National Women in Engineering Day - 23 June 2015
11/06/2015 The Women's Engineering Society (WES)
National Women in Engineering Day (NWED) was set up as an inaugural event organised by the Women's Engineering Society (WES) for the first time last year to celebrate their 95th anniversary, as a charity supporting women in engineering. It has been recognised that a skills gap in engineering is looming, and one way of addressing this is to get more girls to consider engineering as a realistic career option for them. This will have the dual benefit of creating more diversity in the engineering sector (where fewer than 10% of the workforce is women), and creating a bigger talent pool of future engineers from which to recruit.The event proved very successfully with over 250 schools and 100 organisations holding events last year, and social media enjoying a flurry of interest in NWED. Leading up to the event and on the day itself, the hashtag #nwed trended above popular sporting events and tournaments that were taking place, including #worldcup and #wimbledon. Over 250 resource packs were sent out to schools and collective feedback of the NWED revealed an overwhelmingly positive response. Not only did NWED succeed in promoting gender equality in engineering among young people, but it also allowed them to consider engineering as a serious career with many young people stating that they would actually consider a career as an engineer in the future.
After the success of the first NWED, WES are looking to continue this event and establish it on an annual basis with more organisations, institutes and education establishments hosting bigger and better events all across the country in the name of gender equality for engineering.
For more information, please contact:
Women's Engineering Society (WES)
Michael Faraday House
Six Hills Way, Stevenage
Herts
SG1 2AY
Tel: 01438 211403
Tel: 01438 765506
Email: nwed@wes.org.uk
Web: www.nwed.org.uk
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