See below an article from the March 2022 edition of the magazine “Human Futures”, by World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) publication.
With Dawn Bonfield, MBE, Deputy chair of the WFEO Committee on Women in Engineering & Claire A. Nelson, Chief Ideation Leader of WFSF.
IT’S March and we’re celebrating Women’s History Month and exploring the future history of women, in the year 2030 and beyond. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include one goal specifically targeted towards women, SDG 5. In this conversation I speak with Dawn Bonfield, MBE, who is a Entrepreneur in Residence at Kings College in the United Kingdom as well as Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University. More importantly for our purposes, she represents the UK Institution of Civil Engineers at the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, where she serves on the Women in Engineering Committee. Given her role as someone embedded at various levels of the engineering ecosystem, I am looking forward to hearing her prognosis on futures for women in the field of engineering.
Claire A. Nelson:
The UN 2030 Agenda states, “We resolve, between now and 2030, to end poverty and hunger everywhere; to combat inequalities within and among countries; to build peaceful and just, and inclusive societies; … and to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.” These goals also address the need to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources. This is, of course, relevant to engineers. [Professor Bonfield,] how do you see your work as woman, engineer, entrepreneur, and as an individual wearing all the different hats you wear, addressing these complex seventeen goals, and the gender goal – SDG 5?
Dawn Bonfield:
That’s a huge question to start; and not an easy one. The work that I’m doing, particularly for the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), where I’m part of the Women in Engineering Committee, involves looking at how we can use engineering to understand gender in relation to each of the SDGs. The gender equality goal has a target 5B, which says that we will enhance the use of enabling technology – in particular information and communication technology – to promote the empowerment of women. So, what can engineers do to ensure that women have access to the solutions that we’re putting in place across each of the goals? One thing that we’ve been doing is producing information sheets which look at how women are disproportionately disadvantaged in relation to the stated goals. We’re not necessarily saying that engineering or technology solution should address only women but rather, we’re saying to engineers, in general, “how can we ensure that whatever we’re producing and designing understands the roles of women around the world, and how they access or don’t access that technology?” It’s really important to know that, or else you can end up creating technology that just isn’t accessible to women. For example, microfinance is a technology that is accessible to women and to men. It’s not been directly created for the benefit of women, but women can access finance through their phones, which is important, because in some societies they don’t get access to the traditional banking systems. There are lots of different examples of that. As engineers, we don’t necessarily think through the gender perspective in the way that we should. Our role (as a WFEO committee) is to try to illuminate that. Now, we are not social scientists – we are all engineers. So it’s a learning curve for us as women engineers as well. We’ve had to do a lot of work thinking through these problems on behalf of women, because one of the things we don’t necessarily do very well in engineering is own our identities. We’re such a minority in engineering that we try to leave our identity as women at the gate. We do a lot of this identity switching, or code switching, if you will.
Claire A. Nelson:
I want to try to unpack at least two different things. I want to take the code- switching conversation in one direction, but I also want to take up the issue of the engineering inclusion. Let me do the inclusion piece first. When you said ‘inclusive engineering,’ my immediate focus was on issues related to disabilities. I didn’t think of gender as something that could be a design issue relative to making something that we’re using more accessible. Would you talk some more about how making inclusive design part of a university engineering education has been impacting the broader conversation?
Dawn Bonfield:
Engineering design is a big part of the engineering process. Getting the design right is crucial because whatever you build into that design at the start of the process will become embedded throughout that process. And if you get to the end of your design phase – and then realize that you’ve forgotten half of the population – it can be damaging. For example, Google created a health app and they’d forgotten to include the fact that women have periods. The fact is that women have periods which impacts their wellbeing, their health, their ability to train, the number of calories they need, and so on. So, they were at the point of launching this app, when somebody asked them on stage, “what about women”? And they admitted, ”Oh well, we’d kind of forgotten about women.” This was a damaging incident for their brand. In terms of technology, we find gender biases, race biases, LGBT biases, disability biases all built into artificial intelligence systems, machine learning, and other systems that have used historical data, which are oftentimes themselves very biased. And once they’re embedded, it’s very difficult to remove them. In general, engineers are very keen to build things that are right. Nobody wants to create a product that is not going to be able to sell or that begs the headline, “Is this technology racist?” Todays’ students see these as things that they understand and appreciate. Whereas on the other hand, if you go into a class and you’re talking to them about getting more women in engineering, for example, they are not interested in that in the slightest, because they’re probably already in engineering. The work that we do at the World Federation of Engineering Organizations looks specifically at women around the world. It’s very rare to do that. It’s very unusual for women in engineering to look at other women and say, this is how we, as engineers can be solving those problems. And it’s not just women that should be able to do that. All engineers must be able to look at solutions through the eyes of other people who are using those products or services the engineers are producing.
Claire A. Nelson:
Well, one of the things that COVID certainly has done for us, in terms of the SDGs, is force us to a very interesting pause: human society is in a period of transition, and we have some decisions to make. I’m really excited about the fact that the WFEO has woken up in a way, and for example, created World Engineering Day to put engineering front and center in the world. What future do you think is more possible or less possible because of COVID pandemic? There are some people who have said COVID has set us back. We’re not going to be able to meet the SDGs. I am saying, it ain’t necessarily so! What are you thinking? Are you believing that COVID has set us back? How are you seeing the future of women and the work that you are doing to advance inclusive engineering and advance women’s voice as they sit at the table, serving to accelerate the improvements we want or decelerate our progress?
