Women In Engineering

Women and Engineering is not something that you would usually associate with each other!  

Young women and girls need encouragement to enter a field of training which can appear daunting at first as it is very male dominated at present.  The best way to encourage girls and young women to enter the field of Computing and Engineering is to show them confident, focused young women who are currently training to become engineers and mechanics. 

At Telford College of Arts and Technology we pride ourselves in being at the forefront of delivering outstanding teaching and learning to young people from all walks of life and ability levels. 

At the college, we take pride in ensuring that our students are able to progress onto the courses that they aspire to, especially where students aspire to careers which are traditionally gender orientated.  This is certainly the case with our Engineering and Computing directorate, where typically the students are male, with aspirations of male orientated careers. 

There are currently several female students within the Motor Vehicle Studies course over two different levels, who are both promising and enthusiastic students.  They have overcome various difficulties, from the usual ones in starting a new college, to being on a course that is mainly occupied by male students.  They have found that there has been surprise and intrigue into why they are doing a course that is generally accepted to be male and why they have not chosen a more female orientated career such as childcare or beauty therapy.  They have not only had to work hard in order to progress through their course, but they have also had to overcome the above prejudices making their journey through Engineering more difficult than their male counterparts. 

All of the girls however have said that their male classmates, although reluctant at first to have them on the course, began treating them "as one of the lads" very soon after the term began. Once they realised that they were as competent as the male students, and were passionate about going into a career field and being taken seriously as a mechanic or engineer they have not found that they have come across many difficulties with their male colleagues.  All of the students have aspirations to continue in their fields of study, and to become part of the growing female workforce in a predominantly male world.  

As the boundaries of gender are becoming more and more fluid in the workplace, these prominent young ladies are breaking down barriers in Engineering so that it will become another career that is open to both men and women in the not too distant future.  Soon, when we take our cars to be serviced, we may not be greeted by a male mechanic, and a female receptionist, but rather the other way round.  It is another profession which women will soon have equal opportunities in.  These young ladies are at the forefront of ensuring that women are taken seriously in this field, showing to a generation that gender isn't a limitation in the world of employment.  

In the past 50 years or so, the world of work has been shaken by women such as our students who are refusing to be categorised by their gender.  Women who have fought for their rights to be taken seriously in male dominated career paths, and women who have changed the shape of how we view our society. 

It wasn't that long ago that women generally were told that they weren't able to be police officers, fire fighters, doctors and scientists, because it was "Man's Work" and not appropriate for a woman, wife and mother. 

Women are now clear that they have choices, regarding their work, family and personal lives, and that they can do whatever they want to.  The field of engineering and computing is an area where women are still catching up to their male colleagues.    

The female students at the college are not treated any differently to their male counterparts.  They are not given leeway because they are girls, or marked harder for the same reason.  All of the female students that I have spoken to have said that their tutors have been fantastic, and have made the transition from school to college easier, and that they have felt that they could talk to their tutors about issues that they had regarding their course, whilst feeling respected and valued as a member of the class. 

All of the young ladies are very strong minded and focused on what they are trying to achieve, with very good results.  These women are also dedicated to showing other like-minded girls that they can become a mechanic or engineer if that is what they choose to do, and are trying to encourage women into their fields.