In the first of two interviews, we spoke to two of our female engineers about the benefits and challenges of being a woman in engineering.
Route surfacing. Credit: Sustrans
From designing accessible streets for people to walk, wheel and cycle, to building bridges and playgrounds, engineers are central to our work.
According to the Womens’ Engineering Society, just 16.5% of engineers in the UK are women. And many drop out of the profession after the age of 40.
Beth Bagnall
What is your job?
I’m a senior landscape architect. I’m based in the Sustrans’ London hub, but I work across all the regions, which I love!
What inspired you to choose this job?
My father is an architect. When I was growing up in Dublin I used to help him with survey work and sometimes coloured in drawings for him.
There were always architectural magazines hanging around the house that I loved to flick through.
I was attracted to the different shapes of buildings and materials used, but it was always the schemes showing the buildings in their context that grabbed my attention the most.
I realised my main interest lay not in the design of the buildings (architecture) but in the spaces surrounding the buildings and beyond where there were no buildings (landscape architecture).
What does a typical day in your job look like? What sort of projects are you likely to be working on?
My day can vary greatly as I am the only person with the role at present. I can find myself doing anything from a planning application for a new route in Scotland, to a design guide for a local nature reserve in London, or the detailed design of an amenity play area in Wales.
Sometimes I work at the macro planning level across county boundaries. At other times I’m focussing on the 5mm detail of a gap between a planting bed and a path. It’s the variation of scale I find so interesting.
Which aspects of the job do you love?
I love detailed design. I really enjoy working with the wide range of materials that are available, and working out what is appropriate given a site’s particular setting.
The UK has wonderful building practices passed down the generations that vary greatly across the country.
I love coming across practices I’ve never seen or heard of before that give a place its own unique character.
What are the challenges?
I’ve worked with property developers for most of my career.
Some are more enlightened than others. A lot of my previous roles involved box ticking all the ‘site greening’ requirements to gain planning permission for the development.
Once permission was granted and the project was value-engineered for construction stage, many of the landscape elements were slashed in favour of profit. This was disheartening.
It was particularly difficult to watch in areas where access to green space was already poor or there was limited space for children to play.
What is the gender balance like in engineering? How has that affected your work?
When I started out my degree in landscape architecture there were 20 men and five women on the course.
Only two of us were left at the end of the degree.
It’s a labour-intensive degree course and the male-dominated environment didn’t help.
In the places I’ve worked though, there have generally been a good mix of male and female landscape colleagues.
I’m very proud that we have had an encouraging number of inspiring female presidents of the Landscape Institute championing the profession.
There is still work to be done across our profession to support women at different stages in their career.
Many women leave the profession after the age of 40, and that needs to be addressed.
I’m hoping this will improve as more flexible working practices become the norm, and a greater understanding of the link between diversity and innovation in the workplace.
Was there an occasion where your experience as a woman living and working in a particular space informed your design work?
Before I worked at Sustrans I designed a lot of playgrounds.
I loved finding out about the different types of play and how a child’s approach to play changes as they grow.
It was interesting to understand the age groups during which girls and boys tend to play together, and when they start to branch off into more gendered environments.
There was a school playground I worked on where space was limited.
It was dominated by boys (and some girls) playing football.
There was clearly a need to accommodate the children left on the sidelines and provide them with an alternative way to play together.
Through engagement it became evident that this group of (predominantly) girls wanted a space to people watch, socialise and interact, but also perform to each other.
I understood where they were coming from my own older childhood experience. Between six and 10 years old I spent endless hours in various car parks around my neighbourhood working out complex dance routines to perform.
Feedback from pupils at the school helped us to design an amphitheatre-type structure.
This functioned as both a sheltered environment to sit away from the ball games, as well as space for social interaction and performance.
What is the one thing that you wish engineers/architects/city planners gave more consideration to when designing cities so that they are safer/more inclusive for women?
Just to clarify, landscape architects also design cities! It’s difficult to cite one thing.
In generations past only men from a certain privileged section of society had the final say in the design of our cities.
This has led to the unhelpful situations we can still find ourselves in, and we are redesigning today.
If I was to choose one, I would say the design emphasis on unimpeded movement of vehicles in our built environment has had a hugely detrimental impact on the health, wellbeing, and safety of women (and everyone else in society) in our towns and cities.
More consideration needs to be given to a woman’s experience at her different life stages.
We need to shape the built environment more mindfully with the most vulnerable points of her life in mind.
This could be when she is pregnant or less mobile and needs to rest.
It could be when she is undertaking childminding duties* and has to negotiate flights of steps between public transport and streetscapes. Or finding there is limited space for a pram/buggy passing point, she has to walk on the road.
Night-time environments still provide enormous obstacles to the equitable use of our public space by men and women.
Poorly-lit routes for night-time movement and enclosed spaces with no natural surveillance are very common occurrences that challenge women in our cities every day.
We need to consider lower traffic speeds, wider pavements, longer sightlines, better lighting, resting points, shade, shelter, and joy.
* women are not always the primary carer for their children but there is unfortunately still a higher percentage of women taking on that role than their male partners.
Would you recommend your field to young women thinking about pursuing it as a career?
Absolutely.
There are endless avenues in which you can take a career in landscape architecture.
There’s an excellent rounded education, which is helping to shape the grey (structures), green (vegetation) and blue (water) of our built environment.
I would 100% go for it as a career choice.
What advice do you wish you had been given when you were starting out?
You’re not going to understand what this is all about for about ten years but don’t worry about it, just keep going!
One day it will just click, and the environment will become the richest most indefatigable interest in your life.