INNOVATION November-December 2012

more than 20 years. I followed that with a senior leadership role in a consulting engineering firm, UMA (now AECOM), where in 2000, I became UMA’s first female vice president. I was fortunate to have a mentor and sponsor in Jeremy Kon, the CEO to whom I reported. The role was something I never dreamed I could achieve when I started my career or even five years before it happened. What needs to change for women to dream as “big” as men about what they can become? When and why do girls and young women sell themselves short in their career aspirations or doubt that they belong when they arrive? How do we make it commonplace for women to have sponsors in their organization’s senior leadership? Today, I continue to be involved in groups working to increase the number of women entering and staying in engineering. Female enrolment in engineering programs at universities in Canada reached about 20% more than a decade ago and idled there, sometimes falling to the high teens. By comparison, medicine and law have enrolments of over 50% women. Female engineers make up only 10% of the registered engineers in Canada. They make up lower percentages in senior leadership positions and on boards of engineering firms. And still, we are talking about how to increase the numbers. Why aren’t more women choosing engineering? Why are there more women in some disciplines than others? Why are they leaving the engineering profession at greater rates than men? Studies tell us that diverse teams create better solutions and that when the number of women on boards and leadership roles increases so too does the organization’s performance. Study after study confirms these correlations. Yet, the engineering profession continues to lag behind other professions in attracting, retaining and promoting women. Baby boomers may go into retirement slower and later than previous generations; however, they will retire and create serious shortages in the workforce and in the engineering profession. For any profession to survive and thrive in the future, it needs the best and brightest. And yet, engineering continues to draw from a pool that, for the most part, is not attracting half of the population. The inability of engineering to attract women to all disciplines is a complex problem. There are many questions

I came to believe that more women should choose careers in engineering and construction, and that I had a duty to help make that happen. I went to career days and became the woman at the front of the room encouraging girls and young women to choose these careers. In the 1980s, Toronto newspapers and TV stations were focusing on women in “non-traditional jobs” and I was the woman in construction called upon to be interviewed. It gave me more opportunities to promote engineering careers for women. I was also involved through various avenues in discussions about how to get more women in engineering and construction. On one occasion, I was at an elementary school speaking about careers to children from Kindergarten to grade 5. A little girl seated on the floor in the front row became fascinated with my hard hat and I said to her, “You can wear one of those someday.” But, you may have guessed what her answer was: “I can’t; I’m a girl.” Thirty years later and still, young girls just entering the school system already believed they were limited in what they could become. What can we do to make sure that girls see images of competent, successful women and come to believe that they too can choose and be successful in careers like engineering? I went on to become a construction superintendent on a $50 million system centre built for the Royal Bank in downtown Toronto, and managed projects in progressively senior roles over

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without easy answers. However, the business case has been made and it is time for us all to work together to implement effective strategies in government, education and industry that will help our profession achieve Engineers Canada’s goal of women being 30% of registered engineers by 2030. It’s doable, if we start now! v

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Marg Latham PEng is president of Aqua Libra Consulting, a management consulting firm. She has managed institutional, residential and infrastructure projects in Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver and was a vice president with UMA and later AECOM Canada from 2000 to 2009.

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