Dawn Bonfield:
That’s a hard question. There are pros and cons. We have seen how clearly COVID has brought inequalities to the surface. Whereas before we might not have noticed, it has become clear that inequalities exist in a huge variety of ways. A lot of the work I do is around the built environment. We know now that there are implications for equality in the work that we do to build the next generation of infrastructure. I’m working on a publication called “Inclusive Design for the Built Environment.” It is one of the Institution of Civil Engineers publications. And it goes through all the protected characteristics in the United Kingdom and looks at the built environment through the lenses of all those different characteristics – sex, sexual orientation, gender, race, ability, and neurodiversity. We proposed this book before the pandemic and we’ve had it rejected several times; but since the pandemic, we’ve had it accepted. I also think there are some positives around how women can engage online despite the negatives during the time of the lockdown – women were at home, looking after children, trying to do the homeschooling while at work, which was sometimes a real conflict. We’re now into a different reality – a hybrid reality – that I think could play to the strengths of women, because on screen you don’t get that bias of the ”tall man in the room” being the one to whom people automatically look upas being the dominant figure. There are also the opportunities of being at home and being able to multitask – pick up children, etc., and organize your life around the hybrid working realities that we have now. I have spoken to people around the world, so much more since the pandemic than I would’ve done before. And I think if you are interested in the sustainable development agenda, the opportunities for women are there.
Claire A. Nelson:
You said that one of the things you’re doing as entrepreneurin-residence is helping people in business. Talk to me about the future you see from a gendered perspective of small business owners, young people who are doing startups, thinking about the world with this divergent lens that yes, we’re together, we’re inclusive, but we cannot pretend as if difference does not exist. How are you managing that?
Dawn Bonfield:
The work I do as an entrepreneur-in-residence is mainly helping young people become empowered and have some agency around addressing the sustainable development goals. It’s a question of letting them know how they can be more entrepreneurial and have the confidence to know that they – even as individuals – can do something, whether it’s on a large scale or on a small, local scale. I think engineers are often reluctant to see themselves as entrepreneurs. But if we are going to create a “net zero” future world, we need to empower these young engineers who have the passion and the technical skills to be able to create the changes we need across every one of the sustainable development goals. And I’m constantly collecting role models, especially women role models, from around the world, who are doing things which fit into one of the sustainable development goals.
Claire A. Nelson:
In my book, ‘Smart Futures for a Flourishing World’ I ask how we might get 11% of the world’s population to not just be smart about technology, but also to be smart about the future. That means being smart in our design practices, and smart in the values that we’re bringing to the table. Your work is very much what I call smart work because you’re looking at things from a systems perspective. Do you think women are particularly suited to address systemic sustainability challenges? Do you think that future women in this highly complex and uncertain world would have an extra-sensory ability that could bring them fully into this inclusive engineering framework that you are developing?
Dawn Bonfield:
That’s a new and interesting idea. What I have thought about before is the multiple kind of identities that women will have. I’ve been trying to create a narrative that values the ability women have, to multitask, to engage in different parts of life. They’re often the gatekeepers of the home, the energy systems in the home, the purchasing decision-makers, and they’re the steppingstone from the workplace to the school gate. They have these multiple roles and great skills at negotiating, managing things that we don’t recognize. A wider set of skills that they’ve learned while they’ve been off mothering. There are important, transferable skills that I’ve learned while I’ve taken time out. So, we women need to start thinking, “what are the skills that we’ve got and how are these important?”
Claire A. Nelson:
Do you think we’re approaching escape velocity with regard to the number of women that we now have in engineering leadership, as well as the number of allies that we have in leadership on this agenda of inclusive engineering design principles? How far away are we from escape velocity?
Dawn Bonfield:
It’s difficult to judge that. We’re recognizing that women have different types of leadership skills. It’d be nice to think that women could rely on those skills being passed on to other people, and that men could lead in the same way as well. Let’s be optimistic and say we are on the right track.
Claire A. Nelson:
It’s good that you’re optimistic. You are occupying many seats, at least three. In 2030, just 8 years away, what do you believe you are going to be able to look back and say you have accomplished?
Dawn Bonfield:
The worry I have had over the last couple of years is that we have taken a few steps backwards in terms of equality, gender equality in particular. I know that sometimes on a long journey of change, you get some wins and then you go into a slump where you get some pushback. There seems to be pushback now against the diversity and inclusion agenda. It’s now about respect for all. We must find a way of changing the narrative. We need men to be taking responsibility as well. We don’t want the men are over there solving sustainable development and the women are over here talking about their own problems. What I want us to find is a way to create inclusive futures together. By 2030, I want to be further forward and further beyond where we are now: Beyond “the first woman in engineering doing that,” or “the first woman president of this society.” I hope that by 2030 the women in engineering will have become normalized and that gender equality is seen as everybody’s concern.
Claire A. Nelson:
Agreed. We need to do this together. Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Bonfield. We have come to the end of this delightful conversation, but the story continues being written by all of us, co-creating the future.
About Dawn Bonfield, MBE CENG FIMMM FICE.
Dawn Bonfield is currently Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at King’s College London, and Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University. She is Founder & Director of Towards Vision, a Company which works towards a vision of diversity and inclusion in engineering, and founder of the Magnificent Women social enterprise which celebrates the history of women in engineering and uses our inspiring heritage to encourage the next generation of engineers. The Past President and former Chief Executive of the Women’s Engineering Society is a materials engineer by background and spent many years working in the aerospace industry on composite materials. She is the UK representative on the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) and Deputy Chair of the Women in Engineering Committee focusing on the application of engineering and technology to address the Sustainable Development Goals, with particular emphasis on addressing the disadvantages faced by women.
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2022