Our thanks to Jeff for this. 9 per cent of engineers in the UK are female. This is not, of course, a problem. An extract from the piece:
A survey of more than 1,000 children aged nine to 16 showed that fewer than one in 10 described a typical engineer as a woman.
You have to worry about the children who believed a ‘typical engineer’ IS a woman. Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money have been wasted in an effort to push more young women into engineering. With few exceptions, women don’t want to become engineers. The career doesn’t tick the boxes that, say, becoming a doctor does. And after having their first child, few female engineers return to work as engineers.
Justice for Men & Boys 
‘A survey’ (what survey?) of more than 1,000 children aged 9 to 16 showed that fewer than one in ten describes the typical man as a woman…
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Not while I’m drinking coffee at the keyboard, please.
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“9 per cent of engineers in the UK are men.” Typo? 90 or 99 I could believe, but not 9.
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Apologies, will correct now.
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The term ‘engineer’ can mean a lot of things, from someone who simply slots in factory made replacement parts through someone who can design and make something, from a wooden model boat to a full sized working steam locomotive such as Tornado to someone who can ‘project manage’ yet doesn’t know what a Whitworth thread is, what SWG means or how to use a torque wrench. I suspect that the the sort of ‘engineers’ the feminists have in mind are the latter.
Many of those ‘children’ (I didn’t think of myself as a child at 16 and I doubt the sixteen year olds in the survey do) are likely to have fathers who are either engineers by profession or as a hobby and highly unlikely to have mothers who like to tinker with practical things. A child whose father likes to restore old cars, do his own plumbing and electrical work, maintain his boat and earns his living as some sort of project or consulting engineer while mummy sits on her arse reading Fifty Shades of Risible Puerile Fantasy and stuffing chocolate into her mouth is hardly likely to think of the typical engineer as female.
What this is about is children thinking and saying the right things, rather than doing them.
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One despairs. This idea of getting females into engineering and other trades was all the rage when I left school in 1975, when there were lots more apprentices. Still so when I left University in 1980, with bursaries and special helps to attract women into industry (remember this was when we had industry rather than shopping Malls). Frankly after so many many years of effort it seems pretty sure that its a waste of resources. As the lunchtime news included a report about both the difficulties in setting up apprenticeships in industry and the UKs relatively low productivity it strikes me energy should be put into getting anyone interested of either sex, not attempting quotas to include people who aren’t interested at all.
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“remember this was when we had industry rather than shopping Malls…”
Wasn’t that back when the service sector going to replace all those nasty but well paid unionised jobs with safer, easier and more life affirming positions? Like a zero hours warehouse job at Sports Direct!
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Why is there a concern about ‘children’ having a substantially accurate view of the world? In what way does this damage engineering as a profession?
As an engineer myself we desperately need more engineers, when recruiting almost all candidates were not born in Britain. In fact we need more skilled people in all technical/scientific fields but we spend lots of money on trying to persuade those least likely to enter these professions rather on those who are more likely to do so. This along with the shameful neglect of the education of boys is deeply depressing.
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Difficult to prove but I’m sure our continued “falling behind” on productivity (yet another of those telly graphics last night reminding us that it takes 5 days here to do what takes 4 days in USA France and other competitors) reflects the constant distractions into “diversity” “multiculturalism” “gender equality”. We’d do better concentrating on teaching in schools and training and educating any and all wanting to do productive stuff. “Stagnant” earnings reflects that we simply don’t produce enough stuff others want to buy to earn the money we appear to assume we deserve. The gap made up by both the national debt (I see balancing that budget is now kicked well into the “long grass”) and the eye watering personal debt, now way above pre-crash levels. Without harnessing our most energetic and productive people, earnings will have to fall no matter how virtuous we believe ourselves
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