Why the Women’s Engineering Society still has its work cut out after 100 years | Technology | The Guardian

Why the Women’s Engineering Society still has its work cut out after 100 years | Technology | The Guardian

Women engineers still fight stereotypes

On International Women in Engineering Day, historian Emily Rees Körner writes about Britain’s Women’s Engineering Society (WES) — the world’s first organization of its kind. WES was founded in 1919, a time when women were being forced out of their engineering jobs to make space for men coming back from the First World War. WES founders were fresh from having forced UK elections to include women voters for the first time, and they delighted in breaking stereotypes and telling tales of their “unladylike exploits with wiring”. But despite a century of efforts, to this day only 12% of practising engineers in the United Kingdom are women.

The Guardian | 5 min read