Entries for new engineering award boost sector’s gender balance

With the competition now closed, 36% of all the entries for the new ‘engineering undergraduate of the year' category at this year's TARGETjobs National Graduate Recruitment Awards have been received from women - a much higher proportion than the percentage of women who are currently engineering graduates (15%) or registered engineers (just 3%).

"It's fantastic to see that such a large proportion of women have entered the award as they are so drastically under-represented within engineering industries," says Chris Phillips, publishing director of award organisers Group GTI.  "This shows again that women can do more than compete with men in these technical industries, and that there are so many who clearly have promising careers ahead of them."

"We are delighted with the number of entries received and the proportion of women is a welcome surprise," adds Bob Athwal, head of graduate schemes at RWE npower (which is supporting the new award).  "We are huge advocates of encouraging more women into engineering, and while we already have over 15% on our graduate scheme it would be great if we could increase this further."

In all, more than 200 entries have been received for the new award category from over 30 universities across the country, with Loughborough and Sheffield each accounting for 11% of the total, followed by Warwick with 7%.  The most widely-represented engineering disciplines are mechanical (23%), chemical (18%) and civil (16%).  A shortlist of ten names will be announced later this month, and the winner will be revealed at the 2009 TARGETjobs awards ceremony at Grosvenor House on Thursday 21^st May.