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Invest in mentoring for female engineers urges Women's Engineering Society

More financial support is needed to pay for the growing demand for mentoring among female engineers, says Dawn Bonfield, President of the Women's Engineering Society, ahead of National Women in Engineering Day tomorrow. 

Women's Engineering Society

Speaking ahead of the national day to focus attention of the variety of careers in the sector, Bonfield urged both the government and the private sector to invest in supporting the development of women in STEM.

"There will always be a need for, and a place for, mentoring by women for women. We hear it time and time again and this [MentorSET] is a great programme," she said.

“We have launched peripheral parts that we can do without investment but we are all volunteers and that is not sustainable. We need some financial injection” Dawn Bonfield, WES

MentorSET is a one to one mentoring programme from the WES that connects women across engineering sectors with mentors that can offer guidance and advice on important issues. Volunteers operate the charity which is re-launching the mentoring programme in response to the rising demand for support.

"We funded it ourselves in the past so that it was free for users but when times were hard financially in the recession we struggled as a charity to survive. MentorSET was put on hold for a while as we tried to find a sustainable model which we are close to now,” says Bonfield.

However funding is still needed for the programme, which matches professionals across employers and sectors giving participants as much choice as possible over who they are matched with, to ensure that they get the best possible support. Bonfield says that there has been lots of talk about financing it from many people but that investment has so far failed to materialise.

“We have launched peripheral parts that we can do without investment but we are all volunteers and that is not sustainable. We need some financial injection,” she added.

Disappointingly, says Bonfield, the government’s recent £10M fund to support the development of careers in engineering and encourage more people into the sector was not widely taken up and charities were unable to apply. Round one of the Employer Outreach Engineering Fund closed in December 2014 and just two companies were provided with grants.

“Programmes like this [MentorSET] which are desperately seeking help missed out.”

“Our profession is very much still a man’s world, especially the more senior you become, and I do think it’s important to support other women where that opportunity exists,” says Alison Jones, Atkins.

A spokesman for the Department for Business and Innovation and Skills (BIS), said that BIS would be open to discussing eligibility for application with WES. The next two rounds of the outreach fund, and the value of funding remaining is to be confirmed but Infrastructure Intelligence understands that this is something that would be confirmed following the Spending Review.

A lack of senior women in the STEM is a well known problem with professional institutions and employers seeking both to encourage more women into engineering and prevent women from dropping out of the sector after taking maternity leave. The IET says that women represent just 6% of the engineering workforce and the ICE reports that 10% of its members are female.

“Our profession is very much still a man’s world, especially the more senior you become, and I do think it’s important to support other women where that opportunity exists,” says Alison Jones, an associate at Atkins writing in the Atkins Angles publication this week.

“In my working life I have never had a female mentor or role model.  During my whole career there have simply never been any women engineers even just a few years ahead of me that could have mentored me," she added.  

See feature by Alison Jones in this week's Atkins Angles digital publication

"Importantly, I should add that I have never particularly felt I needed a mentor, nor even really thought about it until the last few years when I have had the pleasure and privilege of being a mentor to some of my younger female colleagues.  I now think back to various times in my career where I would have really valued having another more senior female colleague to talk to.”

  • Over 700 resource packs have been distributed to support National Women in Engineering Day this week with 400 schools and colleges expected to take part. First established in 2014 the inaugral event was a celebration of 95 years supporting female engineers. Find out more here

 

 

If you would like to contact Bernadette Ballantyne about this, or any other story, please email bernadette.ballantyne@infrastructure-intelligence.com:2016-1.