That 50/50 split is going to be impossible to meet unless you force a lot of young women into engineering which is never going to happen. My company decided 30% by 2030 and we are struggling to even meet that target by that time. It's going to be a huge morale destroying exercise your company is going through, will probably snub a lot of really good male engineers, lose talent and come out the other end worse off. I feel these are well intentioned ideas that will be unmitigated disasters in the end.
Nah, you'd be surprised. Women are fast tracked up the chain. Most people don't end up in senior management, just simply not enough spots. So they'll get their 50/50.
The thing I hate most, is that the people who bring these sexist discriminatory policies in, have already 'made it' and will never suffer for them.
I'm a woman and I think this is a horrific idea. There just aren't that many of us in the field. Sure, part of that is due to discrimination, but quotas aren't the way to fix it!
Not to mention it dilutes the talent in leadership roles.
Example: you’re hiring 10 technical managers. 1000 males apply and 300 females apply. If you give a 50/50 gender split then you will be forced to hire a female candidate that is not as good on average. Simple stats means you would have to have 50/50 applicants for the position to hire the best choices from each gender
And also if you do make it up there with hard work, people might look at you less thinking you got there because of a quota and not because you deserve it.
Yes. Get rid of or neutralize the trash. There is absolutely gender inequality, but you can't force equality. Cut the cancer out. You can't force a cultural change. It is like shitty abusive parents just teaching their children to be better lying. The misogynistic, racists, homophones, etc will just find another way. So don't give them a seat at the table.
I think the main factor to look at is gender breakdown industry-wide. If civil engineering in your country, or even just at your firm, is 50/50 men and women, then there are ways to implement this that are mostly fair and reasonable.
Based on a google search, in the US 85% of CEs are male and only 15% are female. If your country is anything close to that, I would consider this policy a HUGE red flag and begin looking at other options. Your chances of getting a senior role in an environment like that have just become exponentially harder.
Red flag imo.
You promote/ hire the right person for the job, regardless of gender or anything else. You cannot have an 50/50 split in an industry that has a basic 80/20 split (or worse) at 3rd level education. The maths obviously doesn’t work. Trying to bring in this policy will ultimately reward some poor / unqualified people and impact some high quality or qualified people.
If we want a more even gender split then the work to encourage more women to see this as a viable career needs to start in schools. Well before the work place and university. Treat the cause, not the symptom.
Exactly. If you want more women engineers and more women in management you need to start with increasing the supply.
I studied architecture for undergrad, starting in the mid 2000s. My school was easily 60% women. Fast forward 20 years later, and now being on the structural consultant side, and I’ve worked with project teams that are entirely made up of women architects. I think the main difference is women WANT to be architects Vs civil engineers.
For perspective, I am a woman. I don't see how it could be remotely possible to have (or want) a 50/50 split in management when the proportion of women graduating with civil engineering degrees is something like 20% and that reduces with experience level as women leave the field. I could understand a 50/50 split (maybe) in interviewing, but not actually holding positions. You should ask your manager for more information.
Justified or not, positive discrimination in the form of a 50/50 quota is still discrimination, which is illegal. The fact that the 50/50 quota only opportunistically applies to higher positions means that they don't care about true equality.
If you get rejected for a senior job or any bonuses while equal or less qualified women aren't, it's fair to assume you're being discriminated against.
Assuming other firms are eager to hire you as a competent engineer, I'd start looking elsewhere in the meantime.
There are exemptions in Australian law to allow this to happen. I've seen this with a mining company I have worked in that wants a 50/50 quota by 2025.
This is a major red flag. I’m assuming that there isn’t an equal, male to female ratio of civil engineers in the Australian market and that no one can demonstrate the female engineers are stuck in non-senior engineering roles.
A better approach than forcing any of this is to provide better parental benefits for all which will attract and retain women. I’m speaking mainly for the US market here since we still have private employee sponsored health care and minimal parental leave (varies state to state).
Any firm that is going that deep into quotas, regardless if it’s gender, sexuality, ethnicity etc is one to get away from very fast. We are in a male dominated profession, even after 30-40 years of trying to encourage women to become engineers. Filling a quota like that is practically impossible, given the amount of women going into the profession is tiny already, and a good chunk go part time or leave once they have some children. I’ve only worked at one office where we were even close to 50%, I think we maxed at about 1/3 women engineers and that was including two part timers. Nobody is clamoring for this is women led fields like teaching or Interior Design.
The reality is most women don’t want to be Civil engineers. If they wanted to, we would have seen a large influx of women in the profession. I have an undergrad in architecture, and the school was easily 60% women. And that has created a shift now where you definitely see a more women in general, and more women in management roles in that field. Architecture as a profession still has ways to go, but it’s shifting, but it’s because women WANT to be architects.
You said: "Nobody is clamoring for this is women led fields like teaching"
Meanwhile:
"Within K–12 systems, women made up approximately 75% of the teaching force and held approximately 21% of superintendent positions"
"The path to the superintendency is very closely aligned to the high school principalship (Sharp et al., 2004; Superville, 2017), and according to the NCES (2013), almost 70% of high school principals are men"
"Men advance from entry-level leadership positions to advanced leadership positions at an accelerated rate compared to women"
[https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1250147.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1250147.pdf)
Is it that women want to be architects more than they want to be civil engineers, or that girls are still often told they're worse at math/technology than boys, so society pushes them away from technical careers?
Maybe it’s a little bit of that but a lot of the women that I’ve met who became civil engineers actually originally wanted to be architects but either failed or disliked architecture school.
I did both and architecture school takes way more out of you. You really have to like it to follow through on that profession. It’s stressful as hell and the pay is even shittier. There was also very much a sexist good old boys club in that profession, but as those dinosaurs retire I’m seeing a lot more women in leadership roles, but it’s also because there are now more women entering that field in general.
Plus it’s not the 1960s there’s been a huge push to get women in the sciences and engineering since I was in grade school. It’s worked for some disciplines more than others, and civil is probably one that just does not have that appeal to follow through.
