INNOVATION Mar-Apr 2020

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TRENDS ARE POSITIVE— BUT DIVERSITY STILL NEEDS OUR EFFORT

MLA BOWINN MA, P.ENG.

I n 1920, the Association of Professional public interest. It’s been 100 years since then, and through all those years engineers and geoscientists have been there. Together, we have seen world wars come and go, economies rise and fall, and social movements bring us women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, gay marriage, environmentalism, and more. Society has evolved and so has the profession— faster than other professions in many ways, and more slowly in others. Specifically, it will come as no surprise to anyone reading this that while we have done much to improve gender diversity together, we continue to be laggards and a heavily male-dominated profession. Engineers of British Columbia (Engineers and Geoscientists BC by its new business name) was founded and charged with protecting the

Elsie MacGill, a Canadian famous as the world’s first female aeronautical engineer, said that her presence in engineering classes at the University of Toronto “certainly turned a few heads” in 1923. Things would not change too quickly over the next eight decades. I was seventeen years old in 2002 when my father suggested engineering as a career and field of study for me—it was the first time anyone had explained to me what an engineer even was. In much more recent years, however, concerted efforts to bring women into the fold have painstakingly inched the percentage of women in the profession upwards. Times are changing, and future generations will no doubt experience things differently. More and more, companies are recognizing the value of having a diverse workforce as more than a social good, but a benefit in business terms as well. Studies show that companies with high levels

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