by Cindy Cavenagh
There has been a lot of talk about the problems female engineers face in their careers and how the problems can be dealt with by the woman, her employer, colleagues and, if she has one, her partner.
The female Fellows of the IEAust are a small group of women who have obviously faced these problems, dealt with them and been successful in their engineering careers. At the moment there are 19 female Fellows, 0.48% of the total number of Fellows. Female membership of the Institute is 2980, 4.82 per cent of the total membership.
Engineers Australia interviewed several female Fellows from various family backgrounds and with different experiences and problems in their careers.
Rebecca Norton is a consulting mining engineer and certified mine manager. Her consultancy provides advice on underground mine development, planning, conduct of operations, mining property and related asset valuations.
She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1962 with a degree in civil engineering. She had obtained diplomas in civil and mining engineering at Ballarat School of Mines from 1957 to 1960. She then entered third year civil engineering at the University under the block exemption scheme. She had worked at Mount Morgan and Mount Isa during summer vacations and was attracted to the type of bold engineering judgmerit she saw there. However, she chose to complete the civil degree to satisfy her parents' concern that a mining degree was too narrow a qualification for a lifetime. A job offer from Mount Isa Mines a year before graduation directed her back to mining.
After five years at Mount Isa, Norton moved on to Cudgen RZ Limited in NSW, a rutile and zircon mine. Her first job as mine manager was at Hatches Creek in the Northern Territory. As it was a relatively small mine in a very isolated area, she was responsible for running all aspects of the mine. She even had to organise the slaughter of wild cattle for a supply of fresh meat for the mine. She said: 'Initially I had a few problems with the men there but I did have a high level of skills thanks to Mount Isa.'
'It took about nine months for things to settle down. You can't impose yourself on the men and it takes a while for them to trust the fact that you are in a better position to make engineering judgments than they are,' she said.
After two years at Hatches Creek she worked at Cloncurry for Eastern Copper. She then worked as mine manager at three operations owned by related companies at Munga Creek, Torrington and Inverell. She also had an exploration crew at Mount Garnet in Queensland.
From there she went to New Zealand working as a metallurgist for Waipipi Ironsands. In 1972 she went to manage a fluorspar mine in Thailand and went on to consult on dredging operations in southern Thailand.
On returning to Australia she worked on the Yarra tunnel and did civil design and ground support work for the Lower Molonglo water scheme in Canberra. She did a diploma of computer science in 1977, then went to work at BHP as senior mining engineer, minerals division planning.
Norton found that attitudes did not really change with the times although the settling-in time did become shorter with experience. 'I was 41 when I started at Nevoria Mine for BHP and it took only three months. I just got better at it,' she said.
In 1983 she started Norton Mining.
Norton recommends engineering as a career but said: 'There are better and more profitable ways of earning a living.' She said there are aspects of engineering that are beyond the profession's control such as poor social status, low financial rewards and lack of job security.
She is concerned that enrolments of women in engineering are now slipping back and that insufficient attention has been given to directing women into more flexible streams of engineering where women can choose positions with more regular hours when they have a family. She said that chemical, metallurgical or electrical engineering provide good opportunities for moving between operations and planning or research without affecting a career path.
Norton has found significant hostility toward female engineers from nontechnical men and, in some organisations, from other women. 'This can be very effective in impeding one's progress and a lot more worrying than the occasional run-in with an equipment salesman.'
Elizabeth Coe is an associate at a firm of consulting building services engineers. She is a third generation engineer and trained as an electrical engineer at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. There she was the only woman in a course attended by over 80 students. This did not cause any real problems but she said: 'Once I got onto building sites the spurs I had developed on my elbows to get to the front of the class so that I could see experiments became a bit more useful.'
She doesn't describe herself as a trailblazer. 'I tend to be fairly low key a lot of the time if I can be. I have found that you are labelled as "the bitch from hell" or "that bitch" if you are confrontational.'
Upon graduation she worked for a firm of consulting engineers for a couple of years. She then went to the UK for two years, back to New Zealand as a hospital engineer and then came to Australia where she has worked for nearly 14 years.
She has three sons and has not worked full time since the first one was born eleven years ago. She is currently working 30 to 35 hours a week. She said she never considered leaving engineering when she started her family because, having requested it, the part-time option was made available.
When the children were very young she would take them to work in a bassinet if she had to get something done.
It is interesting to note that even though she has worked part time for so many years she has not been bypassed for promotion. She was not even a senior engineer when her first child was born but has progressed to the position of associate.
She said: 'As a woman you tend to be on show a lot more than an equivalent male engineer. There are still some people out there who are very conservative and feel threatened by women and all you can do is show them that you are a professional, persistent and prepared to do the right thing.
'Ultimately engineering is an enormously rewarding occupation,' she said, but she too is concerned about the fall in status of engineers. 'We are a long way down the food chain in terms of decision making in this country and we are treated less and less as if we have any wisdom. Nowadays in Victoria it seems to be considered that the only repository of wisdom is with accountants and lawyers. It's frustrating that the broad skills of experienced engineers aren't brought to bear at a higher level in Australia.'
