Why Women Shouldnt be Engineers

take a moment to close your eyes

when in your life were you afraid from

the judgment of others

and that it prevented you from doing

something you wanted to do

where would you be now if you resisted

that fear

i am naomi mcgregor first class masters

of engineering scholar

founder of a multi-award-winning tech

company

at 18 when i got into university i

raced on the hallway to my mum i got

into queens

then the excitement started to wear off

i had no idea why i chose to study

economics

i wasn’t even excited

my family and friends expected me to

study a business related degree

yet i was pretty sure there was

something missing

growing up i was very creative i loved

crafts

ballet and even maths

my technology teachers recommended i

study

engineering coming from an all-girls

school this seemed a little odd to me

will i go from an all-girls school

and be able to keep up in a

meal-dominated program

the fear of judgment and fear of failure

meant i was terrified to push beyond the

boundaries

i was afraid i would go to university

feel

and come back to my hometown with my

false hopes

and due to these fears i almost didn’t

pursue

engineering

since taking on the journey of

self-belief

a lot has changed

i whenever i

then spoke to my mom and she realized

that i wasn’t excited for university

we changed my degree that day to

engineering

we frequently hear that there are a lot

of jobs for women in stem

scholarships for women in stem demand

for women in stem

yet what we don’t hear is how

overwhelming

the judgment women in stem can face

at 21 in work i frequently felt the need

to prove myself as a female engineer

i had to be creative yet not disruptive

to be stern yet kind

to be assertive yet not show emotion

and with this mixture of needs to

fulfill

i was then told women shouldn’t be

engineers

i had to bite my lip and walk away

i was heartbroken that still my gender

would define

my job role

thankfully i grew up with rather strong

female influences in my life

i watched them face discrimination daily

i saw them reaffirm their belief in

themselves

and follow their passion against all

odds

it may come to your surprise that one in

every two girls between the age of 11 to

14 years old

consider our career in engineering

fast forward to 16 to 18 the numbers

drop to one in every four yet

these are pretty good ratios still

in industry females only represent

11 of engineers

so what’s holding us back

i believe the fear of failure and the

lack of diverse

role models acts as the two main reasons

to the lack of diversity within stem

although the problem isn’t stem the

problem

is our lack of belief in ourselves our

fear of judgment

and judgment within society

how many groundbreaking technological

changes have we resisted from occurring

due to our judgment

newton’s third law of motion states that

for every action

there is an equal and opposite reaction

for every action or experience we face

in our lives

we learn something and are the people

around us have an impact

we must seek strong influences

in our life that push us forward

and we must seek to do the same for

others

growing up i loved ballet

i started dancing at 4 and assistant

teaching at 13.

ballet was a major influence in my life

it taught me how to be creative how to

work in a team

how to stand in a stage most

importantly ballet taught me

resilience and grit

that nothing is perfect

that hard work and repetition is the

only way to succeed

that failure is only temporary

ballet taught me some of the most

fundamental attributes to succeed

we are the experiences that we face

and how we react to these experiences

at this stage you potentially think that

university was an easy ride for me

and i’m here to tell you that it

absolutely

was not

being one of the few females i felt i

stood out already

so asking questions probably not

why set myself up for further judgment

i frequently question the judgment i

would face

from the actions i took

my motivation dropped my grades dropped

my self-belief dropped

that is the truth of self-belief it is a

continuous

journey

midway through university i started

realizing

that when i was truly myself

that’s when i seen the best results

i applied to a scholarship and i wrote

it the way an

engineer should write it and i didn’t

get it

i applied again the following year and i

wrote it

how i would write it i went to the

interview

and i was my most authentic self

and i became the royal academy of

engineers

leaders scholar this

was the moment that i realized that when

i was my most

authentic self i

could do it

whenever we are authentic people take

our dreams

and our passion seriously

choosing to believe in ourselves has to

be an active

decision it is easy to do

on our best days and most fundamental

to do on our worst

i call myself a girly girl engineer

i used to believe this was a negative

that should be hidden

then i started to realize that when i

was authentic

it worked we have to be

ourselves be unique

and embrace what makes us us

i’m going to leave you with one final

story

two years ago at a stem ambassador event

i was in a room filled with over 100

children

aged 10 to 11 years old

i watched them build shelters out of

paper

none of these shelters out of 15 groups

looked the same

some designs were wonderfully crafted

with every fold identical to the other

other designs were wild and chaotic

but none of these designs were afraid of

judgment

because they were all unique

then it was my turn to stand up and talk

i

asked if they could guess what i was

studying

art business teaching

pop star was by far my favorite answer

to their surprise i said engineering

i then proceeded to ask how many of you

want to be an engineer

three three children put up their hand

i continued and told them my story my

journey through

engineering

at the end of my story i asked how many

of you

want to be an engineer

70 girls and boys put up their hand

by showing these children the potential

that stem holds it showed them endless

opportunity looking back

i find myself agreeing women shouldn’t

be

engineers because there is no such thing

as just an engineer

there is no box or stereotype that

confines the creative capabilities of

stem

there the mathematician can be a baker

the artist can be a scientist

and this ballerina can be an engineer

it is not one or the other but a

beautiful

combination of both

your journey can lead to failure

and you may have to repeat it multiple

times before you succeed

but be resilient

highlight your uniqueness you will

only regret the things you do not

do so

i challenge you

next time you go to do something

but fear the possible judgment

do it anyway

thank you