Women have played a role in engineering in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years,
despite the various societal barriers facing them. In the 18th and 19th century, there
were few formal training opportunities for women to train as engineers and frequently
women were introduced to engineering through family companies or their spouses. Some women
did have more formal educations in the late 19th century and early 20th century, normally
in mathematics or science subjects. There are several examples of women filing patents
in the 19th century, including Sarah Guppy, Henrietta Vansittart and Hertha Ayrton.
During the first two decades of the 20th century new opportunities arose for women to go to
university and earn degrees and there were increasing numbers of women studying maths
and physics at universities across the UK. The job opportunities for women opened up
by World War I meant many women were trained in various forms of engineering. In 1919,
the Women’s Engineering Society was founded to protect these jobs for women, which, once
the war ended, were handed back to the men returning from the front, as decreed by the
Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act .
The 1920s and 30s produced many successful women engineers, who were able to forge careers
for themselves in various fields, including aeronautical, automotive and electrical engineering.
Many of these women were members of WES. 19th century
Inventors and engineers in the early 19th century in the UK include Sarah Guppy, the
first woman in the UK to patent a bridge. Later in the 19th century, there are more
examples of women patenting inventions and practising as engineers. Naval engineer Henrietta
Vansittart, who was introduced to engineering by her father James Lowe, contributed to naval
engineering and held patents across the world for the Lowe-Vansittart propeller. Similarly,
another naval engineer, Blanche Thornycroft, found her way into engineering through a family
connection. She worked as part of her father's engineering business on the Isle of Wight.
Electrical engineer and physicist, Hertha Ayrton, was the first woman admitted to the
IEE , the premier British electrical engineering profession institution, in recognition of
her work on electrical arc lighting.
Many women in this era were collaborators in engineering projects with their husbands.
The effort to electrify the home in the late 19th century involved many women, including
Alice Mary Gordon, who wrote a book called Decorative Electricity, which included a section
detailing life as an engineering spouse. Katharine Parsons worked with her husband Sir Charles
Parsons on the steam turbine engine and later founded the Women’s Engineering Society.
Margaret, Lady Moir described herself as an "engineer by marriage" through her relationship
with Ernest Moir. Several of the women who went on to be founding members of WES were
also involved in the women's suffrage movement, including Katharine Parsons and her daughter,
Rachel Parsons, Lady Moir, Laura Annie Willson and Caroline Haslett.
Early 20th century The 1911 census recorded no woman listing
her profession as an engineer. However, at the start of the 20th century in the UK, there
were greater opportunities for women to study at university and there were more instances
of women studying for degrees in physics, mathematics, and engineering subjects. Nina
Cameron Graham graduated from University of Liverpool in 1912 with a degree in Civil Engineering,
the first British woman to qualify as an engineer. She married a fellow student and moved to
Canada. Electrical Engineer and businesswoman Margaret Partridge studied maths at Bedford
College, graduating in 1914. Aeronautical engineer Hilda Lyon went to study maths at
Newnham College, Cambridge in 1915. Many women attended Loughborough College , which admitted
the first cohort of women engineers in 1919, including mechanical engineer Verena Holmes
and engineer, writer and traveller Claudia Parsons. Georgina Kermode's career as socialite,
suffragette, metallurgist and serial patentee , seems to have emerged from her early marriage
to an engineer, whom she soon left behind. Many women gained engineering experience during
World War One. As men were away fighting, jobs in factories had to be filled by women.
Women in engineering such as Dorothée Pullinger, Rachel Parsons, Margaret Dorothea Rowbotham
and Laura Annie Willson all learned important aspects of their trades through working during
World War One, particularly in the production of munitions. Recognition of the roles naval
architects Blanche Thornycroft, Eily Keary, and Rachel Parsons played was recognised on
9 April 1919 when they became the first three women to be admitted as associate members
by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, Keary having been the first woman to contributed
a paper in the institution’s transactions in 1916.
