses foster creativity and innovation too, diversity and inclusion is far from an add-on at odds with business goals, but rather a crucial element to achieving them.
Our delegates also explored how engineers can meet the needs of a diverse world. The pandemic has accentuated inequalities, and so engineers are being challenged to consider the direct and unintended impacts of their solutions and services on the wellbeing of different groups. As our world becomes increasingly complex, engineers need to develop more inclusive outcomes to meet diverse needs. We know that to do this, those very engineering teams must themselves be diverse.
The event was, as it is each year, charged with motivation for change and the energy of a community committed to action. In a session on becoming leaders of change, current and aspiring leaders of institutions, companies and teams explored how to lead sustainable change and how leveraging diverse perspectives adds value to businesses and leaders. With them, we shared how to be part of the solution and how to drive change within companies and communities.
Change will come from challenging current practices, and it will come from working together to do this. It will come as we ‘Choose to Challenge’. This is the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, and it speaks very much to how if we choose to challenge gender bias and inequality in the workplace (and beyond), we can all help to create an inclusive environment for all engineers.
The Academy’s work on creating inclusive cultures provides resources and information on how each of us can do this, from holding workshops with your teams to build inclusive cultures to being an ally to colleagues and actively challenging barriers to inclusion. Our work to create inclusive cultures will require challenging discriminatory and biased policies, practices, systems and behaviours, it will require supporting employees to challenge bad practice, and instilling among employers that diversity and inclusion is a business imperative. We are helping to make this happen. I encourage you to explore the recommended actions to tackle inequalities around pay and progression and address gender balance, in our Gender Pay Gap report, as well as downloading our workshops on Creating Inclusive Cultures: Teams Workshop Series.
By positively changing engineering, we will effectively change the world, because as our profession becomes more inclusive, society will benefit.