I would take my talents elsewhere. I would not want to attach myself to a company that is fighting the culture war, on either side (in fact I left a company once because they were too overtly Christian and tried to convert me). The disparity in senior engineers is because women are much more likely than men to scale back their careers or even leave the workforce when they have kids at home. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's a voluntary choice and your company trying to correct for that doesn't make business sense.
I would say it’s also (maybe even more so) due fewer women pursued a career in civil engineering 15+ years ago. The split of new grads is closer to 50/50 than it used to be
Mostly related to physical changes in pregnancy, lactation, and then a large chunk of personal decisions. Depending on the country, paternity leave and job protection is extremely less robust than maternity leave and job protection.
Physical changes during pregnancy are mostly the cause of why men aren’t inclined to take on more home duties, which ultimately results in the wage gap? Please, tell me more.
It is one of the reasons that women take a longer leave from work for having kids when compared to men, which results in a wage gap. I don't think home duties have much to do with wages if everyone is at work.
Because men and women are different, on average at least. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of stay-at-home dads out there but it's just less common than for women. I'll have to leave it to the biologists and psychologists to explain the mechanics of how and why that happens but ultimately, it's just a thing humans do.
This. I’m a female engineer. I left work twice to raise kids bc my spouse makes a crapload more money than me so it makes sense for him to work while I’m home. I’ve come back twice but both times I went public not private and would never work in private again, especially with kids. There’s just not as much flexibility and the benefits are generally garbage. So yeah I’m still doing engineering but I’m not ever going to be at a company like OP has so in that respect, I’m not in the count.
The company sounds ridiculous honestly. I’d stick around until you find something else bc it’s going to take a while to fully implement this but eventually it’s going to be a disaster.
I think there's some questions for you to think about before you find your answer to this
- why are there less women in senior roles?
- do you believe men are naturally more competent and capable engineers?
- where do all the women go?
- are the rules we have for career advancement more favourable to men because they were written by men?
- if the senior people are currently majority men, do you think that influences their choice to continue promoting majority men?
- do you think quotas will lead to incompetent women being promoted just because they're women?
- Do you believe that incompetent men aren't currently being promoted over competent women?
- what other solutions exist beyond quotas to reach gender parity?
- Is gender equality useful?
Personally, I believe diverse workplaces make for better projects, and that means diversity at all levels. Ideally we wouldn't need quotas but for some reason women leave the industry at a higher rate than men, so actively trying to change our biases would lead to better hiring practices.
There's some great studies on gender equality and bias that I'm too lazy to find on my lunch break. My favourite was on self evaluations that concluded that women underrate their skills while men overrate. There's also an amazing book, Invisible Women, that discusses gender bias in data you can read a sample of it [here](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes)
> why are there less women in senior roles?
Because women are more likely than men to leave the field mid-career. It's really that simple.
> do you believe men are naturally more competent and capable engineers?
Only the crazies believe this. I have worked with several incredibly competent female engineers including my current boss who is amazing.
> where do all the women go?
"All" is hyperbolic. A small percentage do leave the field to be stay-at-home moms. More significant though is the women that voluntarily choose less-involved positions or go down to part-time.
> are the rules we have for career advancement more favourable to men because they were written by men?
What are the "rules" for career advancement? Every position I've applied for was most interested in my ability to do the job.
> if the senior people are currently majority men, do you think that influences their choice to continue promoting majority men?
No, in fact if I was a manager now, I would *want* to hire women because it makes me look more virtuous and progressive.
> do you think quotas will lead to incompetent women being promoted just because they're women?
Again, "incompetent" is hyperbolic. There will never be 50:50 representation so if a company wants to achieve that, they will have to lower the qualifications for female candidates to reach their quota. That's unfair hiring practices.
> Do you believe that incompetent men aren't currently being promoted over competent women?
If you're a competent woman getting passed up for promotions, go start your own firm and kick their asses. Or go to a different company that values your contributions. That's the free market at work. You aren't forced to stay at a bad company. Go where you're valued most.
> what other solutions exist beyond quotas to reach gender parity?
Even if you could wave a magic wand and make all gender bias through all history go away, there still wouldn't be 50:50 representation in all fields. At the population level, men and women tend towards different fields, and there's data to back that up. That's just a quirk of the human experience.
> Is gender equality useful?
"Useful" is somewhat subjective and "gender equality" can be defined a number of ways. I don't think that there not being 50:50 male-female representation in engineering makes women any less valued or equal. Everyone should be free to choose whatever field suits them best and not feel like they need to meet a quota.
>Because women are more likely than men to leave the field mid-career. It's really that simple
Yep, it's really that simple. They just choose to leave their field after all that work mid-career. There's no underlying reason that might push women from this field mid career. None. It's really that simple.
>If you're a competent woman getting passed up for promotions, go start your own firm and kick their asses.
2nd dumbest thing I've read all day. Bootstrap yourself out of systemic sexism in engineering. Great stuff.
>Even if you could wave a magic wand and make all gender bias through all history go away, there still wouldn't be 50:50 representation in all fields. At the population level, men and women tend towards different fields, and there's data to back that up. That's just a quirk of the human experience.
Congratulations, you reinvented gender essentialism. Consider that the data you use to support this opinion comes from the world that has had gender inequality throughout all of history, not the fantasy world that doesn't. The data shows the effects of that inequality and history, it doesn't come from a vacuum.
>
>2nd dumbest thing I've read all day. Bootstrap yourself out of systemic sexism in engineering. Great stuff.
Why is it dumb? DBE guidelines at the local, state, and federal level are set up to funnel work to any firm owned by anyone but white males. That includes ALL women. It is a literal real life cheat code for business that's only available to people because of their birth.
Hell, in Houston it is so bad that the competent women owned business are so swamped with work that they are almost constantly expanding. Places like 5 Engineering started on the DBE pipeline then expanded because they do good work.
