Celebrating International Women in Engineering Day at Reliance
Today, Reliance Precision Limited (‘Reliance’) celebrated International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) by inviting students from Shelley College to its Huddersfield site for a day of engineering-related activities. The event was designed to highlight the impact female engineers have on our lives, with the aim of encouraging more young women into the profession.
INWED began in the UK in 2014 as a national campaign from the Women’s Engineering Society (WES). WES is a charity that was founded in 1919 at the end of the First World War. The organisation has worked tirelessly for over a hundred years to ensure equality for women in engineering. Today WES’ mission is ‘to support women in engineering to fulfil their potential and support the engineering industry to be inclusive’. The theme for INWED 2025 is #TogetherWeEngineer.
Reliance’s INWED event was organised and hosted by Maria Perrins (Mechanical Design Engineer) and Maegan Green (Apprentice Mechanical Design Engineer). Maria comments:
“International Women in Engineering Day provides an opportunity to celebrate the amazing achievements of women in the industry, past and present. Women make up only 16.9% of the workforce in the engineering and technology sectors, which highlights severe underrepresentation within the industry. My hope is that by holding an INWED celebration at Reliance, we are able to raise awareness and demonstrate the incredible opportunities and career paths that are available to women in engineering.”
The students were given a short introduction to engineering and learnt about some of the women who have made a difference in the field before being taken on a tour of Reliance’s facilities. The second half of the day was dedicated to a Rubber Band Car Challenge where teams of two were required to build a car powered by nothing but a rubber band. The students were able to choose from a number of different materials, but each ‘cost’ a number of points. The final scores were calculated by subtracting the ‘cost’ of the car from the distance it travelled – the further the car went, and the fewer materials used to build it, the higher the score.
Jaime Larder, HR Manager, commented:
“Maria and Maegan did a fantastic job of planning and running the event. I hope that the students enjoyed their visit to Reliance and that they might be inspired to explore a career in engineering in the future. Reliance is committed to championing equality, diversity and inclusion and events like these are a great way to celebrate the female engineers that make a difference both at Reliance and in the wider engineering community.”