BSRIA chief executive, Julia Evans, is asking whether the industry is doing enough to promote the excellence of female engineers into engineering and into the boardroom.

International Women’s Day takes place on 8th March and the remit of the day is for women to continue to contribute to social, economic, cultural and political achievement on a worldwide scale. The World Economic Forum predicted in 2014 that it would take until 2095 to achieve global gender parity. Then one year later in 2015, it estimated that a slowdown in the ‘already glacial pace of progress’ meant the gender gap wouldn't close entirely until 2133.

The organisation calls for both men and women to take a positive step to help achieve gender parity more quickly – whether to help women and girls achieve their ambitions, call for gender-balanced leadership, respect and value difference, develop more inclusive and flexible cultures or root out workplace bias.

Julia Evans said: “Each of us can be a leader within our own spheres of influence and commit to take pragmatic action to accelerate gender parity. BSRIA is working with the local schools and colleges to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects – not only at an early age – but to women – who have historically not always chosen this academic avenue.”

She continued: “The current statistics for women in the construction workplace is about 12 per cent compared to 47 per cent in other industries. This differentiation is clearly unacceptable. Women make up 52 per cent of Britain’s population, so increasing the percentage of the female workforce in the industry must happen.”