• Question: Do you think that people are going to be pre-judgemantal of you being the only woman engineer in this competition?

    Asked by cookiehuff01 to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 13 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by kayleighstyles, charlotteacb11.
    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 11 Mar 2012:

      I think this question is aimed at Harriet, but may I make a short comment about it ? As a professional engineer working with other professional colleagues, I have often had a woman as my supervisor and the only “judgement” I have ever made about the situation is about her ability to do her job. Happily, in most cases, my supervisors have been excellent.
      I have looked at the profiles of most of the engineers on “I’m an Engineer, get me out of here !” and one really stands out – that of Rain Irshad in the High Performance Zone. Curious that, she just happens to be a woman ! Her only disadvantage is that she is obviously too small to be an astronaut – but I can only marvel at what she has already done. Check out her profile, I’m sure you’ll agree. In the competition (I’m an Engineer), there are 12 women out of a total of 30 engineers and I hope that the organisers haven’t been pre-judgemental of them !

    • Photo: Harriet Fletcher

      Harriet Fletcher answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      well I didn’t…Do you?
      In all honesty no. I think that people may judge me because my job is not as exciting as bringing water and sanitation to the developing world or working in Antarctica but my gender is unlikely to have too much bearing.
      There are lots of women engineers in my field. In fact the process departments of my own company and a few of our clients have more women than men. Overall, probably a third of the engineers working for my company are women and I don’t think that is particularly unusual anymore.
      My first experience of engineering was a summer placement for Rolls Royce and my boss there was a woman.

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