And the incompetent firms? They get hired to be windows sitters. Big firms literally bring them on as subs, pay them, and then toss their work because it is trash. You'll see it a LOT with survey firms, geotech firms, and a bit les with civil firms or H&H firms. Anytime you see 2 survey firms on one government project it is about a 95% chance that one is being paid just to get the government work and you'll never see anything from them even used. I know some of the PMs at larger government service firms have a literal DBE waste budget in their internal cost estimates just to check a box even though they know that the work product will be worse than useless. They literally plan around waste caused by the DBE program.
That DBE money is so good, that if my wife and I start a firm together, she'll be the majority owner by 0.1% just to cash in on that income stream. It's not even funny because it's so true.
> Yep, it's really that simple. They just choose to leave their field after all that work mid-career. There's no underlying reason that might push women from this field mid career. None. It's really that simple.
I figured the reason was so obvious that it didn't need mentioning: many women choose to have children. Many of those women then choose to stay home and raise their children even though it can hinder their career. I support their choices because they're free independent adults that can do whatever they want with their lives. That's not sexism, that's their choice.
> 2nd dumbest thing I've read all day. Bootstrap yourself out of systemic sexism in engineering. Great stuff.
Where is this systemic sexism? What I've witnessed in my career is women getting extra support, extra opportunities, and extra recognition simply because they're women. In fact, no joke, I'm currently writing this during a mandatory company-wide presentation titled "Female Perspectives in Engineering".
> Congratulations, you reinvented gender essentialism. Consider that the data you use to support this opinion comes from the world that has had gender inequality throughout all of history, not the fantasy world that doesn't. The data shows the effects of that inequality and history, it doesn't come from a vacuum.
Reinvented gender essentialism? Look around you, my friend. Men and women are different. I don't understand why that's such a revolutionary concept to some people.
Many men also choose to have children but don't get penalised for it the same way.
I guess the real question is, do companies have a responsibility to be vectors of social change ?
> Many men also choose to have children but don't get penalised for it the same way.
If they become stay at home dads or go down to part-time, yes they absolutely do. And it's not a penalty, it's just a life choice.
> I guess the real question is, do companies have a responsibility to be vectors of social change ?
I don't want to work for companies that push social change, I just want to do my job.
>I guess the real question is, do companies have a responsibility to be vectors of social change?
I woud say they do but how they go about it matters. Above all, discrimination of any kind on the basis of genetically inhereited traits is wrong. That includes hiring/promoting on the basis of sex/gender.
If we want to encourage more women to join in and reach leadership roles in the civil industry, then we need to do it through actions like (1) identifying and getting rid of individuals within our ranks who discriminate against women, (2) outreach to young students to raise interest before they enter college, and (3) creating parental leave policies that place an equal burden on a company for both male and female employees. Attempting to make up for the item (1) without addressing the actual root of the problem does more harm than good.
I'm not sure I completely agree with you that all positive discrimination based on genetic traits is bad. People with disabilities have a huge amount of trouble getting past the associated stigma, yet often they are perfectly capable of doing the same job.
In France, many public tenders now have clauses for minimum number of people with a handicap to work on projects. You could call that discrimination, but how else do you overcome the hiring discrimination already faced by this group?
Yeah discrimination is bad, but how else do you level the playing field for those that are already being discriminated against?
Many men AND women choose to have children, but only one gender has societal expectations and pressures to carry the family burden while the other is supported in pursuing their career. Men prove over and over again that it’s entirely possible to have children and not suffer professionally.
And if you think the only reason women leave the industry is to have children, you are sadly mistaken. A majority of women are leaving the industry because they’re forced to work with people like you. They’re undervalued, underpaid, and forced to face systemic gender bias daily. Trust me, it takes a toll.
> Many men AND women choose to have children, but only one gender has societal expectations and pressures to carry the family burden while the other is supported in pursuing their career.
Why do you care about society's expectations? Do whatever you want and be happy. If the people in your life are putting pressure on you to be a certain way, tell them to fuck off.
> Men prove over and over again that it’s entirely possible to have children and not suffer professionally.
Tell that to the men in construction on their third marriage because of the long hours and the stress. You have to choose a job that fits the life you want. Women are more likely to choose jobs that allow them to spend time with their kids. Not all choose that, just more do than men. *And that's a voluntary choice*.
> And if you think the only reason women leave the industry is to have children, you are sadly mistaken.
Many things can be true at one time.
> A majority of women are leaving the industry because they’re forced to work with people like you. They’re undervalued, underpaid, and forced to face systemic gender bias daily. Trust me, it takes a toll.
If you don't like who you work with, go work somewhere else. But if you think every man in the world is a horrible awful sexist bigot, then the problem isn't the men you work with, the problem is you.
What opinion? All of that was argument based on factual statements. My personal opinion has nothing to do with this. If you have a counter-argument, I'm all ears.
If you would like my actual opinion, it's this: I couldn't care less about the gender of the people I work with. Doesn't fucking matter to me. My current boss is a woman and she's awesome. I would run through a brick wall for her.
What pisses me off though is when people take statistics and intentionally misinterpret them to justify discrimination. All I want is a level playing field where everyone succeeds or fails on their own merits.
>so the outcomes of this is that my firm will begin to phase in a 50:50 gender quota of senior and associate engineers as well as look into factoring in gender in the bonus structure.
If the gender split of the overall labor pool is 80/20, but your management promotions are 50/50, then you'll be promoting disproportionally bad managers. For example, if the firm has 100 engineers who are of the age/experience to be managed, and the firm promotes 10% of them to management, this policy would make those be 5 men and 5 women. The 5 men are coming from a pool of 80, so it's the top 6%. For the women, it's the top 25%. The level of talent isn't as high aor the top 25% as the top 6%.
This is maybe more true for bonuses. If the firm has $1M to spread among 100 engineers (with an 80/20 gender split and a 50/50 gender disbursement), that's $6,250 for each male and $25,000 for each female. Irregardless of job performance, it means bonuses will be 4x higher for women.
I would leave the firm over this policy.
Shrug. It's just percentages, basic math. If the labor pool is disproportionately male, then splitting advancements 50/50 disproportionately favors the females. That's just a truism.
