Understanding the long history of women in engineering
Women’s roles in telecommunications history remain underexplored despite a recent proliferation of work on women in the history of technology. Liz Bruton outlines the details of a special issue that seeks to correct that imbalance by situating women’s work in early telecommunications in the UK in relation to broader changes in British society.
This blog post focuses on the life and work of Henrietta Vansittart (1833-1883) who held the patent for the Lowe-Vansittart propeller. This propeller was widely used in the Royal Navy’s ships and was awarded a first class diploma at the Kensington exhibition in 1871. A model of the propeller is held by the Science Museum Group. So why don’t we know more about her fascinating life?
One of the main aims of the project – to introduce more people to the history of women in engineering and thereby encourage more girls and women to find their place in the industry – still requires work. There are still many more audiences to reach and more stories to tell. This is why we need you! We want to provide the resources that you might need to deliver your own events, or to write a blog, or do your own research into the history of women in engineering.
On a cold and wet November evening, we entered the Stage@Leeds performing space for SHE, a public performance by final-year theatre and performance students at the University of Leeds. The enticing poster showed a young woman with a printed circuit board projected onto her face. Read more about how the students brought the lives of women in engineering and STEM to life.
This guest blog from creative writing specialist Hannah Stone reflects on her creative writing workshop with the Migrant Access Project + in Armley, Leeds.
In the field of model engineering, women remain under-represented, so the long and successful career of top modeller Cherry Hill, who has won many awards and accolades for her work, deserves to be highlighted. Especially because, despite her reputation within the model engineering community, Cherry Hill is almost unknown outside the community. This guest blog by Geoff Theasby tells her story.
Following our first two creative writing sessions, at Armley Mills in Leeds and the LSE Women’s Library in London, run by creative writing specialist, Hannah Stone, here are some examples of the kinds of work that was created at the workshops. The output at both workshops was fantastic; participants responded with empathy, flair and originality to the stories of past women in engineering.
Wikithons are an effective way to get more women’s careers and lives recorded online. Learn more about how an Electrifying Women and WES wikithon helped to make the internet less sexist.
Our Electrifying Women project was set up to look for new ways to share a better understanding of women’s long participation in engineering. While women’s voices from the past can be very difficult to recover, we can still use our creative skills to fill the gaps in the documentary story so that we can imagine what it was like to be a past female engineer. Read this blog to learn more about our creative writing workshops.
How did one of Germany’s very first female engineers end up working in Britain during World War 2? The little-known story of Ira Rischowski is certainly not one of espionage. Hers is instead a drama of escape from Nazi persecution and narrowing opportunities until she was able to join the UK’s Women’s Engineering Society (WES).