This year, companies in Ireland are recruiting as many as 6,000 new engineers. If you speak to almost any of these companies, however, they will tell you about the challenges they face getting people to join them. This is because there is a skills shortage in engineering in Ireland, and the problem is not getting any better.
One of the reasons why there is a skills shortage is the gender imbalance in the engineering profession. Let’s look at some numbers.
Ireland will produce about 3,000 new engineering graduates this year who are ready to go into the workforce. If previous years are anything to go by, less than 500 of those graduates will be female.
Not only that, only 12 percent of working engineers in Ireland are women.
Redressing the Balance
Getting more women to consider a career in engineering is, therefore, essential. It’s important for all the reasons that apply to other careers as well, not least the fact that companies that have a healthy gender balance are more profitable and productive.
The engineering skills shortage in Ireland puts even greater focus on the issue, however.
Priority for E-Cubers
The gender imbalance in engineering is something we identified as a key priority for E-Cubers from day one. As a result, we actively take steps to encourage children and young people of all ages, particularly girls and young women, to consider engineering as a future career.
Not only that, we do our best to get them excited about our area of specialty – Equipment Systems Engineering. After all, Equipment System Engineering is an emerging but rapidly growing field of engineering that will be in demand for many decades to come.
From our point of view, this process of getting more women into engineering must start at a young age, i.e. when children are in primary and secondary school education.
It is possible to do this in a fun way with the field of Equipment Systems Engineering because we can use educational toys that almost all children love – Lego. With specialist Lego sets, children can build, programme, and automate small robots to get an idea of the job of an Equipment Systems Engineer.
Other initiatives and activities where E-Cubers promotes engineering as a career to girls and young women include:
- Holding E-Cubers workshops which allow young people to realise their strengths in engineering disciplines
- Making engineering more accessible to everyone by developing, with 3rd level institutions, earn-and-learn structured scholarships
- Our ongoing Feirm CHLISTE project which includes female students on the development team
- Actively participating with secondary schools to provide talks outlining the career options that exist in engineering companies and allowing students ask questions to find out more
At Home and At School
As demonstrated by the E-Cubers initiatives listed above, it’s important that everyone, including parents, teachers, schools, universities, and the industry, has regular conversations with young people, girls and young women included, to explain more about engineering.
This includes explaining what an engineer does and the opportunities that exist.
To be at its most effective, this means going beyond the technical day-to-day aspects of the job to explain to young people the important role engineers play in people’s lives.
For example, the sectors with some of the greatest demand for Equipment Systems Engineers are the pharmaceuticals and medical device sectors.
In other words, companies in those sectors need Equipment System Engineers so they can continue their work developing medicines and innovative products that save people’s lives, enhance treatments, and improve patient outcomes.
Those reasons alone are compelling enough for any young person, male or female, to consider studying to become an engineer.