23rd June is International Women in Engineering Day #INWED17. The sub-theme of this year's celebration is #MenAsAllies. We've asked 3 men from around the industry to give us their view on the importance of gender diversity.
First up is Leon Flexman, Director of Corporate Affairs at Horizon Nuclear Power.
In my first job my company had 400 employees and 75% were women. That’s still an unusual experience today, but it was my normal. I learned a huge amount from the inspirational, formidably determined women I worked for and with. The company was very successful.
I don’t know if this is an argument for diversity (men were in the minority!) but it was powerful evidence of what you’re missing if you’re not drawing fully on both halves of the population. Our industry has a skills shortage we need to deal with and we don’t have to accept that something somewhere puts off girls and women from pursuing STEM-related careers. We have to fix it.
I’m interested in the blockers. When I moved into the utility industry the gender mix I was used to was reversed. I was shocked by “old fashioned” attitudes. Formally, the right policies were in place, but casually, people said and did things that made my jaw drop. It seemed to be accepted, but how much unseen damage was it doing?
These days we (men) all have experience of working with brilliant women who’ve made a difference to our businesses (there are plenty of them here at Horizon). We have wives and daughters (and mothers) forging successful careers. But do we need to work harder to create the sort of culture or environment that allows women and men to thrive equally? Of course we do.
In my last company things improved due to a) a conscious effort to deal with gender balance b) successful female role models and c) men realising it was ok to be involved. I think men are still nervous about that. We’re scared we’ll say something awful or people will snigger, but for me it’s no different to safety culture – you can’t get this right unless everyone buys in. Men: we’re allowed to care about this, let’s get involved!