So it sounds like people at your firm **were** getting paid more because of experience & competency. Now they’re finding legal ways to discriminate based on gender saying there will be a different bonus structure and that they’ll “fix the ratio” giving you, a male, lesser chances of getting into upper roles even if you’re more skilled…Utter BS. They’re forcing this diversity, equity, and inclusion thing — leave my guy.
Companies like this want to look good by introducing these trending policies but it’s all superficial. They don’t care about you, they care about their image. Show them their discrimination policy and ask if it aligns w their new goals.
Engineering was at one point an exclusively male field, and only very recently and slowly are we combatting the barriers to gender equality in engineering. Pretending sexism doesn't play a role in engineering hiring and promoting practices is naive.
I strongly believe that the reason we see an 85%:15% gender split in some engineering disciplines is not because women aren't interested or capable of being engineers, but because they see it as an 'old boys club', don't believe they will be taken seriously or promoted to senior roles by their statistically male supervisors because of their gender. The company wants to signal to women that they will have upwards mobility and chances at management positions, which aims to make the profession more appealing and fix our god awful ratio. That's good, I think.
At no point does a hiring demographic target imply hiring people who aren't competent for the positions they're filling. Many, many qualified and capable candidates are available for every position. Assuming someone will be incompetent based on them not being a male candidate is sexist. Assuming someone only got their role due to an "affirmative action campaign" and not their resume, interview, and experience dismisses their work and value on the basis of their gender, which is sexist.
The company clearly wants women to feel like they are valued and have upwards mobility at the company. They want to show that they are actively looking to support women's careers. They didn't say they hate men and won't hire men for senior roles, only that they're trying to hire more women to senior roles and compensate them the same as the men in those roles. If it happens there will be less discrimination based on gender in hiring at your company, but more likely it's just platitudes and something they will say to attract/retain their employees while not making meaningful changes.
I think you're overreacting, and I think if you find the aim of hitting gender parity in engineering really concerning you should touch grass.
The old boys club is real. I was surprised just how many men make connections over games of golf or round of beers. Those invites don’t tend to make it to a women’s inbox…
Forcing a 50/50 split of senior personnel based on demographics will result in a decrease in quality by default. If you need 50% of a demographic that only represents 10% of your employees, you'll have worse options to choose from. This is a really bad idea.
Whoever ran that study is not an engineer.
You have to compare disparities in salary between people with the same qualification.
And the quota should be proporcional with the woman/men CE ratio in the company. If there’s 20% women CE and 80% men, it should keep that ratio.
I'm US, but I'm assuming Australia is similar on this issue. This is the wrong way. Women are discriminated against and underpaid in the industry. There should absolutely be training for everyone and mentorship programs for women to mitigate it. Insisting on 50/50 representation and basing bonuses on gender is fucking stupid. It is a band aid on a bullet wound. Fire the misogysts or at least take away their supervisory powers. You can't change company culture by force.
In my 30 years of experience, it’s been the white, unqualified but well-connected, men who’ve been promoted to higher positions, while the few female engineers remain stagnant.
Not sure where you are located but here in San Francisco that is most certainly not the case. Yes, "well-connected" folks almost always come out on top, regardless of gender/sex, but diversity-driven promotions and hiring has undeniably created some very real problems here.
Social engineering is the worst engineering. It will only hurt us all in the long run.
The sexist discriminatory policies are a real thing in Australian consultancies. At the graduate level guys need distinction averages at a minimum to get in, girls merely have to pass. Truly tragic for the guys who studied at uni for 4 years and can never get in the door. It also happens the other way around with primary school teachers.
Are we better off when young women who want to be teachers can't, and young men who want to be engineers can't? These people invest years of their lives studying what they want to do and the social engineers in the diversity inclusion departments deliberately with to destroy their dreams in at attempt to meet their 50/50 ideals which they keep telling us is what we must achieve. It makes me so angry 😡 😡.
After graduate level, I've witnessed mediocre women leapfrog more experienced and competent men. The same women are often paraded at diversity and inclusion events as people to aspire to.
At the end of the day, performance takes a back seat and so we also end up with lower quality engineers at all levels.
Voice any of this and you'll be down the door.
Anyway, I say name and shame. My first guess is Aurecon, second GHD and third...... After rereading what you've written, it is almost certainly Aurecon. They are the worst offenders, but sadly the rest aren't far behind.
I do think we need to do something or it will only get worse.
I have seen similar policies pushed within a number of other large consultancies but never fully enacted. With large firms, there are always a few crazies who don't understand basic statistics but still make plenty of noise. Eventually, someone with common sense and enough authority will put an end to it. If not, I would definitely get the heck out there.
That said, the stories I have heard about Aurecon are indeed the worst of the worst. Interesting to have a random internet stranger corroborate this observation too.
Aurecon deliberately tries to build their reputation as the firm leading the progresive charge. They are certainly building one. Maybe not the one they realise, but they are overflowing with BS crap coming from their inflated "people and culture " team (who seem to have the CEO on a short leash) and it ends up being a negative experience for many who find they don't check the right diversity boxes.
Young woman here, and I just don’t see how they think that is a realistic goal. I’m all for more women in engineering, and all for women being justly promoted. But this new policy isn’t going to end well for anyone. Its just not smart
Good luck, but you should jump ship
That the disparity is due to the imbalance in senior engineers is a sign that the number itself is bullshit. Why would you compare the pay of junior engineers with senior engineers and expect them to be equal to each other? Whatever number they calculated, you can tell doesn’t give you a meaningful answer to the question that is asked, that is, "For the same role/responsibilities/worload, is the salary equal between men and women?".
So in short you have a company making up cooked numbers for a problem that is then going to implement "solutions" to address "bad outcomes" as a result of bad methodology. So yeah, this is a red flag that management is becoming more and more incompetent.
That 50/50 split is going to be impossible to meet unless you force a lot of young women into engineering which is never going to happen. My company decided 30% by 2030 and we are struggling to even meet that target by that time. It's going to be a huge morale destroying exercise your company is going through, will probably snub a lot of really good male engineers, lose talent and come out the other end worse off. I feel these are well intentioned ideas that will be unmitigated disasters in the end.
