Aussie discrimination higher in profession

6 January 2009

Aussie discrimination higher in male dominated profession

Despite New Zealand’s female engineers being outnumbered by their male colleagues by ten to one, Kiwi women report a relatively low level of gender discrimination when compared to their Aussie contemporaries.

The Institution of Professional Engineers of New Zealand (IPENZ) recently completed their ‘2008 Women in Engineering Survey’ in which of the 6,000 members surveyed only 12 % of the women citied gender discrimination in the work place compared to 42 % by Australian women professional engineers.

“The recent survey shows that in a profession where women only add up to 7 per cent of the work force the level of discrimination is relatively low, particularly when you compare it to Australia where nearly half of the women engineers surveyed believed they had experienced discrimination because they were female,” says Tim Davin, IPENZ Director of Policy. “For a very male dominated industry, New Zealand has quite a low level of gender discrimination, which is great news for the profession as we need more women entering engineering, it’s a great career and it benefits from more women in the work place.”

“Our survey revealed of the small number of Kiwi women who believed they had experienced discrimination in the workplace, they said they encountered it generally from older male colleagues who they felt didn’t take them seriously and were more likely to treat them with a lesser ability because of their gender, not their inexperience,” says Mr Davin. “Women surveyed also said they encountered instances in the UK or Australia instances of male engineers with a lesser ability and qualifications getting paid more than them and other more senior females in the team, of the women surveyed they did not report this happening in New Zealand.”

“Our statistics show women in engineering in New Zealand seem to report relatively high career satisfaction levels with over 42% ‘very satisfied’, overseas studies say women are leaving the profession 39 times faster than men, whereas in New Zealand of our IPENZ membership which is over 10,000, 49 women have resigned in the last 5 years and 39 % said they were leaving because they were going overseas,” he says.

The IPENZ survey revealed most female engineers in New Zealand are young with 73% aged between 25 and 40 years of age and more than one third were employed in civil engineering.

IPENZ reported its ‘2008 Women in Engineering’ survey results to the World Engineering Convention in Brazil last December and will provide updated results at the International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists in Adelaide in 2011.

“Even though New Zealand female engineers are relatively satisfied with their working environments especially when compared to our Australian colleagues, IPENZ is committed taking steps to ensure the engineering profession is a flexible and supportive workplace for women in order to retain women, advance their careers and encourage more women to enter the profession,” says Mr Davin.

ENDS

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