Flatline

I recall, some time ago, attending a meeting on, I think, the psychology of programming. It was ostensibly a technical discussion like many I had attended before, and since. There was however something vaguely unsettling about it. Something not, how shall I put it, 'right'. It took me quite a time to work out what was giving rise to my unease. I was the only man in the room, the others all women. I am not sure whether on any other prior occasion in my professional life, as an engineer and computer scientist, that had ever happened. I am not sure it has happened again since. A little while after the incident I recounted it to a female colleague. "Yes," she said "that's how I feel every day".

The issue of the gender balance in engineering and computer science has been much discussed and analysed. Employers, professional bodies even government have sought to address it. It is a major theme in universities and in the broader educational arena. We have tried, and continue to try, many different strategies: schools engagement, mentoring, summer programmes, role models, branding and marketing, and so on. Most engineering and technology organisations work hard to eliminate both overt and more subtle 'everyday' prejudices from the way they work, with some success it must be said. Many women within the profession have contributed significantly, actually heroically, to efforts to support this agenda.

Yet, despite all this work we have scarcely shifted the dial. The proportion of women studying engineering and technology degrees still stands at around 14%. Essentially, the entry has (more or less) flatlined, any changes reflect the larger trends in overall application numbers. All the work that has been done has had in fact very limited effect.

Now, it is very important that this comment is not misinterpreted. None of the effort spent has been wasted nor should it be curtailed. Encouraging women to study engineering and technology and proceed to technical careers; supporting those who make that choice at all stages in their personal and professional development; ensuring that we provide an environment that is open, equal and diverse; addressing damaging stereotypes and prejudices wherever we can. All of these things are the right thing to do, morally, socially, practically. We should sustain these efforts, probably increase them, let us not however fool ourselves into believing that by these means we are going to address the underlying issues or make much of a difference in the overall gender balance.

We are faced with a large problem. It is a deeply embedded cultural and educational challenge. The roots of the problem lie early in childhood and are widespread in society, relating to attitudes, understandings and behaviours. They have strong cultural components. There are also complex dynamics and threshold effects which means that incremental changes are not easy to sustain - whilst a subject is gender labelled children will tend to form their identities around that label - and we are dragged back.

It is necessary, collectively, to face up to the implications of this analysis. If we do not, we risk setting unrealistic expectations and consequently being disheartened. We also risk miscalculating the effort and resources required. First, we must to recognise that we need a wholesale transformation of the educational system. We must disrupt the subject and disciplinary boundaries to relabel our discipline and reset expectations. We must change the teaching workforce to ensure that the attitudes and skills required to form motivated potential engineers and technologists are widely available. We must address the deeply engrained biases and prejudices that are the mainspring the problems we face. We must change curricula and approaches to engineering to better reflect the vision and aspirations of a more equal, balanced profession.

All of this entails a major, potentially a revolutionary change. It means we need to scale our efforts to address the gender disparity differently. We need coordinated political and communal action at the national level. This effort must be sustained over the longer term, probably twenty to thirty years. Small, piecemeal, intermittent, localised, inconsistent engagement will not - has not - cut it. We will have to contemplate making significant changes in the ways we talk about and think of engineering. The other choice is we live with the flatline, and that is not a choice.