engineered equality

EcolibriumTHE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF AIRAH MAY 2015 · VOLUME 14.4

Under the domeHigh finance in downtown Sydney. PRINT POST APPROVAL NUMBER PP352532/00001

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A few of HVAC&R’s sharpest female engineers spoke to Ecolibriurm staff writer Rachel Urquhart about why women choose HVAC&R careers, and how gender discrimination still exists, just not in the way we usually think.

There’s no denying that – be it through nature or nurture – there are certain careers that attract more men, and those that attract more women. Engineering, and more specifically, the HVAC&R industry, has long been one of the former.

But as employment-gender stereotypes have fallen away over the years, allowing individuals to pursue their own interests rather than dictated traditional paths, what is it that draws women into a male-dominated industry such as engineering?

And given that the future’s brightest and most valuable minds are just as likely to be female as they are male, how should our industry be ensuring that women are among the HVAC&R ranks?

With the idea of token placements and quotas being as insulting as it is outdated, perhaps it’s worth looking into how and why some of our industry’s women found their way to HVAC&R. And furthermore, what they think are the real selling points and shortcomings of an industry historically dominated by men.

According to statistics from Engineers Australia, women accounted for just 16 per cent of the 9,500 Australian engineering graduates in 2011. Interestingly enough, however, women tend to score higher academic results than their male peers, and about a quarter of female engineering graduates receive a PhD.

Most female engineers can be found in environmental engineering (37 per cent), biomedical engineering (32 per cent), and chemical engineering (26 per cent).

Mechanical engineering, along with mining and maritime engineering, trails behind, with single-figure percentage participation rates.

CHOOSING HVAC&RBy the time someone is well into a career, it’s easy to forget how it all began. Of course, keeping an eye on future career moves and professional development is a higher priority than, say, contemplating whether you chose your career, or it chose you.

Regardless of whether they’re male or female, some people are simply more inclined toward a career in engineering. The archetypes usually share a common predilection towards maths, physics or other sciences, and an analytical and inquiring mind. It’s difficult to say whether these attributes might be a product of their environment, or just how their brains are wired. It’s harder still to say whether any of these tendencies have anything to do with gender.

Engineered equality

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Jenny Lewis, Affil.AIRAH, at work in the Melbourne office of WSP. Image: Rachel Urquhart.


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According to studies conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the strong mathematical and scientific literacy among young Australian women generally fails to translate into advanced and intermediate science and maths studies, and by extension, into careers such as engineering.

In fact, young Australian women scored only slightly lower than young men on the 2009 PISA mathematics test. However, the female score was still higher than the international average for both genders. In science, there was no difference between the gender scores, with both above-average. This suggests that it’s not a hard-wired deficiency in maths and science that deters women from a science-and-maths-based career such as engineering, but perhaps social perceptions and the learning environment.

But on top of all of this, the reasons for choosing an HVAC&R career can be as arbitrary as any other occupation.

For AIRAH New South Wales division committee member and building services manager Renata Dobrowolska, M.AIRAH, the path into an engineering career was “somewhat of a fluke”.

“Back in Poland, I was always an A-grade high school student with a passion for history, but I equally enjoyed maths and science,” she says. “When it actually came to deciding which course of study to follow at university, I literally followed a boy that I had a crush on, who happened to be studying mechanical engineering.”

Although Dobrowolska never crossed paths with the object of her affection

during university, she never regretted her decision to become an engineer.

“It turned out to be quite serendipitous, because when I immigrated to Australia due to political circumstances in Poland, my Masters degree in engineering presented more career opportunities than a degree in Polish history ever would.”

Likewise, Edefice director and AIRAH board member Ania Hampton’s path into the HVAC&R industry started with a love, albeit one of maths and science. There’s also the possibility that Hampton was simply born to be an engineer – after all, it was in her genes.

