Celebrating International Women’s Day at APS, by exploring how to Accelerate Action in the engineering industry
Here at APS, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day, by asking some of our brilliant team members about their experiences of being women working in the engineering industry.
The theme of this 2025’s International Women’s Day is accelerating action for gender equality, looking at the need to address systemic barriers and biases faced by women in personal and professional spheres.
Our Project Engineer, Katie Burrell, and our Area Sales Manager, Rebecca Lee, have been talking about challenges faced in both sales and engineering, the advice they’d give to those entering the industry, and the measures they think would make a difference in getting more women in engineering-related roles.
“The main challenge I have had in my job roles is the shortage of female role models to look up to in this industry. The few that I have had, and still have, are fantastic, however I’d love to see more in the future, to help inspire younger people,” says Katie, reflecting on some of the difficulties of working in engineering.
Rebecca meanwhile mentions an interesting story involving a former customer, “In a previous company, where I had the same role as here at APS, a target client of mine told me that ‘women should stay at home cooking and cleaning’… I think he was trying to get rid of me! After getting my sister to bake him a Victoria sponge, which I obviously took credit for, he then purchased ten machines, and a further four a year later…”
Speaking about how to get more young women in engineering-related roles, Rebecca talks about the importance of making the industry less scary to enter, saying “maybe female only engineering courses and degrees would help, it would be less intimidating for someone starting out and would hopefully boost confidence for when getting into a role.”
“I think that speaking with kids at school and college ages through careers days would be useful. I believe this will help encourage more young women to take the step towards engineering,” adds Katie.
As for the advice they’d give to young women looking to enter the engineering industry, both echo similar sentiments, referencing the variety of job roles on offer.
“Don’t!”, jokes Rebecca, before saying “I think engineering is quite a broad field, so it offers varied career paths which allow you to try different avenues. I was in welding before, which then opened the opportunity up to work in dust extraction!”.
“Take the step and be yourself. It’s a never-ending industry that brings new and exciting challenges each day,” Katie says.
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