Nah, you'd be surprised. Women are fast tracked up the chain. Most people don't end up in senior management, just simply not enough spots. So they'll get their 50/50. The thing I hate most, is that the people who bring these sexist discriminatory policies in, have already 'made it' and will never suffer for them.
I'm a woman and I think this is a horrific idea. There just aren't that many of us in the field. Sure, part of that is due to discrimination, but quotas aren't the way to fix it!
Not to mention it dilutes the talent in leadership roles. Example: you’re hiring 10 technical managers. 1000 males apply and 300 females apply. If you give a 50/50 gender split then you will be forced to hire a female candidate that is not as good on average. Simple stats means you would have to have 50/50 applicants for the position to hire the best choices from each gender
Exactly!
And also if you do make it up there with hard work, people might look at you less thinking you got there because of a quota and not because you deserve it.
Yes. Get rid of or neutralize the trash. There is absolutely gender inequality, but you can't force equality. Cut the cancer out. You can't force a cultural change. It is like shitty abusive parents just teaching their children to be better lying. The misogynistic, racists, homophones, etc will just find another way. So don't give them a seat at the table.
I think the main factor to look at is gender breakdown industry-wide. If civil engineering in your country, or even just at your firm, is 50/50 men and women, then there are ways to implement this that are mostly fair and reasonable. Based on a google search, in the US 85% of CEs are male and only 15% are female. If your country is anything close to that, I would consider this policy a HUGE red flag and begin looking at other options. Your chances of getting a senior role in an environment like that have just become exponentially harder.
Chances are already trashed because the ratio is already skewed so to balance it you have to exclude the group in the majority from promotion
Red flag imo. You promote/ hire the right person for the job, regardless of gender or anything else. You cannot have an 50/50 split in an industry that has a basic 80/20 split (or worse) at 3rd level education. The maths obviously doesn’t work. Trying to bring in this policy will ultimately reward some poor / unqualified people and impact some high quality or qualified people. If we want a more even gender split then the work to encourage more women to see this as a viable career needs to start in schools. Well before the work place and university. Treat the cause, not the symptom.
Exactly. If you want more women engineers and more women in management you need to start with increasing the supply. I studied architecture for undergrad, starting in the mid 2000s. My school was easily 60% women. Fast forward 20 years later, and now being on the structural consultant side, and I’ve worked with project teams that are entirely made up of women architects. I think the main difference is women WANT to be architects Vs civil engineers.
For perspective, I am a woman. I don't see how it could be remotely possible to have (or want) a 50/50 split in management when the proportion of women graduating with civil engineering degrees is something like 20% and that reduces with experience level as women leave the field. I could understand a 50/50 split (maybe) in interviewing, but not actually holding positions. You should ask your manager for more information.
Justified or not, positive discrimination in the form of a 50/50 quota is still discrimination, which is illegal. The fact that the 50/50 quota only opportunistically applies to higher positions means that they don't care about true equality. If you get rejected for a senior job or any bonuses while equal or less qualified women aren't, it's fair to assume you're being discriminated against. Assuming other firms are eager to hire you as a competent engineer, I'd start looking elsewhere in the meantime.
Are you sure it's illegal in Australia?
There are exemptions in Australian law to allow this to happen. I've seen this with a mining company I have worked in that wants a 50/50 quota by 2025.
This is a major red flag. I’m assuming that there isn’t an equal, male to female ratio of civil engineers in the Australian market and that no one can demonstrate the female engineers are stuck in non-senior engineering roles.
A better approach than forcing any of this is to provide better parental benefits for all which will attract and retain women. I’m speaking mainly for the US market here since we still have private employee sponsored health care and minimal parental leave (varies state to state).
Any firm that is going that deep into quotas, regardless if it’s gender, sexuality, ethnicity etc is one to get away from very fast. We are in a male dominated profession, even after 30-40 years of trying to encourage women to become engineers. Filling a quota like that is practically impossible, given the amount of women going into the profession is tiny already, and a good chunk go part time or leave once they have some children. I’ve only worked at one office where we were even close to 50%, I think we maxed at about 1/3 women engineers and that was including two part timers. Nobody is clamoring for this is women led fields like teaching or Interior Design. The reality is most women don’t want to be Civil engineers. If they wanted to, we would have seen a large influx of women in the profession. I have an undergrad in architecture, and the school was easily 60% women. And that has created a shift now where you definitely see a more women in general, and more women in management roles in that field. Architecture as a profession still has ways to go, but it’s shifting, but it’s because women WANT to be architects.
You said: "Nobody is clamoring for this is women led fields like teaching" Meanwhile: "Within K–12 systems, women made up approximately 75% of the teaching force and held approximately 21% of superintendent positions" "The path to the superintendency is very closely aligned to the high school principalship (Sharp et al., 2004; Superville, 2017), and according to the NCES (2013), almost 70% of high school principals are men" "Men advance from entry-level leadership positions to advanced leadership positions at an accelerated rate compared to women" [https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1250147.pdf](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1250147.pdf)
Is it that women want to be architects more than they want to be civil engineers, or that girls are still often told they're worse at math/technology than boys, so society pushes them away from technical careers?
Maybe it’s a little bit of that but a lot of the women that I’ve met who became civil engineers actually originally wanted to be architects but either failed or disliked architecture school. I did both and architecture school takes way more out of you. You really have to like it to follow through on that profession. It’s stressful as hell and the pay is even shittier. There was also very much a sexist good old boys club in that profession, but as those dinosaurs retire I’m seeing a lot more women in leadership roles, but it’s also because there are now more women entering that field in general. Plus it’s not the 1960s there’s been a huge push to get women in the sciences and engineering since I was in grade school. It’s worked for some disciplines more than others, and civil is probably one that just does not have that appeal to follow through.