“Both of my parents are mechanical engineers,” Hampton says. “My mum is, in fact, a retired HVAC engineer – I think she was the second female member of AIRAH. Some tremendous maths and physics teachers in high school fuelled my passion for those subjects, and I intended to do a science degree. At the very last minute I decided I’d rather do something more applied, so I switched to engineering.”

During university, a building services subject (taught by Dr Lu Aye, F.AIRAH) piqued Hampton’s interest. Questions about whether there was a more energy-efficient way to do things saw sustainability progress from a hobby to a career.

“I started my career as an automotive engineer at Holden,” remembers Hampton. “At a party I met an ESD consultant and thought, ‘Wow, you can get paid to do this?’”

Luckily for Hampton, the ESD consultant’s company was after a graduate engineer.

“It was a step backwards at the time but one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” she says.

Brisbane-based Aurecon senior ESD and mechanical engineer Jessica Holz, M.AIRAH, and Melbourne-based WSP Built Ecology environmental design consultant Jenny Lewis, Affil.AIRAH, both cite an interest and natural skill in physics and maths as their gateway into engineering. But for both, this interest was compounded by the desire to do something useful for society and the environment, and to exercise the creative problem solving that is integral to high-quality engineering.

“Essentially, I fell into studying engineering at university because I was good at maths and physics, and I wanted to do something useful for society,” says Lewis. “I became increasingly interested in environmental issues and in particular the problem of climate change. This motivated me to find work in environmental consulting within the building sector, with an understanding

Ania Hampton, M.AIRAH Jenny Lewis, Affil.AIRAH Jessica Holz, M.AIRAH

Interestingly

enough, however,

women tend to score

higher academic

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of HVAC&R being central to reducing carbon emissions associated with the built environment.”

As a high school student, A.G. Coombs project engineer Katherine Hay, Affil.AIRAH, was tossing up between science and engineering.

“Somehow the coin fell on engineering,” she says. “It didn’t seem like a big decision at the time.

“I applied for quite a few positions as a graduate, and ended up taking a role with the company I wanted to work for the most. They seemed to take on interesting projects and had a relatively young and energetic team to work with. It just happened to be within the HVAC industry.”

A MERIT-BASED INDUSTRYDobrowolska has more than 30 years’ experience in the engineering and HVAC&R industry, and to her eye, it is a fair, merit-based one, albeit one that has gone through significant changes over the years.

“In the 1980s and 90s, Australia seemed to me rather conservative in terms of gender roles, and had hardly any females in engineering,” says Dobrowolska. “At that time I considered Europe and my native Poland as more progressive on that issue than Australia – for example, my engineering course in Poland had a ratio of 80:20 female to male students. In those early years of my career in Australia, I was often mistaken for the tea lady or receptionist on a job.

“However, in the last 30 years I have observed a significant shift in attitude in Australia in terms of gender equality in typically male-dominated fields. In particular, some large companies nurture and support female employees taking maternity leave, without compromising their career progression in the long term. Nowadays females are treated as an asset as opposed to a liability.”

When it comes down to it, Dobrowolska strongly believes that career progression largely depends on the ambitions and goals of the individual, not one’s gender.

AIMING HIGHHolz says the multidisciplinary rewards of delivering on both general HVAC&R as well as sustainability goals is a major draw of the job. However, the business operations, management and directorship side of things also holds some appeal – Holz, like many other women, can increasingly see opportunities in executive roles.

“A lot of women like to plan out their careers and are quite ambitious, so I think we could see more women moving into senior positions in the future,”

Katherine Hay, Affil.AIRAH Renata Dobrowolska, M.AIRAH

In those early

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says Holz. “There are still some issues with gender bias, although they are not widespread and are usually institutional or subconscious in nature. For example, some organisations may never have visualised women in particular roles so naturally promote men into these roles. This can delay women’s progression into senior positions, or force women to be more aggressive in their communication style when trying to progress their career.”

Hay says that personal choices can lead to different career progression, but ultimately, the opportunities are there. “I’m sure there are companies that exist where career progression would be made very difficult for women but I haven’t experienced that directly,” Hay says. “I do admire very experienced female engineers in senior roles – it must have been a real challenge even a few decades ago to study engineering and progress to a leadership role within the field of engineering.

