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News Release from: UK Resource Centre for Women in SET
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 02 April 2007
Qualified women wait to help with
climate change
A UK group claims here is a pool of tens of thousands of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists (SET) ready, able and willing to get to grips with the problems of climate change.
There is a pool of tens of thousands of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists (SET) ready, able and willing to get to grips with the problems of climate change if they are given the opportunity to do so That is the over-riding conclusion of the annual conference of the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC), which took place at the British Museum during National Science and Engineering Week
Faced with increasing shortages of skilled and technically qualified personnel, the organisation claims that British industry has only to address the issues which keep up to 50,000 SET-qualified women not working in the specialisation for which they are qualified.
What is more, recent research commissioned by the UKRC and revealed at the conference has shown that women are particularly suited to and attracted by work in the sectors of environment and sustainability.
On an individual level, women express the most concern for the environment and act accordingly.
The research shows that there are grounds to believe that women's environmental concern would also translate into more speedy action against emissions, for example, if they occupied more positions of authority.
Delegates to the conference heard one of the world's leading climate scientists, Professor Julia Slingo of Reading University describe how, when she became a mother, the Director of Research at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting agreed to her working just afternoons and how Warrel Washington, an eminent climate scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, gave her a computer at home and a modem line into the super computer at NCAR and told her to do what she could.
"So there I would be in the evenings; I would iron a shirt and then type in my instruction and this would go across to the super computer and a few minutes later something would come back, so I could then iron another shirt and then send another instruction".
"And so I managed to keep my research going", she said.
However, when Professor Slingo returned to the UK to Reading University, she had to start at the bottom again.
"Although I had a good publication record (and actually I did my PhD whilst I was in the States based on my publications), I hadn't had a solid career progression for 10 years, so I started at the bottom and it took me 10 years to work up to be a Professor at Reading University".
"It was difficult and I did suffer because of that 10-year break".
However, delegates also heard that an increasing number of British companies, appreciating the business case for change, are changing their workplace policies and practices, often assisted by the UKRC.
In his keynote speech, Malcolm Wicks, Minister for Science and Innovation, congratulated not only National Grid, winner of this year's UKRC Women in SET Award, one of the Working Families Employer Awards, but also two runners up from the traditionally male-dominated construction industry, Frank Haslam Milan and Fulcrum Consulting, for improving the position of women in technical roles at all levels of their organisation.
Wicks was also able to present two companies, Atkins and BT Openreach, with the new UKRC CEO Charter, signed by their respective Chief Executive Officers and committing the companies to promote the increasing participation, at all levels, of women in SET and to develop and communicate the business case for gender equality.
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