Electrifying Women: Understanding the Long History of Women in Engineering.

Value

£80,567

Partners and collaborators

Women’s Engineering Society; Archives of the Institution of Engineering and Technology; Science Museum, London; Heritage Open Days; Wikimedia

Description

Our aim was to broaden public awareness of women’s diverse collaborative roles in engineering since the 19th century, showing the many precedents for women’s future roles in engineering. The project drew upon Graeme Gooday’s Domesticating Electricity (2008/2018) for evidence on women in engineering before the First World War. This was the key background to the founding of the UK Women’s Engineering Society in 1919, the Electrifying Women project thus marked the centenary of W.E.S.’s founding.

To support this goal, the Electrifying Women project complemented WES’s centenary activities by running a series of events, such as workshops and talks for non-STEM audiences. This led to the production of a series of resources, including public lectures, videos, volunteer research guidance, blog posts, educational source packs, recommended reading, and creative writing materials. In addition to this we have produced enhanced Wikipedia coverage of past women in engineering.

All these are now available in the Electrifying Women linked resources and events pages for anyone anywhere to download, use and share.

This rich array of resources to celebrate women’s long participation in engineering was produced in collaboration with our project partners: WES, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, the Science Museum, Wikimedia UK and Heritage Open Days. 

Impact

Changing perceptions about the long history of women in engineering 

The Electrifying Women (EW), project team collaborated with the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), the Science Museum Group (SMG) and the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET) to promote wider cross-sector knowledge of WES’s centenary in 2019-20.  This was a key opportunity to enhance public awareness of women’s long under-recognised participation in engineering.

EW engaged new audiences with locally-specific histories of women’s engineering roles since the nineteenth century, showing the many precedents for women’s work in the field.  The programme delivered 33 integrated events across England, Scotland and Wales, comprising free public lectures, Wikithons, student workshops, archive taster events, creative writing workshops, volunteer training sessions and a student-led musical theatre production, She.  The project introduced 1,647 members of the public to established female engineering figures, such as Hertha Ayrton, and to those newly re-surfaced, such as Henrietta Vansittart.  Online audiences comprising 25,000+ people were reached through blogposts, short films, and online events,  International engagement is evident with 53 people from eight countries joining the EW team’s session on enhancing inclusivity in past stories of women in STEM (especially Africa and Asia) at the first British Society for the History of Science Global Digital Festival (6-10 July 2020), with international interest in EW also indicated by project website visits from 49 countries (at June 2020)

By engaging HE and non-STEM audiences, the project helped the WES centenary reach ‘audiences that would not otherwise have been reached’ bringing ‘about a significant step-change in how the WES centenary was celebrated and shared’  

Creative writing workshops attracted 30 participants, many of whom contributed to the anthology, Hannah Stone (ed.) Electrifying Women: From Fact to Fantasy (UoL: March 2020), . Over three Wikithons, EW trained 26 new Wikipedia editors, improved 58 articles and created 13 new pages, which have been read 59,500 times (F).

The EW team forged an ‘invaluable expert network’ of curators, archivists, Wikimedians and researchers, who worked together to expose more stories of women in engineering in archives and museum collections. Beginning with EW’s London launch at the Science Museum (03.06.2020), the project’s events and online resources have contributed to SMG delivering its Inspiring Futures Vision 2030: to ‘help the Science Museum to build a society [that is] literate in engineering,’ to ‘grow engineering capital’ and ‘show that engineering is open to all’. The EW team brokered the collaboration between WES and the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester (SIM) informing the £6 million, DCMS-funded redevelopment of its ‘oldest and one of its best-loved galleries’, the Power Hall, due to reopen in 2021: ‘This conjoint participation will ensure, for the first time, that stories of women engineers (including WES members) will feature in all areas of that large-scale exhibition’. Also delivering on SMG’s Inspiring Futures Vision 2030, the re-interpreted gallery draws upon EW to show a more inclusive vision of the history of energy production.

The EW team is working with IET and SMG to create an international network of mutually supportive stakeholders to facilitate a global and inclusive shared resource on the history of women in STEM. To this end the Archivist of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) in the USA, has already agreed to share resources on the International Conference of Women Engineers and Scientists which SWE commenced in 1964. EW launched the new network in December 2020.

Publications and outputs

Resources: https://electrifyingwomen.org/resources/

Blogs: https://electrifyingwomen.org/blog-2/

Newspaper articles: Yorkshire Evening Post 15.07.2019 and The Guardian/The Observer 16.06.20.

Project website

https://electrifyingwomen.org/