Resilience and visability

Rising to the top of an industry is a challenge for anyone – but for a woman in a male-dominated world, Emily Smith’s advice is simple.

“Don’t listen,” she says. “Be resilient. I’ve had some horrendous things said to me. ‘You can’t be the managing director of a fabrications company – you’re a woman’ or ‘you’re just a silly little girl, what do you know?’”

Emily is the Managing Director at AVW Fabrications and the Operations & Finance Director at Michael Smith Switchgear, two high-up positions in prolific organisations.

“If I wasn’t of a resilient character, these things could really get to me. Imposter syndrome is a massive issue – for men too, but more prevalent in women – so when you hear these things, they make it worse. You need resilience not to let that in. But at the same time, I’m so resilient because I have heard these things and I’ve found a way to come through them.”

“It’s one of my pet peeves when someone says: ‘Why is this a women’s event? Why is it International Women’s Day? What about the men?’ and I say: ‘Hang on a minute, what about the working men’s clubs? What about the freemasons, and all the other things that exist solely for men?’ We need these things to make us more visible.”

Every business can own the responsibility of creating equitable working environments. The businesses’ latest strategy for generating equal opportunities is very simple.

“When we’re hiring, our HR team removes names and other identifying information from the CVs, so we see the candidates on the strengths of their skills and experience alone. Hopefully, this removes any unconscious bias, and means we interview people that might’ve been overlooked in the past.”

With the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day being #EmbraceEquity, Emily believes that the best way to get more women into the manufacturing and engineering industries is at the grassroots level.

“Equity is the pathway to equality. It’s how we catch women up with men – and once we’re level, we can start to think about equality.

“In my industry, we need to be reaching girls while they’re young. I’m an enterprise advisor in schools and work to ensure they know the opportunities that are available to them. I was at a careers fair with the fabrications team recently, when a couple of girls came over to look at our table, and one said: ‘I can’t go into that because I’m a girl’.

“Why? Who’s told you that? Where’s this ideology come from that you can’t do something? We need to change that; it’s not about saying: ‘You have to do it’ so much as ‘You can do it’ and making it an option.”

International Women’s Day, Pride, Black History Month – these are all examples of equitable events, not designed to exclude others, but to emphasise the continuing needs of minority groups and the rights and opportunities they fight for.