Women who began their careers in the 1980s found themselves a novelty and were treated differently on this account, sometimes to their advantage. However, they also faced assumptions about their career goals or blunt questions about their plans to start a family.
Women starting their careers today are no longer a novelty and the challenges they face are less explicit. Balancing work and family commitments is still very much on women’s minds, as is workplace culture, career progression opportunities and the value of diversity in the workplace.
In this section:
- Entering the workplace and workplace culture
- Construction sites
- Parental leave
- Career progression
- Leadership and governance roles
- What women bring to the workplace
Entering the workplace and workplace culture
Making the jump from university to the workplace can be both exciting and daunting. Sometimes women found themselves shy amid a culture that was foreign to them or struggling to be understood in workplaces that were oblivious to the different challenges they may face.
Interviewees spoke of supportive colleagues and fantastic male allies, but negative experiences – being ignored, talked over or subject to little quips – were not uncommon.
Gretchen
I did get a job with the chemical engineering division of DSIR…
There was one other woman in this group of 50…
On her OE in the UK, Gretchen got a job in the chemical engineering department of Courtaulds, a company that made artificial fibres. She describes her experience there.
Janis
…I didn’t get the job in the dairy industry…
When Janis first graduated in 1969 with a BTech (Biotechnology) she was turned down for a job.
…where do you fit in when you’re a minority…?
Janis completed a PhD in Canada and then returned to New Zealand in 1977. She got a job at Ruakura Agricultural Research Centre in Hamilton. She was the only woman scientist on the project.
Kaye
…they were encouraging…
One of Kaye’s first jobs was at Hamilton City Council. She had the opportunity to rotate through different departments and worked in the survey department, design office for stormwater and sewage, the water department and finally in roading. There were other women doing engineering work, but very few in leadership roles. But she found the men she reported to supportive and helpful.
…so that was my bias, thinking it would be unusual for them…
Later Kaye worked at Waikato District Council. She initially wondered if, as a woman engineer on rural site visits, she would be met with surprise. Here’s what she found.
…I would come up with an idea and virtually be ignored for half an hour…
Kaye describes that she could be fairly tenacious with an idea if she thought it was right. And that she often had to return to an idea more than once before it was accepted.
She later found an explanation for this listening to an interview with Celia Lashlie, author of He'll Be Ok: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men.
Shelley
…I had to take a ‘did you really just say that’ kind of a moment…
Shelley describes what it felt like making the switch from a study environment, where there was a good gender balance in her course, to a workplace where there were very few women in engineering roles.
…there’s always little quips here and there…
Throughout Shelley’s career she has come up against assumptions and pre-conceptions based on gender. Thankfully, she has also seen some improvement in this area.
Sheridan
…once you got past that little boundary, there were no issues.
Sheridan’s first role after graduating was with HEB Construction. As she was willing to relocate to different cities and towns for work, she had the opportunity to work on many different types of projects and grow her skills and experience.
She describes the positive and welcoming culture in the company and some of the challenges of the work.
Charlotte
…I wasn’t the perfect graduate…
Charlotte found the transition from university into a graduate role challenging. As she explains, she was not the typical graduate.
Jess
It was a really steep learning curve…
Emily
…it just felt quite male…
Emily initially found some aspects of the workplace culture challenging but is now more confident to suggest changes to make work social activities more inclusive for all.
Rosita
Even though they were trying to be nice, I still felt singled out…
Construction sites
Construction sites have had a reputation for being uncomfortable or challenging spaces for women.
Interviewees discussed their experience on construction sites and some of the strategies they have used to overcome any difficulties.
Kaye
…so that cleaned my language up no end…
…I’m always conscious of going onto a site alone…
…how you choose to deal with those situations, I think, is the most important thing.
…you definitely stick out.
Parental leave
Part-time hours and flexible working are relatively recent developments in the engineering profession. This situation is not unique to engineering, but because of the low representation of women in the profession, accommodating parental leave and a flexible return to work are situations some workplaces had had little experience of.
Some interviewees had very positive maternity leave experiences and felt well supported. Others spoke of the challenges around part-time hours equating to work on less complex projects or disqualifying them for leadership or management positions. Women found that the experience and skills gained outside of paid work were not always recognised or understood by employers.
Gretchen
…the profession was absolutely hopeless at doing anything about engineers who wanted to have children.
In the 1980s, Gretchen was involved in trying to start a women in engineering group in Auckland, but it wasn’t until two of the woman involved became pregnant that the need for a group was recognised.
Kim
That was one of the reasons my mother had always not wanted me to do engineering…
Kim was lucky enough to be able to do part-time contracting and freelance work while her children were still young.
Sharee
…part-time work was very hard to come by…
Sharee felt lucky to be able to return to work with part-time hours after her maternity leave.
