The Awards identify and celebrate the best female engineering talent and demonstrate to young women and girls across the UK that engineering is a creative, diverse and exciting career. Winners become all-important role models to help inspire more girls to become engineers.
Recognising and showcasing outstanding female engineers has never been so important. Statistics from the most recent IET Skills and Demand in Industry survey show that women represent just 9% of the engineering workforce in the UK.
To help inspire the next generation of female engineers and to raise awareness of the Awards, the IET’s social media campaign #9percentisnotenough has been encouraging engineers to share a picture with their hand raised to the fact that only 9% of women make up the UK’s engineering and technology workforce – and to also highlight that engineering is a realistic and inspiring career for girls.
The campaign has already captured the imagination of both female and male engineers (and non-engineers) across different disciplines and generations, as well as politicians and TV personalities.
“Women are woefully underrepresented in engineering. In a profession with a serious skills shortage, this represents a problem for the economy as well as for diversity,” said IET president, Jeremy Watson CBE. “So to coincide with International Women’s Day, we want to make it clear that engineering is a fantastic career for women. Not only that – but there are thousands of female engineers doing amazing things that are changing our world.”