Australia’s engineering profession risks not realising its full potential unless there is a renewed focus on retaining qualified and experienced female engineers.
To mark International Women in Engineering Day (23 June), Engineers Australia and WSP, one of Australia’s largest engineering employers, have co-released a report examining gender diversity within the profession, the unique challenges facing women at mid-career, and what steps can be taken to improve retention.
The report finds female representation drops sharply through the middle years – declining by around one percentage point annually – at a time the industry can least afford to lose experienced talent.
Other findings show:
- Mid-career slump: From a peak of 64 per cent for Australian born (and 53 per cent for overseas born) female engineers in their mid-30s, utilisation declines by about 1 per cent per annum.
- Workforce composition: 75 per cent of Australia’s female engineers were born overseas.
- Sustained growth: The number of female engineers doubled in many industry sectors in the decade to 2021. This includes Professional Scientific and Technical Services, which employs more than a third of female engineers.
- Representation imbalance: The gender share of engineers in Professional Scientific and Technical Services is 15.7 per cent, compared with 19 per cent of engineers in the education sector, and 10 per cent in construction.
- Pay gap persists: Based on WGEA data, the gender pay gap in Professional Scientific and Technical Services is five percentage points higher than the all sector average of 11.2 per cent.
Engineers Australia CEO Romilly Madew AO said the report and consultation is the start of a renewed push to improve gender diversity in engineering across the full scope of a career path.
“Progress has been made in recent years to improve the gender share across keys sectors. This is resulting in greater diversity across engineering and means efforts to encourage more girls to pursue STEM and engineering degrees are working,” Madew said.
“But many longstanding barriers persist which undermines these efforts. One of the challenges our research uncovered was that engineers can experience a fundamental shift when choosing a pathway out of field-based work, which many women choose to do after returning from parental leave.
“This raised questions about how employers can support middle career engineers to successfully and intentionally navigate this crossroad and transformation.”
President and managing director of WSP Greg Kane said the report was an opportunity to drive important discussions about supporting female engineers during a crucial time in their careers.
“While the profession has made meaningful progress in increasing the number of women entering engineering, this report highlights a persistent challenge: too many women are not progressing through the middle stages of their careers at the same rate as their male peers,” Kane said.
“Addressing this issue is not only a matter of equity. It is also a matter of economic and industry performance.
“Better utilisation of the existing workforce represents a clear opportunity to strengthen productivity, improve project outcomes, and unlock greater value from investment across infrastructure, energy, water and resources.”
Engineers Australia and WSP are inviting feedback from leaders across the engineering profession to share their experiences to continue building the evidence base for action to support women engineers in the middle career phase and beyond.
The report is available here: https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/publications/australias-untapped-workforce