Once the war was over, these jobs were threatened by the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act
, which stated that the jobs women filled had to be handed back to the men returning
from the front. Another act of parliament later in 1919 attempted to improve women's
professional and educational rights. The Sex Disqualification Act 1919 received Royal Assent
on 23 December 1919. The act enabled women to join the professions and professional bodies
, to sit on juries and be awarded degrees:
"A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public
function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from
entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to
any incorporated society ..."
It was an enabling act, not an enforcing one, but did open the doors of the professional
engineering institutions to women who could earn the qualifications and had the professional
experience required to pass the entry examinations.
The founding of the Women's Engineering Society The Women's Engineering Society - the first
of its kind in the world - was founded on 23 June 1919 to protect the jobs that women
had gained during World War One and to continue promoting the place of women in engineering.
Seven woman signed the foundation documents: Eleanor Shelley-Rolls, Margaret, Lady Moir,
Laura Annie Willson, Margaret Rowbotham, Katharine Parsons, Rachel Parsons and Janetta Mary Ornsby.
The first Secretary appointed was Caroline Haslett, who had trained as a boiler-maker
during World War One, and was later made a Dame for her services to industry and business.
The United States equivalent, the Society of Women Engineers , was founded in 1950.
Inter war period Through these new opportunities, the 1920s
and 1930s in the UK were an active time for women in engineering and WES. In 1923 Elsie
Louisa Winterton, a draughtswoman working for the Great Western Railway became the first
woman member of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers.
In 1924, members of WES, including Caroline Haslett, Margaret Moir and Margaret Partridge
founded the Electrical Association for Women. This association aimed to educate women about
electricity, providing courses in Electrical Housecraft and demonstrations at electrical
showrooms. It published The Electrical Handbook for Women, a guide to electricity, which was
re-issued until 1983. That same year, engineering project manager Kathleen M. Butler travelled
to London to set up the project offices for the Sydney Harbour Bridge team at Dorman Long,
at the same time that Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan started work at the company.
In July 1925 the First International Conference of Women in Science, Industry & Commerce was
held in London, during the British Empire Exhibition. It was organised by Caroline Haslett
& WES, and opened by the Duchess of York in her first public engagement since her marriage
into the royal family. Chaired by Lady Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat in the
House of Commons, its speakers and attendee list represented key figures in the suffrage
and women's rights movements in Britain and abroad, including Millicent Fawcett, Viscountess
Rhondda, Kerstin Hesselgren the first woman elected to Upper House of the Swedish parliament
and American engineer Ethel H. Bailey.
Also in 1925, Annette Ashberry was the first woman to be elected to the UK Society of Engineers
and delivered the first address by a woman to the Society's members on 1 November 1926.
Careers developed in companies such as Metropolitan Vickers in Manchester, where engineer Gertrude
Entwisle worked for her entire career. In 1927, Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan successfully
passed the admission examination to become the first female member of the Institution
of Civil Engineers. In 1929 Winifred Hackett was the first woman to graduate in electrical
engineering from the University of Birmingham. By the 1950s Hackett was head of the Guided
Weapons Division at aerospace and defence company English Electric.
In 1934, pilot and engineer Amy Johnson became the youngest president of WES, serving under
her married name of 'Mrs Jim Mollison', four years after becoming the first woman to fly
solo from the UK to Australia. That same year, Jeanie Dicks, the first female member of the
Electrical Contractors Association, was responsible for the first permanent electrification of
Winchester Cathedral. A register of members from 1935 shows the international membership
of WES and the variety of different women who were members.
Before World War Two, German Jewish engineer Ira Rischowski took refuge in the United Kingdom,
becoming a member of WES, having already been in correspondence with them at the start of
the War. Because of her German heritage, she was interned as an enemy alien at the Rushen
camp on the Isle of Wight but returned to an engineering career once freed in 1942.
In 1938, Marja Ludwika Ziff became the first woman to study electrical engineering at the
University of Edinburgh, the professor who had offered her a place believing her application
was from a Polish man. She later became a defence engineer and university lecturer.
