Female trio engineer a first
Women head up engineering bodies in a historic first
They were the old boys’ clubs of New Zealand engineering. Women run them now. “I wish it wasn’t newsworthy,” Rosalind Archer says in jest about her March appointment as president of Engineering New Zealand, the 22,000-member behemoth that registers the country’s chartered professional engineers and holds them to account.
One month before Archer, Michelle Grant became the first woman president of the Structural Engineering Society.
Last April, Helen Ferner made similar waves at the Society for Earthquake Engineering.
It’s a first that all three institutions have women presidents at the same time, a historic victory for gender diversity in engineering.
Is it? Women make up 27 per cent of the engineering workforce, but only 20 per cent of chief executives and 17 per cent of senior managers, according to the Association for Women in the Sciences.
The numbers are poorer where Archer, Grant and Ferner sit, reflecting the profession’s longrunning reputation as a boys’ club. Around 17 per cent of Engineering New Zealand’s members are women, 11 per cent at the two societies.
“It’s fantastic, these numbers,” says Ferner, who had one other woman in her engineering class. “Because that’s a big change from when I started in the ’70s and ’80s.”
The earthquake engineer has 35 years of experience, including postquake reconstruction in San Francisco
and Christchurch. She now heads a society that is home to New Zealand’s seismic rating system for buildings, and the de facto expert on all things earthquake.
“Now we have opportunities, role models, a real advance. That wasn’t so a while ago,” she said.
“I think it’s just a sign of the leaky pipeline in the profession,” says Archer, who is also deputy dean of engineering at the University of Auckland. All three presidencies are voluntary, unpaid appointments.
“I count myself as one of the lucky ones. I wasn’t particularly held back. I don’t have children, so I haven’t had to navigate the challenges of work and family. When I look at dual-career couples and their challenges of navigating childcare during school holidays . . . the numbers just don’t add up,” she said.
The juggle is real for Grant. She is mother to two school-aged boys, founding director of engineering firm LGE Consulting in Masterton, Wairarapa, and since February, president of the Structural Engineering Society. She wants to fill the aspiration gap for women in a field grappling with an invisibility syndrome.
“When you think of a structural engineer, what’s the image that comes to mind?” she says. “If you don’t see it, you can’t want to be it.”
Structural engineering is the design and construction of the structural elements of buildings, the stuff that ensures safety and stability.
“When we’re finished, a lot of the structural work is hidden behind the architectural finish, so you don’t see the work we do. If a structural engineer makes a mistake, and a structure fails, you can hurt a lot of people. It’s that responsibility on your shoulders.”
At Engineering New Zealand, fulltime academic Archer is in charge of an authority that also serves as a watchdog, upholding technical standards and professional ethics.
“We have an outstanding legal team in-house, we work with external legal advice, and have all sorts of disciplinary channels we unfortunately have to use at times.”
One of her priorities is growing the organisation’s Ma¯ori and Pasifika membership.
“If we’re going to engineer solutions for New Zealand, we need a profession that looks more like New Zealand.”
Having women at the top of engineering institutions means women’s interests and views are represented in decision-making that affects the whole profession. But it doesn’t change the fact that women remain the obvious minority.
Diversity is a long game, Ferner says, undaunted.
Asked if she’s still heading a boys’ club, Archer laughed.
“It’s not true. It’s an organisation that’s open to all, that wants a membership that looks like New Zealand, and is turning a lens on itself to ask how it can be part of that solution.”
If you don’t see it, you can’t want to be it. Michelle Grant on the lack of female visibility in structural engineering