Page 49 - Headingtonian Magazine 2017

Why do you think there are so few women
in engineering? This is a question I get asked frequently; it was an interview question for
an internship, it is a question that my work colleagues ask me often, and to be honest, it is a question I ask myself a lot when I am working in an exquisite place like McLaren, looking around the engineering department in disbelief.
I believe there has been a stigma associated with what engineering is deemed to be; what it represents to a woman.
Just because as a child I didn’t immediately pick up a can of WD-40 and start playing around with bolts and car parts, doesn’t mean that I wasn’t thinking about them. In fact I thought about how things are put together and “why that was there” so often, I began
to develop a very logical thought process to problems and objects.
At Headington, being inquisitive as a girl was a good thing. It gave me the opportunity to ask as many questions as I wanted. I particularly remember loving Mr. Howe’s IT classes,
and how he would introduce us to new technologies that were coming out in the near future, all because of scientific research.
When I was choosing my A levels, I remember walking down Headington hallways and passing a poster displaying flexible solar panels. As I started reading I saw it was advertising a Materials Engineering day course at Oxford University. It involved tech,
chemistry and free food. Easy, I was in!
After spending the day at the University, floating magnets in their superconducting state and learning about ink that allowed a current to pass through it, I was hooked. This is what I wanted to be involved in, materials engineering. Engineering the materials that make this world.
I then began looking into what engineering would allow me to do and this is where the topic ‘women in engineering’ got interesting.
Searching the corners of the Internet, I couldn’t find many inspirational videos or articles about a woman “like me” making it in science. I am a girls-girl who can easily spend 3 hours sitting in a salon, and it didn’t look as though this industry was for people like that; people like me.
Being strong-willed and driven, I went into Materials Engineering anyway and got a place at Manchester University.
After the first couple of years studying it really didn’t seem too bad; yes there are quite a
few more boys there than girls, but it wasn’t awkward or lonely. What’s the controversy and where’s the sexism? I began to learn that engineering is not about portraying the hard, tough and mighty version of yourself. If you are interested in it, then go for it!
I really got stuck into my course and, by the end of my second year, I had worked hard
enough to earn an industrial placement year, a year where I could go and work in a business relevant to my degree.
This was fantastic for me; at this stage I was so keen to see what was out there, to apply my knowledge to something useful. I wanted something that was pressured, high profile and verging on sporty- to have that team vibe I thrive on so much.
I took a stab in the dark and wrote a letter to McLaren, attaching my CV. Six months passed and I heard nothing, I got an offer from Morgan’s Materials and was pursuing Bentley at the time, when I got a call inviting me to interview at McLaren Technology Centre the following week.
After four days of nervous planning, a day of tough assessments and a ride in the world’s coolest glass elevator, I secured a year at McLaren for engineering - and what a place it is to work.
I’m now here sitting on a mezzanine floor above some of the world’s finest sports cars. My background noise is the sound of a V8. My backdrop is one spotlessly glamorous production centre, and my job: making these cars perform at the forefront of technology. As I walk down the perfect production line on those polished floors, I don’t feel weird that I’m one of the few girls working in this place or that I have a handbag on my arm, I feel empowered and I love it.
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