The study, released to mark the start of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2015 (2-6 November), has found a host of organizations – including universities, media outlets and search engines – are guilty of reinforcing engineering stereotypes through their choice of images online.
The analysis of engineering-related imagery from across more than 70 popular websites found:
- Four in 10 (42%) ‘people pictures’ online related to engineering depict women.
- Stock image sites and search engines are the worst culprits, majorly lagging behind other sites on gender balance. Image searches for the term ‘engineer’ found just 26% of search engine results featured women and 25% of stock images contained female engineers (compared to 85% and 81% of images featuring men).
- Universities are the best at portraying gender balance in the sector, with 53% of images including a woman and 80% including a male.
- One fifth of images feature the stereotypical hard hat, fortifying out-dated opinions that engineering is only about men in hard hats working on building sites as opposed to the full range of careers available to young people today.
Supporting research among 11-16 year olds has also revealed just how influential online imagery can be. Almost a third (29%) of those surveyed believed images used to represent engineering were not relevant to them, with 28% of girls saying they were too male orientated. Almost one in 10 (7%) girls said images they’d seen online put them off a career in engineering.
Paul Jackson, chief executive of EngineeringUK, said: “If a picture is worth a thousand words, it is extremely worrying that cyber sexism is rife when it comes to the depiction of engineers on websites used by young people.
“Engineers shape the world we live in and are behind many of the amazing everyday things we take for granted. Engineering isn’t just about men in hard hats.
“In the next decade employers will need 1.82m people with engineering skills, meaning we need to double the number of apprentices and graduates entering the industry. We cannot afford to lose would-be engineers by carelessly reinforcing stereotypes and not showing the full scope of exciting careers available.”
He added: “As part of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2015 we are calling on all organisations to look carefully at how they represent engineering and stop using these out-dated, gender stereotypical pictures. We need to inspire, not discourage, young people to consider engineering as their future career.”
A separate study from the Centre for Economics & Business Research for EngineeringUK has revealed the financial benefits of becoming an engineer. The analysis has found the net lifetime earnings premium associated with doing level 3 apprenticeships in engineering, manufacturing and technology is around £111,900, one of the highest among apprenticeship subject areas.
The study also revealed that total employment in the engineering sectors was estimated at 5.6 million, representing one in five (17.2%) of all UK jobs.
Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2015, now in its third year, is designed to inspire young people, their parents and teachers through a host of activities based around the theme ‘Mission Inspiration’. This will include a schedule of hands-on activities and interactive events and activities run by employers and engineers.