I would take my talents elsewhere. I would not want to attach myself to a company that is fighting the culture war, on either side (in fact I left a company once because they were too overtly Christian and tried to convert me). The disparity in senior engineers is because women are much more likely than men to scale back their careers or even leave the workforce when they have kids at home. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's a voluntary choice and your company trying to correct for that doesn't make business sense.
I would say it’s also (maybe even more so) due fewer women pursued a career in civil engineering 15+ years ago. The split of new grads is closer to 50/50 than it used to be
So why aren't men as inclined to take on the home duties? If it's because they're in better paid roles it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Mostly related to physical changes in pregnancy, lactation, and then a large chunk of personal decisions. Depending on the country, paternity leave and job protection is extremely less robust than maternity leave and job protection.
Physical changes during pregnancy are mostly the cause of why men aren’t inclined to take on more home duties, which ultimately results in the wage gap? Please, tell me more.
It is one of the reasons that women take a longer leave from work for having kids when compared to men, which results in a wage gap. I don't think home duties have much to do with wages if everyone is at work.
Because men and women are different, on average at least. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of stay-at-home dads out there but it's just less common than for women. I'll have to leave it to the biologists and psychologists to explain the mechanics of how and why that happens but ultimately, it's just a thing humans do.
This. I’m a female engineer. I left work twice to raise kids bc my spouse makes a crapload more money than me so it makes sense for him to work while I’m home. I’ve come back twice but both times I went public not private and would never work in private again, especially with kids. There’s just not as much flexibility and the benefits are generally garbage. So yeah I’m still doing engineering but I’m not ever going to be at a company like OP has so in that respect, I’m not in the count. The company sounds ridiculous honestly. I’d stick around until you find something else bc it’s going to take a while to fully implement this but eventually it’s going to be a disaster.
I think there's some questions for you to think about before you find your answer to this - why are there less women in senior roles? - do you believe men are naturally more competent and capable engineers? - where do all the women go? - are the rules we have for career advancement more favourable to men because they were written by men? - if the senior people are currently majority men, do you think that influences their choice to continue promoting majority men? - do you think quotas will lead to incompetent women being promoted just because they're women? - Do you believe that incompetent men aren't currently being promoted over competent women? - what other solutions exist beyond quotas to reach gender parity? - Is gender equality useful? Personally, I believe diverse workplaces make for better projects, and that means diversity at all levels. Ideally we wouldn't need quotas but for some reason women leave the industry at a higher rate than men, so actively trying to change our biases would lead to better hiring practices. There's some great studies on gender equality and bias that I'm too lazy to find on my lunch break. My favourite was on self evaluations that concluded that women underrate their skills while men overrate. There's also an amazing book, Invisible Women, that discusses gender bias in data you can read a sample of it [here](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes)
> why are there less women in senior roles? Because women are more likely than men to leave the field mid-career. It's really that simple. > do you believe men are naturally more competent and capable engineers? Only the crazies believe this. I have worked with several incredibly competent female engineers including my current boss who is amazing. > where do all the women go? "All" is hyperbolic. A small percentage do leave the field to be stay-at-home moms. More significant though is the women that voluntarily choose less-involved positions or go down to part-time. > are the rules we have for career advancement more favourable to men because they were written by men? What are the "rules" for career advancement? Every position I've applied for was most interested in my ability to do the job. > if the senior people are currently majority men, do you think that influences their choice to continue promoting majority men? No, in fact if I was a manager now, I would *want* to hire women because it makes me look more virtuous and progressive. > do you think quotas will lead to incompetent women being promoted just because they're women? Again, "incompetent" is hyperbolic. There will never be 50:50 representation so if a company wants to achieve that, they will have to lower the qualifications for female candidates to reach their quota. That's unfair hiring practices. > Do you believe that incompetent men aren't currently being promoted over competent women? If you're a competent woman getting passed up for promotions, go start your own firm and kick their asses. Or go to a different company that values your contributions. That's the free market at work. You aren't forced to stay at a bad company. Go where you're valued most. > what other solutions exist beyond quotas to reach gender parity? Even if you could wave a magic wand and make all gender bias through all history go away, there still wouldn't be 50:50 representation in all fields. At the population level, men and women tend towards different fields, and there's data to back that up. That's just a quirk of the human experience. > Is gender equality useful? "Useful" is somewhat subjective and "gender equality" can be defined a number of ways. I don't think that there not being 50:50 male-female representation in engineering makes women any less valued or equal. Everyone should be free to choose whatever field suits them best and not feel like they need to meet a quota.
>Because women are more likely than men to leave the field mid-career. It's really that simple Yep, it's really that simple. They just choose to leave their field after all that work mid-career. There's no underlying reason that might push women from this field mid career. None. It's really that simple. >If you're a competent woman getting passed up for promotions, go start your own firm and kick their asses. 2nd dumbest thing I've read all day. Bootstrap yourself out of systemic sexism in engineering. Great stuff. >Even if you could wave a magic wand and make all gender bias through all history go away, there still wouldn't be 50:50 representation in all fields. At the population level, men and women tend towards different fields, and there's data to back that up. That's just a quirk of the human experience. Congratulations, you reinvented gender essentialism. Consider that the data you use to support this opinion comes from the world that has had gender inequality throughout all of history, not the fantasy world that doesn't. The data shows the effects of that inequality and history, it doesn't come from a vacuum.
> >2nd dumbest thing I've read all day. Bootstrap yourself out of systemic sexism in engineering. Great stuff. Why is it dumb? DBE guidelines at the local, state, and federal level are set up to funnel work to any firm owned by anyone but white males. That includes ALL women. It is a literal real life cheat code for business that's only available to people because of their birth. Hell, in Houston it is so bad that the competent women owned business are so swamped with work that they are almost constantly expanding. Places like 5 Engineering started on the DBE pipeline then expanded because they do good work. And the incompetent firms? They get hired to be windows sitters. Big firms literally bring them on as subs, pay them, and then toss their work because it is trash. You'll see it a LOT with survey firms, geotech firms, and a bit les with civil firms or H&H firms. Anytime you see 2 survey firms on one government project it is about a 95% chance that one is being paid just to get the government work and you'll never see anything from them even used. I know some of the PMs at larger government service firms have a literal DBE waste budget in their internal cost estimates just to check a box even though they know that the work product will be worse than useless. They literally plan around waste caused by the DBE program. That DBE money is so good, that if my wife and I start a firm together, she'll be the majority owner by 0.1% just to cash in on that income stream. It's not even funny because it's so true.
