Today, June 23, 2023 is International Women in Engineering Day, being celebrated under the theme #MakeSafetySeen. Now in its 10th year, International Women in Engineering Day was started to bring visibility to women engineers worldwide as women are still hugely underrepresented in the field.
Globally, women account for less than 20 per cent of engineers, with data from the UN highlighting that women still account for only 28 per cent of engineering graduates globally. Jamaica is not much different, with women accounting for only 15 per cent of engineering graduates from the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTECH).
With such a clear gender gap, it is no surprise that in typical engineering firms, men far outnumber women, but at CEAC Solutions Company Limited (CEAC), almost the opposite is true.
“We are very proud that 50 per cent of our engineers in junior and senior roles across several disciplines – civil, coastal and environmental – are women,” says Dr Christopher Burgess, CEAC Solutions Managing Director. “Since inception, CEAC has focused on ‘Excellence in Engineering’, and having a strong cohort of women engineers on staff has been central to our success.”
The women of CEAC are assigned projects of the same value as men, bear the same responsibilities, and achieve as much as their male peers. At CEAC, its not unusual to have a woman running a highly technical multi-million-dollar project, or to be the most senior leader on a project where she is outnumbered by men.
Tashae Thompson, Senior Coastal Engineer at CEAC admits that while it can be intimidating being a woman engineer, particularly when supervising several men, at CEAC she feels empowered to achieve. “I am blessed to be in an organization where knowledge and experience trump gender and as such, I do not receive any negative reactions when issuing instructions to male colleagues,” she said. “Everyone likes a great boss no matter their gender,” she added.
For Project Manager Sasha-Kay Adams, being a woman in engineering requires daily strides to self-improvement. “As a woman engineer, I feel special because its mainly men in the industry, but I constantly have to work on being assertive. Sometimes in meetings I’m the only woman, and men often overlook me or speak over me as if I don’t exist because I’m a woman.”
Even with the challenges, the women engineers of CEAC continue to defy stereotypes and carve out their space in a traditionally male-dominated field, bringing their creativity, resilience, and collaborative skills to the table, contributing to the advancement of engineering.