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Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

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Dawn Bonfield, Executive Vice President of the Women’s Engineering Society on re-engineering the industry’s gender balance through National Women in Engineering Day on 23rd June

Engineering

Dawn Bonfield is the Executive Vice President of the Women’s Engineering Society. Dawn has previously worked for the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, British Aerospace and PSA Peugeot Citroën. In 2014 the Society celebrates its 95th anniversary and will mark the occasion on 23rd June with National Women in Engineering Day.

Dawn Bonfield
Dawn Bonfield

“…In the UK, just 8.5% of engineers are women. We need your help to increase this figure…”

National Women in Engineering Day

National Women in Engineering Day on 23rd June is just around the corner, and if you work in a STEM profession (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) then it’s not too late to start planning to do something to celebrate it.

This is the first year of this celebration to focus attention on careers for women in engineering, and we have seen some fantastic and innovative ways that people are celebrating the day.

For example: the WiSET team at Sheffield Hallam University are running a girls’ day with a Tour de France theme for 30 year 9-10 girls; the First Edition team from the Engineering Development Trust have an all-girls engineering event at Glaziers Hall for 100 Year 7 and 8 girls; The University of Kent are hosting WIRED – Women in Research, Engineering & Design which is an all-day enrichment event for Years 10 and 11 looking at the creative aspects of both engineering and digital technologies; and Young Crossrail have launched a competition to invite girls aged 16-19 to think of creative ways to encourage the next generation of female engineers into industry.

Magnificent Women

Over 100 schools have been sent resource packs in order to organise their own events on that day, and the events we know about include careers fairs, talks by women engineers, visits to local companies, and the ‘Magnificent Women and their Flying Machines’ outreach activity that the Women’s Engineering Society have developed to look at the work of women during the First World War.

This day has really captured people’s imaginations, and we are so pleased that this has been taken up so enthusiastically by so many organisations.

It’s not too late…

If you haven’t got anything already arranged, but want to mark the day, then why not join WES for our one day conference Women in Engineering: The Challenge, which will look at the positive things that companies can do to increase diversity in engineering? To book visit:

http://www.wes.org.uk/wie

National Women in Engineering Day, 23 June 2014

http://www.wes.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/WES1919

e-mail: office@wes.org.uk

Register for the WES e-newsletter here

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