Davies Maguire are proud that women make up 44% of our team, and we are committed to increasing this further in the future.

To mark International Women’s Day 2025, we asked some of our colleagues to give their thoughts on what it means to be a woman in engineering:

Nina Heavyside, Director

What challenges have you faced as a woman in the industry?

The biggest challenges I have faced are not unique to engineering but a fact of life for all professional woman balancing a career and family. With my teenage daughters now independent and about to fledge (hopefully following in my footsteps into stem/engineering careers), I can reflect on the last 20 years and how being an engineer has helped and hindered this life work balance. Commuting into central London and regular international travel for work wouldn’t have been possible without support, in my case from my husband and the childcare choices I made.

The acceptance in the industry that part time working is not a barrier to career progression and particularly post-covid, the shift to more flexible office/home working has made the juggling act easier. Skills gained in engineering are lifelong and although the world is changing fast, the engineering principles particularly in structural engineering remain. Given the skills gap we are facing, we should be encouraging the return into the industry of women who maybe have chosen to be family-focused whilst their families are young.

How can we get more women into engineering?

Our UK education system requires students to select a limited field of subjects to study at A-level at age 15/16 and this can sometimes inadvertently create barriers to progression into engineering later in life. Enhancing the reputation of the engineering industry (across all disciplines) and the varied opportunities that a career in engineering provides needs to be the strong message to all female Year 10/11 students, encouraging the selection of STEM options (particularly maths and physics) at A-level or consideration of apprenticeship roles.

Choosing engineering as a career opens up a world of opportunities post GCSE/A-level at a time when life options can feel quite funnelled by early subject choices. The STEM promotion activities I have have been involved in have highlighted young women’s interest in sustainability and the key link between engineering and the route to decarbonisation is a field that is likely to become increasingly important to them and the rest of the world, and should be promoted as widely as possible.

What do you enjoy about engineering?

Engineering is creative and varied, often challenging and never mundane.

Reema Ismail, Design Engineer

What challenges have you faced as a woman in the industry?

The engineering industry has made a lot of progress in terms of gender equality in the workplace, and companies like Davies Maguire I fully believe are leading the way in this front.

How can we get more women into engineering?

The environment in the industry overall still has some way to go in being welcoming and open to minorities, and I believe a lot of progress can be made through a change in mindset from individuals within the industry, which will do a lot to encourage more women and minorities into engineering fields.

Hana Khan, Design Engineer

What challenges have you faced as a woman in the industry?

As a young, short, woman of colour, I’m already always a little bit worried about whether I am going to be taken seriously in professional spaces, but this is exacerbated by the unique set of pressures that come with being a visibly Muslim woman in the construction industry.

Muslim women are particularly underrepresented in the industry; I have yet to meet a single other hijabi woman on any project team or site. This carries a significant burden of representation as I’m constantly conscious that for many people I’m working with, I could well be the first Muslim/hijabi woman they have met or interacted with in a significant way. This means I am always thinking twice about my comportment, conscious that my very presence is a challenge to decades of stereotyping.

Unfortunately, as long as the proportion of Muslim women in the industry stays so low, I don’t see this as a challenge that will abate any time soon. However, I am thankful that people I have worked with largely have been open to asking questions and changing their perceptions, and hope that this attitude will be reflected in the wider industry as a whole.

How can we get more women into engineering?

It seems obvious, but visibility is key. People need to see others who look like them already in the industry, to be able to envision themselves there. From boards of directors to the audiences at industry events, it’s still all too common to see photos full of almost exclusively white men, which can make those spaces feel very distant and unreachable.

Education is also crucial. It wasn’t until I went to university that I really understood the breadth of fields that engineering encompasses, and everything it can mean. But I was lucky to have teachers who encouraged an aptitude in maths and science throughout my school life, and saw that it would be a good fit for me. Many girls are unfortunately not afforded this same support; we know that children as young as primary school already believe that engineering and similar careers belong to men. Girls need to be encouraged to pursue maths/logic/puzzle-solving interests right from childhood, and also shown that engineering – being such a wide field, with so many potential specialisations – can be a good fit for pursuing a range of other interests at the same time.