“There will always be some [discrimination], but it is definitely the

minority,” she says. “Interestingly, or more disappointingly, discrimination, whether blatant or more subtle, seems to come from a spread of ages. It is not just those approaching retirement [who are] accustomed to being in an all-male industry.”

A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORDA concerted push for equality can, however, be a double-edged sword – quotas, token hires, and diversity-based KPIs can all cast doubt on whether a woman was chosen for the role because of her skills, or her gender. According to Hampton, women actually have a much easier progression through the industry thanks to this push for equality, but it is an approach that needs to be cautiously balanced.

“At university, we enjoyed select entry, reduced prerequisites and exclusive scholarships, as well as access to

mentoring and women-only lounges,” says Hampton. “Quotas and diversity-based KPIs for managers put female candidates to the top of the list, and it’s very easy to stand out as the only woman in a field of men. If an employer is specifically looking for a woman to balance out a team, you can end up competing against a very small pool of applicants.

“The dark side of quotas and diversity-KPIs is the implication that women aren’t capable of landing these roles on their own and need a leg up to compete,” says Hampton. “Then, once you’ve got the job, there’s the fear that it’s because of your gender rather than your skills.

“The push for women in management positions makes career progression that much easier for us, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Having diversity in a team and management structure has well-documented benefits, but putting an incompetent woman in a role for the sake of diversity is a retrograde step.”

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Hampton says that in her experience, these efforts to encourage and enable women in engineering roles, and more broadly, management roles, lead to them being treated much better than men.

“I’ve experienced gender discrimination from day one, although never against women,” she says. “Right from university we were given the sort of advantages that, if given to men, would have feminists in an uproar. Most men would kill for the flexible working arrangements mothers get.

“In my time I’ve never seen any discrimination against women, although I have seen several women cry discrimination when pulled up for under-performance.”

SKILLS, NOT GENDERAs with any vocation, skills, experience and proving your worth are generally of higher value in HVAC&R than other considerations, including gender.

“Probably like most industries, particularly those that are relatively small, opportunities are mostly based on who you know,” says Hay. “In my experience, once you have worked with people and know them, it tends to be more about skills and ability than things like gender.

Lewis agrees, saying she doesn’t feel she has experienced significant discrimination in the workplace, but sees any doubts about a woman’s ability to perform the work – perceived or imagined – not as a reason to be discouraged, but as a reason to excel.

“When I have encountered what I’ve felt may be resistance to working with female engineers, it has seemed to me that this is quickly overcome once a woman displays her technical ability,” says Lewis. “As a woman, I sometimes feel I need to prove myself more before people trust my technical skills. I guess the upside is that it’s an additional motivator to be good at what I do.”

THE FAMILY WAYLewis does, however, acknowledge that there are specific areas where women require job flexibility or support.

“I’m wary of generalising and I don’t claim to speak for all women in the industry by any means,” says Lewis. “I have certainly seen women excel in this industry. On the other hand, it’s generally difficult for women to maintain their career trajectory if they have children, and I believe this is due to a combination of practical reasons and a lack of systems to support working mothers.

“I don’t see this as being an issue that is specific to the engineering industry. However, it would be great to see the industry address the issue in a progressive way.”

Hampton says that this support for women, when it comes to children and family commitments, requires its own kind of gender balance. In order to help


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women, this support needs to be extended to men, also.

“Women are perfectly capable of securing senior positions on their own,” says Hampton, “Quotas are unnecessary, but we do need to create the social conditions that enable them to do this.

“At a recent AIRAH convention, I had a chat with the directors and they all said the same thing: ‘I couldn’t do this without my wife’. Women also need a ‘wife’: someone who can run the house, look after the kids and put dinner on the table while she networks and attends committee meetings.

