Letter from the Vice President

Tara mentions that perhaps some of the reasons she was excluded from this could have been because her employer may have preferred someone with more experience, or that maybe given that she was an expat in Spain, he may have not have wanted to invest long term in her role in the company. Regardless of these reasons, she still felt as if she should have had the opportunities to travel and be present on these worksites. After all, she had been doing significant behind the scenes work.

Tara had worked on these international projects locally in Barcelona without getting the chance to observe the results of her efforts. “I was working on huge towers, and I couldn’t go. Actually, we were actually working with a Lebanese company called Glassline. The team members kept asking me, ‘when are you coming to Morocco?’ And I would tell them, hmm I don’t know”. Among her company, Tara was the only person who spoke French, and she felt that it would have been relevant for her to be there. After all, she was on all the calls and would even translate all the reports for her boss from Spanish.

With an itch for change, Tara felt like it was time to keep growing and developing her career. In September of 2021, she applied for the job at Wintech in London. “London was something I always dreamed of”.

Hands On at Wintech

Tara’s experience at Wintech has been a positive transition in her career path. “Here, I feel that I am very challenged professionally. They treat me like a man”, she says enthusiastically. On the contrary to her experience in Spain, Tara has gotten a fair share of hands-on experience.

“I go on site visits, to construction sites. Very very often. Once every 2 weeks I go to construction sites, I wear the helmet, the yellow fluorescent t-shirt you wear when you’re outside so people can see you.”

A big part of facade engineering consists of analyzing the structure and making sure there are no defects. In the process of doing so, engineers have to mount themselves on the cradle machines. Tara explains that traditionally, it wasn’t common for women to be on these machines. She laughs as she recounts an interaction she had with a man she was working with on the cradle during one of her London site visits.

“I’m the only woman between the workers, the people that are actually working on the facades. There’s the contractors, clients. It’s all men in the world of architecture. Here in this specialization of facade, it’s really unique.” workplace seems to be progressing in their firm. On International Women in Engineering Day, Wintech made it a point to acknowledge the disparity within the field as a whole. Alongside Tara, they also spotlighted some of the other hard working women on their team.

“My company has 100 employees almost, and maybe at least 40 are women. Half of my office are women. So it’s really really nice. My company is making it a point to treat women like men. In my old office, it was 3 women and 7 men.”

Tara even points out that she had the chance to travel to Scotland for a project during the time she has been at Wintech.

According to Tara, the presence of women at her current workplace is valued.

“Women tend to be more organized. I can see the men appreciating our touch; Our precision, organization, order. We are more rigorous, and men appreciate this in my company.” I asked Tara how she personally feels about initiatives like that of Wintech to promote and recognize women engineers. Tara disagrees with the idea that such initiatives imply that women are less capable than their male counterparts. Having spaces and spotlighting successful women creates another necessary outlet for representation. Particularly in a field that fails to recognize women and their efforts collectively, this representation is rather pivotal towards making any changes in the industry.

I asked Tara the question of whether or not she feels that women are given the credit and acknowledgement because they are women, or because of their skillset. Her response: “Of course for the skills. We just bring another vision.”

Given that men are the ones primarily pursuing the engineering field, there’s an association that being an engineer isn’t necessarily suited towards women. Furthermore, for the women who are in the industry, there’s often the misconception that their work can strip them from their label of “femininity”, and this same stigma is what would limit them from being as successful as their male counterparts. Tara challenges that. “I can be an engineer and still be a woman and be feminine”, she tells me adamantly. Furthermore, seeing women on front pages and acknowledged in the media oriented world we are in today may even serve as inspiration to other girls to pursue this field as well. With more women in the field, there is bound to be more headway towards changing the current dynamic. “Women starting to work in this industry are going to encourage others to do it”, Tara states.

In Tara’s perspective, any level of change taking place in the industry begins at the academic level.

“Universities should accept equal amounts of men and women in a classroom. For example in architecture school, there are more men than women. This already gives the way for more men to have the opportunity.”

Another factor would be the previously mentioned spaces of female representation and opening up discussions regarding women as engineers in the early days of university years, all the way up to the actual work force.

“The confidence is needed to go in it. The more people talk about it, the more awareness. That’s why I’m happy to participate in those kinds of dialogues because I already did that with my office and I think it’s helpful for other younger generations.”

Making Headway and Room for Growth

Regardless of the great work Wintech is doing to change the gender disparity within its own spaces, there is a lot of room for progress to be made collectively within the industry. “We’re just starting, that’s for sure”, Tara tells me. In terms of the workplace, bringing change comes with companies bringing power to women to prove themselves. But this is where it can get tricky. If an employer refuses to hire or see any value of women on their team, there is automatically no space to prove a point in such an environment. Women can’t be the only ones advocating for themselves; in Tara’s perspective, there has to be collaboration between the dominant figures in the workplace.