To think that hard hats do put off girls from pursuing engineering?

[LivingDeadGirlUK]

Having a discussion on facebook about this article.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50315019

I think the association of engineering with hard hats and dirty work is a big issue in attracting both men and women to the industry however another poster took exception to the stereotype of 'heels and dresses' being used to combat the stereotype of 'hard hats'. Person in question did not believe that women are put off of engineering because of the protective gear. However I disagree and think that it is a factor (alongside many others) as young women can be very sensitive to their image and 'fitting in' during that secondary school age range when we think about our careers and uni choices.

AIBU to say that for quite a proportion of teenage girls the thought of wearing a hard hat and boots and being outside/in a dirty environment all day would make them dismiss a career in engineering, given the association?

(think this is my first AIBU so please be gentle :) )

Girls can't pick engineering unless they already chose, aged 15, to do A level Physics. The effort has to be lower down the age range (there's a good episode of Big Bang Theory about exactly this).

I don't think so.

I think that if they are put off from Engineering ,by having to wear a hard hat then they would not be right for this job anyway! My son is an Industrial Chemist ,and has to wear a lab coat as do his colleagues some of who are female. He also has a friend who is an Architect ,she too has to don a hard hat sometimes when on a building site ,(probably preferable to hurting her head though)! Many Engineers are on Computers now anyway. No idea if this is just a gender thing though .FIL is an Engineer and says Applications are low compared to other Industries .

You can put CEng after your name if your a chartered engineer, although I'm not a letters after the name kind of person myself. I do think its a shame that Engineer itself isn't a protected title.

@Dilkhush exactly these choices are made quite early on and that's why I do think that the image of 'engineering' is a factor, especially paired with inadequate careers advice.

@PumpkinPieAlibi Well that absolutely isnt th the case in the UK as the number of medical school places, and then specialty training scheme places is pretty tightly controlled to be inline with projected work force demands. Ok, they dont always get it 100% right - in the 90s there was a significant problem with over production of Obstetricians for example - but medical unemployment has never been the issue in the Uk that it is in some other countries. Nor, if my husband's company is anything to go by do we have an excess of engineers here. My husband gets head hunted on a regular basis, from companies all over the world who presumably aren't overwhelmed by quality staff either.

There was an open day I attended when I was a young teen in 1980 about engineering careers.
It made it sound a good job etc but all the literature was aimed at boys and all the speakers were men!
My dh was an engineer for forty years and he had noticed more women going into these jobs over the years and getting the top jobs and being excellent. Still not as many as the men though.
There a lot of money that can be made and it's a shame there isn't more women going into it.

The reality is that it all starts in primary rather than secondary.
By the time children sit their SATS, there is already a huge gap between boys and girls in maths.
I had many discussions with my dcs teachers because they were all telling me it’s a gender issue, because you know, boys are good at maths (and science) and girls arent.
When you have teachers not expecting girls to do well (and therefore not giving it a second thought when one is struggling a bit more), it doesn’t help either.

@dottiedodah but the point is that probably the majority of engineering jobs you don't need to wear a hard hat. So people are being put off because of this image that its the norm when really it can be just another office job. I did a careers event at a private girls school, lots of incredibly academic girls who mostly had the idea that Engineering was a dirty site based job. They all wanted to go into finance or medicine.

One reason why engineers are still in demand in the U.K. is because many graduates chose not to work as an engineer and go into banking and the likes.
And don’t even start asking said graduates to go ‘up north’ either.

The female engineers I know don't give a shit about dirty work sites. I'm probably scruffier than they are.

I'm a woman. I have a hard hat, boots with steel toe and mid sole, hi vis.

I also have a chainsaw license. It never occurred to me that any of these things were "boy things"

I was at college in the late 80’s on a welding/fabrication course, and did that job for years until I fell pregnant, then I became more office bound sadly in the same company, but it fitted with being a mum better, i still wear a hard hat and hi vis regularly, but I’ve always been in the minority which is sad.

I had a temp admin job on a building site yonks ago. A far few female engineers. Everyone was polite and respectful to me. And I still have a fabulous "cut for women" boiler suit that I use for heavy duty gardening. I feel like Rosie the Riveter in it. It's awesome. Sadly my rigger boots haven't followed me - they got lost in transit.

Fair few. Not far few.

@bellinisurge I miss rigger boots too, they were so comfy. We aren't allowed to wear them on most of our sites anymore and have to have lace up boots. My current ones are so uncomfortable!

Its great to see all the other engineers on this thread but 'I'm an engineer and its never put me off' is kinda missing the point. There are woefully few of us because its not an attractive career path. The hard hat image is just a small part of that but does need addressing as its not actually an accurate depiction of the wide fields of engineering.

My father was an engineer. I don't think he ever wore a hard hat in his life. It would never have occurred to me to associate hard hats with engineering.

its not actually an accurate depiction of the wide fields of engineering. Yeah, but it shouldn't be countered with a wannabe smutty shite piece claiming "I do it in heels!"

We need a Mumsnet drive behind this

OP Definitely up to engineering companies to present the huge range of opportunities in engineering and point out that nearly every aspect of our lives is based on engineering. And feed material into primary school as well as secondary school options ... even art - how would we have books without mechanical engineers making printing presses or fashion without weaving and one of the earliest basic IT of the Jacquard weave?

Someone upthread said engineer isn't a protected word so you get sanitary engineers etc etc. However for both boys and girls it would be useful if there were more practical apprenticeships and ladders from allied jobs to further training. Telford trained as a young man as a stone mason and then on the job before going in for an architect. IKB had a talented engineer father and did geometry and drawing as a child and then trained under a clockmaker when he couldn't get into engineering school. I think we're missing out on natural genius in our concentration on academic qualifications - that's fine, but there should be a ladder which engineering professors don't sneer at.

@CuriousaboutSamphire when I first saw the article heading it made me think of a time years ago a colleague got her stiletto heal stuck in the grid floor of a riser cupboard

I've done much the same trying to get meter readings in purpose built blocks of posh apartments.

HeyNotInMyName I don’t think the issue is with girls not taking maths. My DD1 has done a maths degree and the proportion of females on the course was good. I think the issue is with girls not taking physics to A level as pp have said. DD2 is doing an engineering degree and there are supposedly 15% female students on her course - but she knows very few females on her course. For the first two years, she was the only female on any of her team projects and in her tutorial groups. All her course friends are male. It is very male dominated which can be off putting particularly when you first start attending open days and applicant days.

Family members are engineers.
The problems are not whether the bridge will fall down or whether the equipment will turn up on time, they can be fixed, but instead are staff issues, people problems, unreliable or unmotivated staff, staff relations etc , in other words the same problems everyone has whether you are a nurse or an astronaut. Hard hat or none.

I work in an engineering company, although I am not an engineer. I think one factor is that female engineers are very visible because they are so few and hence if they are anything less than exceptional or make a mistake it stands out compared to the men. It can make you very self concious, especially when young and unsure of yourself.