“Most companies now offer women working flexible hours: from home, part-time. Extending this same privilege to men will enable them to support their wives while they do valuable work in a rewarding career. I couldn’t do my job and be as involved with AIRAH as I am if my husband didn’t have the flexibility to come home early, take a day off here or there and be ‘dad’ as much as I am ‘mum’.”

According to Engineers Australia’s 2012 statistics, just under half (49 per cent) of the women’s engineering labour force did not have children.

WHY WOMEN, WHY ENGINEERING?It seems that for many women who find their way to engineering and to HVAC&R, the groundwork was laid early.

For those who are interested in physics, maths, and science from a young age, an engineering career is an obvious path – as long as they are aware of the options.

“Women don’t go into engineering because they think it’s boring, not because they are afraid of the men,” says Hampton. “Our schools need to teach the exciting, practical aspects of physics and maths and engage girls early on. Women are often looking for a career where they can help others and benefit society – engineering does exactly this and we need to be promoting that aspect of it!

“The rise of ESD has caused a large increase in the number of women moving into our field; designing a refrigeration or condenser water system can be just as good for the world, we just need to sell it right!

“I get a huge rush from seeing a building and knowing that I was a part of it. I love hearing my boys say, ‘That’s mummy’s building’. And I hope to continue to work on projects that I can be really proud of and leave a lasting legacy for the next generation.”

Hay says that at a higher, tertiary level, the incentive to join the HVAC&R industry over other engineering disciplines is the same across gender lines – we all want to work for companies that value their staff and contribute to fostering careers.

“Most graduates – male and female – are attracted to roles and companies which invest in employees and their development, take on a variety of work and trust and back their staff,” says Hay. “If the industry is attracting good people in general, there is bound to be a good mix of gender.”

An additional drawcard for women in engineering and HVAC&R is the opportunity to effect change, particularly in the sustainability sector.

“A lot of women like to see the positive impacts of their work on the community and environment, which is probably why so many women are interested in sustainability,” says Holz. “Therefore, celebrating and marketing the positive impacts of our industry is a very important part of attracting more women to engineering.

“Also, work-life balance and flexible working conditions are becoming increasingly important to both men and women,” Holz continues. “Women, however, may be more likely to seek out employers who offer a flexible working

environment and who recognise their contributions and accomplishments rather than relying on ‘presenteeism’ to evaluate performance.”

But eventually, the question of selling the HVAC&R industry to potential recruits – regardless of gender – circles back to one of its age-old shortcomings: the industry’s lack of visibility.

“HVAC&R contribution to the industry and our day-to-day lives is currently taken for granted,” says Dobrowolska. “In order to attract more women to this field we need to create awareness and promote our industry, commencing in primary schools. We need to explain how our industry literally keeps things cool in order to make it a ‘cool’ career choice.

“There is definitely a larger number of females in all engineering fields, and many have brilliant achievements,” she says. “Perhaps AIRAH and our members may need to take the lead in more active promotion of the benefits and the uniqueness of HVAC&R industry through primary and high schools to ensure that future generations aspire to join our field.”

WSP’s Lewis agrees with the suggestion that AIRAH could consider a presence in secondary schools.

“I went to an all-girls high school, and we had a few different career professionals come in to speak to us,” she says. “And I remember there were doctors and lawyers and accountants, but no engineers.

“I don’t know if that has changed at my high school now, but I think [engineering] would have interested me at the time, and perhaps others, too.”

Hampton agrees that engineering and HVAC&R careers could do with a little street-cred overhaul – in order to have young, enthusiastic students signing on, the industry needs more recognition of the important and at times exceptional work it does. In short, HVAC&R needs to be cooler.

“The work we do is so fundamental to everything in modern life and yet it is almost invisible,” says Hampton. “I’m very excited to be joining AIRAH’s board and on my agenda is making HVAC&R the industry of choice for graduates. I want to engage with young engineers and students, and have the best and brightest fighting to get into our industry.” ❚

Women also need

a ‘wife’: someone

who can run the

house . . . while

she networks

and attends

committee

meetings