Shelley
…I really felt like I had to hide that…
Shelley was working at Waitakere City Council during her first pregnancy. It was an uncertain time as the council was amalgamating with the other city councils in the Auckland region to create Auckland Council.
…there’s some kind of assumption that you might not return to work…
During Shelley’s second pregnancy her workplace went through a restructure, forcing her to reapply for roles while on maternity leave.
…other people in my team had the opportunity to step up…
Shelley talks about the opportunities going on maternity leave creates for others in the team.
Philippa
…they were really supportive, they just didn’t know how to support…
Sina
…it’s potentially a lot more difficult for fathers…
…there was an openness and a welcoming culture…
During maternity leave following the birth of her third child, Sina’s workplace was flexible and supportive.
Kate
…they weren’t advertising for a part-time person…
…he thought that was great.
Sheridan
…they were flexible because just like me, they’d never done this before…
…the burden of the parenting still sits on women…
It was just this expectation that I was exactly the same person as I was before. And I wasn’t. My whole life was different. My drivers for being there were different.
Career progression
When interviewees discussed career progression, they did so in the context of their personal career goals and choices. Interviewees values and interests, family commitments, and whether they were their household breadwinner were all factors in their career decisions. For each woman, success looked a bit different.
Interviewees spoke about the challenges they’ve faced and the opportunities they’ve taken to advance their careers in the ways that suited them.
Gretchen
…my interest in my job suddenly just took off into the stratosphere.
In the 1980s Gretchen worked at engineering firm, Kingston, Reynolds, Thom and Allardice. She found her first role there extremely boring, but then found enjoyment as a project manager and went on to do an MBA.
Janis
I don’t think there was a hierarchy per se, except I did find out once…
In one of her early roles, Janis was working at the Meat Research Institute on food product development. There were women product developers but no other women engineers.
Jan
…by then I just felt tough…
Jan discusses career progression in her early academic roles. She recalls what the gender ratio was like in her first academic role at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in the UK.
Kaye
Going and doing the degree felt like a big leap of faith…
For Kaye, doing further study and completing a Bachelor of Civil Resource Engineering from University of Auckland in 1998 opened doors which helped her to progress her career.
Kim
…because women were so rare, there was a novelty value…
Early in Kim’s career in the 1980s and early 1990s she found that being a woman in engineering got you noticed and sometimes led to opportunities she may not otherwise have had.
I think everyone at some point still has imposter syndrome…
Kim shares her thoughts on what it was like to feel she was given certain opportunities because of her novelty value as a woman in engineering.
I never felt that if I really wanted something it wouldn’t happen…
Kim discusses her career choices and the support she received from her employer, Fletcher Challenge.
Sharee
…my priorities had changed…
Shelley
…that was a really amazing opportunity…
Shelley found that the broad skillsets she was able to bring to a role were recognised and opportunities followed.
Sina
…he said ‘you can’t be a manager or executive if you are part-time’…
…I was demanding and it felt bad, still feels bad to say that.
Kate
…‘Kate won’t want to do it’…
…I know exactly how much cheese costs…
Sheridan
I started building these goals and have forged my way to achieve that.
…I could see that the road for further progression for me in that environment was going to be quite slow…
Charlotte
…it’s a hard juggle…
Jess
…I was held back by the process…
Emily
…if I want to progress, I need to be having these discussions…
Discussing career progression can sometimes be an uncomfortable conversation, but an important one.
Alice
…[they asked] ‘how long have you been here [in New Zealand]?’…
Leadership and governance roles
Historically, women have been underrepresented in senior and governance roles. Today, the value of diversity at board level is recognised.
Interviewees were asked about their experience sitting on governing boards, their motivations for joining and their thoughts on the value of diversity on boards.
Gretchen
It was just at that time – I was going to these consciousness-raising meeting in Auckland and understanding how important the language was…
Gretchen joined the IPENZ Governing Board in 1988 and served as President in 1998. In 1984 she had been Chair of the Auckland Branch where she had taken a stand against gendered language.
Janis
…getting rid of this myth that you have to know how to do everything well…
You get completely different thinking...
…the best boards are the ones that have diversity of membership…
Until we can respect diverse pathways through, we’re going to keep missing out on amazing female leaders…
…it’s so important to have our voices in those top positions...
Sina
It’s a really complicated topic…
What women bring to the workplace
Engineers play a large part in shaping the world we live in – from how we manage natural resources, design and power our cities, to how we travel and communicate. To best serve the whole of society, we need engineers who, together, bring a diversity of lived experiences to the design of engineering solutions.
Interviewees were asked whether, in their experience, they felt women brought different skills or approaches to engineering problems.
Janis
The most frustrating thing is when I cannot get my point of view across…
…women bring this whole difference perspective…
…I have a different lived experience, I see different issues…
Groups and mentors Interviewee profiles…women aren’t less technical than men…
