Weir Group committed to getting more women engineers into industry

Ms Lafferty outlined how Weir is working with a range of organisations here to help to improve representation in the engineering trade.

When recruiting for senior roles Weir will typically employ the services of a headhunter if no suitable internal candidates are available.

According to Ms Lafferty she is now asking those firms to bring her lists of female candidates.

She said: "It is easy [for headhunters] to deliver a shortlist with talented men on it. It is more difficult as they have to turn over more stones and have to be more persuasive to get the tremendous women on the shortlist.

"We are actively trying an experiment where we are pushing the headhunters to show us the women first. Which is forcing them to actually go and do the work which will turn up really good women.

"Once we are sure we have got a strong shortlist in women then we add men to it. Then we can have a much more balanced discussion about who the best person for the role is."

While around 20 per cent of entrants into the profession are female the percentage reduces to around seven per cent when it comes to senior management roles. Weir has a similar level to its industry peers.

Ms Lafferty said: "Fundamentally there is a need for more engineers. If you look at the Royal Academy publication from the summer it suggests [we are] 420,000 engineers short for 2020.

"So you really are going to have to spread that love across both genders and attract more women into this to be able to [hit] those numbers."

However if the UK is unable to supply engineers in those numbers Ms Lafferty and her team will look overseas.

She said: "If you look at China there are a lot of women coming through. South Africa is another place where there is a lot of female engineering graduates.

"As a global organisation then we are starting to say 'ok if we are struggling to get female engineers out of the UK there is nothing to stop us recruiting more from the likes of Africa and China'."

Weir is working to raise awareness of engineering at various levels.

It is engaged with the not for profit Primary Engineer organisation which goes into primary and secondary schools to stimulate interest in engineering from an early age.

Along with that it is involved with the Arkwright Scholarships Trust which has seen it take 15 and 16 year old school children and place them in Weir facilities in the likes of Malaysia and South Africa.

There is also the Weir Group and Scottish Engineering Schools Challenge which sees teams of young teenagers come together to give presentations on the application of engineering within their own societies.

Ms Lafferty said: "We are starting to see more female interest in engineering at the school level. I think that is adjoined to society and women coming through in all aspects of society on an equal footing."

Jenny McGeough, a value chain excellence project manager at Weir, was one of only five women in her undergraduate engineering class. By the time of her Masters qualification there were two women in a class of four.

However when she took her first industry role, which was not with Weir, she was the only professional women in her division.

She said: "You have no-one to look up to, you are different and you see things in a different way. It is very, very, very challenging.

"In hindsight I think I would have benefited from a female mentor, even getting someone in externally from a sister company or institute, just to help you over the hurdles you experience.

"That might help get the lower rung of girls to the next rung and they can mentor people below them."

While Ms McGeough now acts as a mentor to younger engineers Weir is also looking at working with others in the sector to provide more senior female role models.

Ms Lafferty said: "We have started looking at partnering with external organisations as we don't have that cadre of females internally. It is more than networking. It is genuinely about reaching out to organisations and saying can we borrow your successful females and help young women coming through. We have to share that."

Gladys Schnier, a PhD student working in mechanical engineering at Weir's advanced research centre at Strathclyde University, was encouraged into the profession through her parents but said the experience of attending Scottish Space School and meeting astronauts from NASA was also a major influence.

Ms Schnier said: "My parents have encouraged engineering and science but it was never a pressure. I really enjoyed maths and science and had inspirational teachers.

"I love being involved in new designs, creativity and developing things. That is how I see myself progressing.

"The work with Weir has brought me into a position where I really want to develop further in that area."

Ms Lafferty says parents still have a major role to play in challenging gender stereotypes for professions and not just engineering.

She said: "[We] owe it to girls to start demonstrating that everything is open to them and it doesn't have to be swathed in pink to be acceptable to them."

While Ms Lafferty admits further work across the industry needs to be done she says Weir is investing to make sure its female workforce expands.

She said Weir chief executive Keith Cochrane is fully behind the initiatives and added: "As far as workplace flexibility and agility is women happen to have children and [Weir] has suck it up and work out how we maintain that position while they are gone. It is really not that challenging. It is just that it has always been run by men who have viewed it as being difficult to conquer.

"We need to make an impact on our graduate intake and to pull from that rank up the way. We are putting a lot of focus on hiring female engineering graduates and that there is an environment in place that supports them.

"We have enlisted the female graduates help with that and asked what made them want to come and work for us and what should we be changing to make it more attractive. We have also asked males for their views on that as well."