World War Two Women continued to play an active role in
engineering in World War Two and WES were vocal about promoting women's place in industry.
Women proved once again their ability to take on roles seen as exclusively for men, while
women with formal training in engineering from before the War were able to demonstrate
their innovative capacity. Aeronautical engineer Beatrice Shilling, for example, engineered
the RAE restrictor for use in Hurricane and Spitfire planes, which had previously been
failing during air battle.
Isabel Hardwich, electrical engineer and photometry expert joined the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical
Company Ltd. in Manchester in 1941, and later became supervisor of technical women within
their Research Department, as well as a president of WES.
Post-war, Cold War and second wave feminism Although women who had gained engineering
opportunities in both industry and the forces during World War Two were forced out of those
positions in an almost identical situation to that following World War One, there were
enough women sufficiently established in senior roles in government research establishments,
such as the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Building Research Establishment and similar,
that there continued to be more openings for women. Beatrice Shilling, for instance, remained
at the RAE to work on rocket engines and was consulted by NASA on runway surfaces for the
future space shuttles. In the same era, Anne Burns introduced the use of strain gauges
for inflight testing, contributing to solving the reasons for the Comet airliner crashes
of the 1950s.
In 1947 Mary Thompson Irvine became the first woman to be elected a chartered member of
the Institution of Structural Engineers. In the early 1950s Mary Coombs became the first
woman to work on a commercial computer, the LEO computer. In 1958 Dorothy Smith, an electrical
engineer at Metropolitan-Vickers, was awarded Full Membership of the Institution of Electrical
Engineers, the first woman since Hertha Ayrton in 1899, to reach this level of membership.
In 1962, Steve Shirley founded software company Freelance Programmers with a capital of £6,
. Having experienced sexism in her workplace, "being fondled, being pushed against the wall",
she wanted to create job opportunities for women with dependents, and predominantly employed
women, with only three male programmers in the first 300 staff, until the Sex Discrimination
Act 1975 made that practice illegal. She also adopted the name "Steve" to help her in the
male-dominated business world, given that company letters signed using her real name
were not responded to. Her team's projects included programming Concorde's black box
flight recorder.
In 1967, WES led the organisation of the second International Conference of Women Engineers
and Scientists, held in Cambridge. The conference was attended by delegates from across the
globe, with many international speakers, including from African and Asian countries.
Tidal engineer Mary Kendrick began leading the team working on the Thames Barrier in
1968. She later became the first female Acting Conservator of the River Mersey responsible
for keeping the River Mersey navigable, a role dating back to 1625.
In 1969, Shirley Williams MP, then Minister for Education and Science, launched the first
Women in Engineering Year campaign in conjunction with WES to encourage girls and young women
to take up engineering as a career.
Although numbers were tiny until the 1970s, increasing numbers of women started to take
university degrees and trade qualifications in engineering subjects. It was still a period
when a talented person could rise from the technician ranks without a degree, as defence
engineer Joan Lavender was able to do at DeHavillands and engineering software designer Judy Butland
was able to do at Manchester University and then with her own software business. The defence
industry, aviation and the emerging computer hardware and software industries were areas
when many women found careers at that time. Examples include Elizabeth Killick, WES presidents
Elizabeth Laverick and Peggy Hodges and the founder of the UK's first independent commercial
software company, Dina St Johnston.
In 1979 the Finniston Report into the engineering profession in the United Kingdom was commissioned
by the Labour government. This ultimately led to the foundation of the Engineering Council
in 1981, which in its turn collaborated with the Equal Opportunities Commission to launch
the Women into Science and Engineering year in 1984. Spearheaded by Baroness Beryl Platt,
Chair of the EOC and herself an aeronautical engineer, WISE aimed to highlight the career
opportunities for girls and women in science and engineering professions. At the time of
the launch of WISE, only 7% of engineering graduates in the UK were women.