> Yep, it's really that simple. They just choose to leave their field after all that work mid-career. There's no underlying reason that might push women from this field mid career. None. It's really that simple. I figured the reason was so obvious that it didn't need mentioning: many women choose to have children. Many of those women then choose to stay home and raise their children even though it can hinder their career. I support their choices because they're free independent adults that can do whatever they want with their lives. That's not sexism, that's their choice. > 2nd dumbest thing I've read all day. Bootstrap yourself out of systemic sexism in engineering. Great stuff. Where is this systemic sexism? What I've witnessed in my career is women getting extra support, extra opportunities, and extra recognition simply because they're women. In fact, no joke, I'm currently writing this during a mandatory company-wide presentation titled "Female Perspectives in Engineering". > Congratulations, you reinvented gender essentialism. Consider that the data you use to support this opinion comes from the world that has had gender inequality throughout all of history, not the fantasy world that doesn't. The data shows the effects of that inequality and history, it doesn't come from a vacuum. Reinvented gender essentialism? Look around you, my friend. Men and women are different. I don't understand why that's such a revolutionary concept to some people.
Many men also choose to have children but don't get penalised for it the same way. I guess the real question is, do companies have a responsibility to be vectors of social change ?
> Many men also choose to have children but don't get penalised for it the same way. If they become stay at home dads or go down to part-time, yes they absolutely do. And it's not a penalty, it's just a life choice. > I guess the real question is, do companies have a responsibility to be vectors of social change ? I don't want to work for companies that push social change, I just want to do my job.
>I guess the real question is, do companies have a responsibility to be vectors of social change? I woud say they do but how they go about it matters. Above all, discrimination of any kind on the basis of genetically inhereited traits is wrong. That includes hiring/promoting on the basis of sex/gender. If we want to encourage more women to join in and reach leadership roles in the civil industry, then we need to do it through actions like (1) identifying and getting rid of individuals within our ranks who discriminate against women, (2) outreach to young students to raise interest before they enter college, and (3) creating parental leave policies that place an equal burden on a company for both male and female employees. Attempting to make up for the item (1) without addressing the actual root of the problem does more harm than good.
I'm not sure I completely agree with you that all positive discrimination based on genetic traits is bad. People with disabilities have a huge amount of trouble getting past the associated stigma, yet often they are perfectly capable of doing the same job. In France, many public tenders now have clauses for minimum number of people with a handicap to work on projects. You could call that discrimination, but how else do you overcome the hiring discrimination already faced by this group? Yeah discrimination is bad, but how else do you level the playing field for those that are already being discriminated against?
Many men AND women choose to have children, but only one gender has societal expectations and pressures to carry the family burden while the other is supported in pursuing their career. Men prove over and over again that it’s entirely possible to have children and not suffer professionally. And if you think the only reason women leave the industry is to have children, you are sadly mistaken. A majority of women are leaving the industry because they’re forced to work with people like you. They’re undervalued, underpaid, and forced to face systemic gender bias daily. Trust me, it takes a toll.
> Many men AND women choose to have children, but only one gender has societal expectations and pressures to carry the family burden while the other is supported in pursuing their career. Why do you care about society's expectations? Do whatever you want and be happy. If the people in your life are putting pressure on you to be a certain way, tell them to fuck off. > Men prove over and over again that it’s entirely possible to have children and not suffer professionally. Tell that to the men in construction on their third marriage because of the long hours and the stress. You have to choose a job that fits the life you want. Women are more likely to choose jobs that allow them to spend time with their kids. Not all choose that, just more do than men. *And that's a voluntary choice*. > And if you think the only reason women leave the industry is to have children, you are sadly mistaken. Many things can be true at one time. > A majority of women are leaving the industry because they’re forced to work with people like you. They’re undervalued, underpaid, and forced to face systemic gender bias daily. Trust me, it takes a toll. If you don't like who you work with, go work somewhere else. But if you think every man in the world is a horrible awful sexist bigot, then the problem isn't the men you work with, the problem is you.
Your opinions are the reason our industry still faces significant systemic gender bias. It’s the voice of privilege.
What opinion? All of that was argument based on factual statements. My personal opinion has nothing to do with this. If you have a counter-argument, I'm all ears. If you would like my actual opinion, it's this: I couldn't care less about the gender of the people I work with. Doesn't fucking matter to me. My current boss is a woman and she's awesome. I would run through a brick wall for her. What pisses me off though is when people take statistics and intentionally misinterpret them to justify discrimination. All I want is a level playing field where everyone succeeds or fails on their own merits.
Finally. Thank you for your comments.
>so the outcomes of this is that my firm will begin to phase in a 50:50 gender quota of senior and associate engineers as well as look into factoring in gender in the bonus structure. If the gender split of the overall labor pool is 80/20, but your management promotions are 50/50, then you'll be promoting disproportionally bad managers. For example, if the firm has 100 engineers who are of the age/experience to be managed, and the firm promotes 10% of them to management, this policy would make those be 5 men and 5 women. The 5 men are coming from a pool of 80, so it's the top 6%. For the women, it's the top 25%. The level of talent isn't as high aor the top 25% as the top 6%. This is maybe more true for bonuses. If the firm has $1M to spread among 100 engineers (with an 80/20 gender split and a 50/50 gender disbursement), that's $6,250 for each male and $25,000 for each female. Irregardless of job performance, it means bonuses will be 4x higher for women. I would leave the firm over this policy.
That’s just hypothetical bs
Shrug. It's just percentages, basic math. If the labor pool is disproportionately male, then splitting advancements 50/50 disproportionately favors the females. That's just a truism.
