Today (June 23rd) marks the first International Women in Engineering Day which aims to recognise women in the industry and focus the attention on the careers available to them.
June 23rd marks the anniversary of the foundation of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) which was founded in 1919 by a small committee drawn from the National Council of Women. This council was created during the First World War as a way of getting women into work so that men could be released for the armed forces.
Although women were encouraged into the profession during World War One, they were put under pressure to vacate after the war, with men returning from the forces and looking to get back into work. WES was created to resist this pressure but also to promote engineering as a rewarding job for women, as well as men.
It is strange to think that in 2017 we do not have strong levels of equality but there are some industries that are still lacking a mixture of genders, with engineering being one of them. Women should be encouraged and empowered to embark on a career within this industry as well as men, and importantly to question how things work in the way they do and why they work that way.
At Morris Site Machinery we salute all people working in engineering, especially women, and enforce our ‘One Team’ philosophy for all our staff members.