The ITS (UK) Forums – WITS Forum

Rukshan Soysa March 8, 2022 3 min read 0

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What is the Women in ITS Forum

Continuing with our blog series and with International Women’s Day today, we wanted to highlight our WITS Forum. It was started to promote and encourage Women in ITS and provide a safe and fun environment for Women to discuss their career ambitions as well as their concerns.

By exploring these areas and showcasing Women who have made successful careers we hope we can encourage others to join what is a very diverse career path.

Why is it important to have the Women in ITS Forum

Sadly the engineering and transportation sectors are still mainly male dominated so the Forum gives Women and Men (in the form of Manbassadors) the opportunity to discuss ITS broadly and explore the barriers which still make ITS a predominantly male industry, Stats below from WES (the women’s engineering society)

• 12.37% of all engineers are women in the UK. (22) 
• 21.80% women work in the engineering sector (incl. engineers) (22) 
• 46.4% of girls 11-14 would consider a career in engineering, compared to 70.3% of boys (22) 
• 42.0% of girls 14-16 would consider a career in engineering compared to 66.0% of boys (22) 
• 25.4% of girls 16-18 would consider a career in engineering compared to 51.9% of boys (22) 

ITS impacts everyone in society and in order to achieve the best solutions the wider the pool of ideas and knowledge the better.  Women make up just over half the population, so it does not take much to realise the benefit of encouraging Women into the ITS world – opening up a wealth of experience and knowledge and a diverse way of thinking about solutions.

What can you expect from the WITS Forum

We have 260 members and hold 3 meetings per year, two of which coincide with International Women in Engineering Day and Women in Engineering Day and the third is a joint event with other ITS-UK forums.

We have attracted speakers from across the global on a wide range of topics some examples below;

We have had speakers from – UK, Finland, US, Canada, Sweden, Uganda and India

Topics have included – Professional skills, Mentoring, CAVs, Digital Data, Career Progressions, Leadership, Electrical Vehicles, Digital mapping, the impact of Covid-19 on women at work, Safety in Transport (for the user), work life balance and mentoring.

What we are looking to achieve

We aim to highlight trends within the ITS industry where women are making an impact.  Some examples of this are safety in transport where we are focusing on what makes all types of transport accessible for all and the gender data gap highlighting where designs have not considered all types of road user in some cases making it statically less safe for women.

We want to highlight women working in the industry by championing mainly female speakers and prove that ITS is a diverse and fair area to work in and that women can sit at the top table.  

We want to provide a welcoming environment for everyone to share ideas and knowledge over a broad range of ITS topics.  Personally, it has opened many doors to me and widened my network of work colleagues and friends and given me the opportunities to build my skill set.  So if you’re looking for female support at any stage in your career or you want to showcase a project or idea please get involved and contact Wendy Irving at wirving@its-uk.org.uk.