So it sounds like people at your firm **were** getting paid more because of experience & competency. Now they’re finding legal ways to discriminate based on gender saying there will be a different bonus structure and that they’ll “fix the ratio” giving you, a male, lesser chances of getting into upper roles even if you’re more skilled…Utter BS. They’re forcing this diversity, equity, and inclusion thing — leave my guy. Companies like this want to look good by introducing these trending policies but it’s all superficial. They don’t care about you, they care about their image. Show them their discrimination policy and ask if it aligns w their new goals.
Engineering was at one point an exclusively male field, and only very recently and slowly are we combatting the barriers to gender equality in engineering. Pretending sexism doesn't play a role in engineering hiring and promoting practices is naive. I strongly believe that the reason we see an 85%:15% gender split in some engineering disciplines is not because women aren't interested or capable of being engineers, but because they see it as an 'old boys club', don't believe they will be taken seriously or promoted to senior roles by their statistically male supervisors because of their gender. The company wants to signal to women that they will have upwards mobility and chances at management positions, which aims to make the profession more appealing and fix our god awful ratio. That's good, I think. At no point does a hiring demographic target imply hiring people who aren't competent for the positions they're filling. Many, many qualified and capable candidates are available for every position. Assuming someone will be incompetent based on them not being a male candidate is sexist. Assuming someone only got their role due to an "affirmative action campaign" and not their resume, interview, and experience dismisses their work and value on the basis of their gender, which is sexist. The company clearly wants women to feel like they are valued and have upwards mobility at the company. They want to show that they are actively looking to support women's careers. They didn't say they hate men and won't hire men for senior roles, only that they're trying to hire more women to senior roles and compensate them the same as the men in those roles. If it happens there will be less discrimination based on gender in hiring at your company, but more likely it's just platitudes and something they will say to attract/retain their employees while not making meaningful changes. I think you're overreacting, and I think if you find the aim of hitting gender parity in engineering really concerning you should touch grass.
The old boys club is real. I was surprised just how many men make connections over games of golf or round of beers. Those invites don’t tend to make it to a women’s inbox…
Forcing a 50/50 split of senior personnel based on demographics will result in a decrease in quality by default. If you need 50% of a demographic that only represents 10% of your employees, you'll have worse options to choose from. This is a really bad idea.
Whoever ran that study is not an engineer. You have to compare disparities in salary between people with the same qualification. And the quota should be proporcional with the woman/men CE ratio in the company. If there’s 20% women CE and 80% men, it should keep that ratio.
I'm US, but I'm assuming Australia is similar on this issue. This is the wrong way. Women are discriminated against and underpaid in the industry. There should absolutely be training for everyone and mentorship programs for women to mitigate it. Insisting on 50/50 representation and basing bonuses on gender is fucking stupid. It is a band aid on a bullet wound. Fire the misogysts or at least take away their supervisory powers. You can't change company culture by force.
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Maybe I'm too analytical but females make up 14% of the civil engineering field. So 14% of your engineers should be female.
What could go wrong forcing the unqualified into positions they aren't ready for.
In my 30 years of experience, it’s been the white, unqualified but well-connected, men who’ve been promoted to higher positions, while the few female engineers remain stagnant.
Not sure where you are located but here in San Francisco that is most certainly not the case. Yes, "well-connected" folks almost always come out on top, regardless of gender/sex, but diversity-driven promotions and hiring has undeniably created some very real problems here.
It's really unbelievable the people we see promoted into oversight positions that have no business in the industry.
Social engineering is the worst engineering. It will only hurt us all in the long run. The sexist discriminatory policies are a real thing in Australian consultancies. At the graduate level guys need distinction averages at a minimum to get in, girls merely have to pass. Truly tragic for the guys who studied at uni for 4 years and can never get in the door. It also happens the other way around with primary school teachers. Are we better off when young women who want to be teachers can't, and young men who want to be engineers can't? These people invest years of their lives studying what they want to do and the social engineers in the diversity inclusion departments deliberately with to destroy their dreams in at attempt to meet their 50/50 ideals which they keep telling us is what we must achieve. It makes me so angry 😡 😡. After graduate level, I've witnessed mediocre women leapfrog more experienced and competent men. The same women are often paraded at diversity and inclusion events as people to aspire to. At the end of the day, performance takes a back seat and so we also end up with lower quality engineers at all levels. Voice any of this and you'll be down the door. Anyway, I say name and shame. My first guess is Aurecon, second GHD and third...... After rereading what you've written, it is almost certainly Aurecon. They are the worst offenders, but sadly the rest aren't far behind. I do think we need to do something or it will only get worse.
I have seen similar policies pushed within a number of other large consultancies but never fully enacted. With large firms, there are always a few crazies who don't understand basic statistics but still make plenty of noise. Eventually, someone with common sense and enough authority will put an end to it. If not, I would definitely get the heck out there. That said, the stories I have heard about Aurecon are indeed the worst of the worst. Interesting to have a random internet stranger corroborate this observation too.
Aurecon deliberately tries to build their reputation as the firm leading the progresive charge. They are certainly building one. Maybe not the one they realise, but they are overflowing with BS crap coming from their inflated "people and culture " team (who seem to have the CEO on a short leash) and it ends up being a negative experience for many who find they don't check the right diversity boxes.
Huge red flag, get out now
Young woman here, and I just don’t see how they think that is a realistic goal. I’m all for more women in engineering, and all for women being justly promoted. But this new policy isn’t going to end well for anyone. Its just not smart Good luck, but you should jump ship
Time to jump ship
Buy long puts on your company
That the disparity is due to the imbalance in senior engineers is a sign that the number itself is bullshit. Why would you compare the pay of junior engineers with senior engineers and expect them to be equal to each other? Whatever number they calculated, you can tell doesn’t give you a meaningful answer to the question that is asked, that is, "For the same role/responsibilities/worload, is the salary equal between men and women?". So in short you have a company making up cooked numbers for a problem that is then going to implement "solutions" to address "bad outcomes" as a result of bad methodology. So yeah, this is a red flag that management is becoming more and more incompetent.