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Award in the years to come. Following that, OPSE has its eyes on a summit with all Ontario engineering leaders to develop an industry-wide solution to barriers faced not only by women, but also the persistent gaps in data about the numbers of black, Indigenous, LGBTQ2+ persons, and persons with disabilities working in the sector. Over the last five years, OPSE has often trained a spotlight on engineering’s gender gap, formulating hard data like the fact that the number of women working in engineering over the last decade has increased by just 2% in Ontario. It’s a number OPSE leaders refer to as “dismal". Other findings have been stark and plentiful, but perhaps only add to what is an extraordinarily complex puzzle. Nationally, 17.4% of newly licensed engineers were women in 2017, according to Professional Engineers Ontario. Of 14,905 engineering degrees awarded nationally in 2016, just over 19% were to women. This is despite the fact that women represent a strong majority of young university graduates in Canada, and that the number of female students applying for engineering programs in Ontario has tripled since 2005. But the more critical number of engineering license holders has barely moved.
One of the more pressing concerns is that many of the challenges that exist for women only arrive after they’ve already landed a job. Monkey Business, Adobe Stock
OSPE working to welcome next generation of women engineers with open arms By David Nesseth
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n online signature counter is ticking away as engineers from across Ontario join the call to action for more inclusion and diversity in the male-dominated sector. The new real-time ticker sits on the Engineering for Change website (www. engineeringforchange.ca), which lets virtual signees tweet out support under the hashtag #engineeringforchange. The site’s owner, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE), hopes to gain 10,000 supporters who say their arms are open for the next generation of talented engineers, no matter who they may be. Joining the cause is critical, OSPE leaders say, if the engineering community wants to end the journey down a path where just 32% of Canadian-trained women with engineering degrees actually put their talents to use. 34 | December 2020
“Women and other underrepresented groups are being held back from contributing to the vital work Ontarians need them to do,” says current OSPE President and Chair, Réjeanne Aimey, who worked as a mechanical engineer in Ontario’s automotive and nuclear industries. DIVERSITY AWARD While women’s presence in fields such as business, law and medicine have nearly doubled over the last 30 years, engineering remains somewhat uncharted territory. OSPE believes that a key component of potentially altering this course could come through a plan based more in action than rhetoric. One of the first tasks on the list will be to shed light on OSPE members who are already making real systemic change. These individuals will be featured under a Diversity and Inclusion Champion
FEMALE FACULTY MILESTONE In science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the largest percentage of women typically pursue life sciences, while engineering often draws the fewest female candidates. Studies suggest that it could be anything from societal attitudes about what is considered appropriate for girls and women from a young age, to a culture within engineering where there is a distinct lack of visible role models. Female faculty in engineering programs can often be few and far between as well. On that front, a marker of change did occur at Montreal’s Concordia University just two years ago. For the first time in Canada, a faculty of engineering was named after a woman: The Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science. Cody, who grew up in Iran, where women now make up more than half of the students in computer science
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