Professor Beverley Reynolds trained as a civil engineer and currently holds the Woodside Chair in Oil and Gas Engineering at the University of Western Sydney. She completed her undergraduate degree at Melbourne University, choosing civil engineering because her father was a civil engineer. 'If I hadn't known someone who was an engineer it wouldn't have crossed my mind to do it.' Nobody encouraged her to do it and her father was very worried that the difficulties for a woman would be overwhelming. 'He was all for the quiet life for his daughter.'
She was the only female civil engineering student but 'it was a load of fun. I treated it as being one of the boys and that's the way it suited me. I had a great time and I had no problems.'
She later did postgraduate degrees at Imperial College in London, lectured there, and spent the last four years as a project manager in London. She has worked in a number of companies as engineer or senior engineer. She does not have a family which has made life a lot easier, she said.
With regard to men in a similar position to her getting a higher salary she said she has come across this but it was only a personal thing. She feels she is not very good at negotiating. 'I'm one of the quiet types who has an occasional grumble and then gets on with the job so it's self induced rather than something to do with gender,' she said.
Reynolds gives talks to women in engineering groups because she feels there is a lot to be done to encourage women in engineering. She recommends engineering as a career for anyone. 'It's a very broad career from the very theoretical through to the very practical, indoors, outdoors, computing.
'I have never seen any situations in my career where a woman has been prevented or discouraged from doing anything.' She thinks of herself as an engineer, not a female engineer.
Deni Greene has her own consultancy which often works on broad environmental and energy policy issues related to such things as sustainability, the greenhouse effect and consumption for all levels of government and industry.
She came to Australia in 1983 from the US where she did her undergraduate degree in biochemistry. She holds two masters degrees, one in communications, one in environmental engineering.
Before she did her masters in environmental engineering, she had worked primarily with engineers. She had edited Water and Waste Engineering for several years and had headed a group involved with environmental impact assessments for powerstations.
'I decided I was tired of writing about what other people did and I would do it myself,' she said. 'But I also thought engineers were by and large pretty dubious about environmental things and I would be more effective in convincing them if I were an engineer too.'
One third of the environmental engineering class were women. 'I think it attracts more women because it is newer and therefore probably doesn't have some of the traditional perceptions of it being hard engineering or male dominated. The field is more open and I suspect people working in it are more receptive to change.'
Regarding the higher proportion of female engineers in the US than in Australia she said, 'I think there is still an expectation here that women will stay in their place. This is less true in the US.'
She said that even now women who go into engineering have to be comfortable with challenge and be willing to do something out of the ordinary. But she thinks engineering is a good career for a woman. 'If you are an engineer you already have a head start because, being someMat unusual, you are noticed.'
'I'll know women in engineering have made it when we don't have to have articles on women in engineering.'
Suzy Goldsmith is not an IEAust Fellow yet but, until she resigned in 1994 to gain more freedom in her working day to look after her young family, she was a principal. She is now an environmental engineering consultant to the company working full time but with short days.
Goldsmith studied civil engineering at Imperial College, London and also has a master of science from the University of Birmingham.
She said: 'Having women in engineering is opening up things for the whole profession giving all engineers the freedom to develop different working arrangements and be more creative in the way they view their work.'
She said female engineers planning to have a family have to have a different approach to their career. 'You tend to try to get a lot of experience up early because you need to be in a position where you have some bargaining power to seek the sort of flexibility you know you will want later when you have children.'
She also thinks women tend to stay longer with the one firm for the same reason. 'I was well versed in the organisation and I could really add value because I knew the way the organisation worked and how things needed to be done. I think this gives an added advantage because you have an opportunity to consolidate your experience.
'I was working at managerial level and stepped back to have children. If you were looking at this as a standard career move it was a very strange thing to do but I think it was more valuable for me and the organisation because I could develop my ideas further,' she said.
Andrea Ryan is from a younger generation of female engineers but has managed to fit a lot into her short career. She was named Young Professional Engineer of the Year at IEAust's National Conference in April.
She studied civil engineering at the University of Queensland, choosing this because it was the only profession where she could use both maths and science creatively. Her father was an engineer so she had plenty of opportunity to see what it was like. She likes the fact that engineering gives her the opportunity to do a wide variety of work in many different environments.
She finds that she is sometimes treated differently in the workforce but this has its advantages as well as disadvantages. She is surprised at some reactions when she says she is an engineer. 'Some people are surprised I am an engineer. To me it's not an issue.'
Upon graduation she spent two years with a firm in Brisbane. For three months of this time she was a volunteer project engineer for a charity organisation. She went to Guyana in South America where she was responsible for site management, supervision of up to 30 labourers, project administration and documentation and government liaison while refurbishing a leprosy hospital.
She also worked in the UK for a year. She is now assistant national program manager for a project for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait ]slander Commission. This involves improving health infrastructure for communities nationally although her responsibilities are mainly in Western and South Australia.
With regard to being a woman in engineering she said: 'Enjoy it. Being a woman shouldn't be an issue and don't make it one. You have to recognise where your strengths are. Everybody is different and it's all about doing the best with what you've got.'
Ryan is actively involved in women in engineering groups. 'It's a little harder for girls to realise that engineering is an option. It's not something they automatically think of.'
(This is a slightly edited version of an article which appeared in Civil Engineers Australia, November 1995.)