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