International Women's Day

Yesterday, Dr. Lalita Oka and I were fortunate to be invited to AECOM's office to participate in their International Women's Day round table.  Although Women's Day was established in the United States to commemorate the movement of women's rights, currently it appears to me to be more widely celebrated abroad.  This year's official UN Women's Day theme was "Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030".  This theme is particularly relevant to structural engineering considering only approximately 17 percent of structural engineers are female (Source:  http://www.structuremag.org/?p=7042).

I greatly enjoyed the lively conversation that flowed at the round table.  When the conversation reached the topic of how to retain female civil engineering employees, I was reminded of a recent survey completed by the Structural Engineering Association of Northern California (SEANC) regarding Structural Engineering Engagement and Equity.  This survey gathered fascinating information regarding why both men and women leave the profession and to raise awareness of gender equity in the workplace.  A webinar highlighting the demographics constituting the sample and the findings of the survey may be viewed at on http://www.se3project.org/webinar.html.  The full report, which also includes best practices for engineering firms may be viewed  at http://www.se3project.org/full-report.html.

I highly encourage individuals entering the structural engineering field to review the webinar and/or report to gain informed insight into the workforce you are about to join.  Learning about what satisfies the structural engineering participants of this survey may help you to determine what company characteristics you may want to seek out when looking for employment.  For example, female structural engineers surveyed cited "poor work-life balance" as the number one reason for leaving a position.  To that end, I must say that I was impressed with AECOM's apparent concern with providing a positive work-life environment for all of its employees.

Lastly, some of the gender inequities uncovered by this survey were saddening to me, but I hope that you won't be discouraged by them.  It is important for both men and women in our field to be aware of these inequities so that we can work to remove them.