Engineering in Australia: An Uncomfortable Experience for Women

The engineering profession continues to experience difficulty attracting and retaining women. A qualitative investigation of women's and men's experiences in a range of engineering disciplines, industry sectors, and work locations in Australia has been conducted. This investigation found that engineering is often an uncomfortable profession for women, despite the fact that the women engineers interviewed frequently expressed a fascination and expert facility with engineering work. Although the women did express concern about the lack of a family-friendly environment within engineering workplaces, the investigation found that this was more a symptom of the prevailing workplace culture, often described as a boys' club. The difficult coping strategies women consequently had to adopt, combined with lack of opportunity, support and family-friendly work practices, all contributed to women's feelings of discomfort in the workplace.