Design Insights: International Women’s Day: The Impact on Engineering

A review of the day’s top trends and news from Machine Design editors.

March 8, 2021

2 min read

Design Insights is a new daily column recapping some of the trends and highlights from Machine Design editors.

It’s International Women’s Day

March 8 marks International Women’s Day, and the organizers of the day ask, “How will you forge a gender-equal world?” It’s a question which the engineering community continues to address.

Unfortunately, part of the issue is one of semantics. There is a linguistic difference between “women engineers” and “engineers who are women.” Because we don’t use the phrase “men engineers,” categorizing women in the field as a group apart in some way keeps them apart. We have to start by understanding that engineering is by nature a gender-neutral field. Your work is judged by your finished product.

But we have traditional biases, conscious and unconscious, and so there has been a greater effort in the last 20 years to help women see their place in engineering, and for engineering to do a better job of recruiting. There continues to be shortages of skilled workers in an increasingly digital age, and yet the Society for Women Engineers estimates only 13% of engineering jobs are held by women.

WISE Offers Further Insights

Machine Design has championed this cause. In 2020, we established Women in Science & Engineering (WISE), which is a continuing effort to discuss the opportunities for women in the field and celebrate the many achievements to date. Our effort is led by Senior Editor Rehana Begg, who conducted a roundtable with key engineering leaders at our Design Summit last November. Machine Design will present another panel at our WISE Luncheon, part of the IDEA! Conference in Cleveland Nov. 9-12.

An Added Dimension

One engineering area where women have prominent roles is in 3D printing. A recent Machine Design article highlights the TIPE 3D Printing 2021 Conference, where a panel of 3D printing executives—all women—discussed their industry as engineering leaders first. The group included