Last Thursday I went to the Old Abbey Inn in the Manchester Science Park for the third Manchester Geek Girl Dinner. I took Kian as my date – its a women only event unless the men are brought as a date.
Ruby_Gem organised a lovely venue for the “BBQ” and talk. Sadly on the day the BBQ broke so dinner was oven cooked instead – still good food though.
The speaker was Lesley Allger from BAE Systems. She spoke about her various roles during her ~30 years that she’s worked with BAE Systems. From “shop floor” engineer to team management to head of her own team. She spoke of key mile stones which effected her time with the company and how she has learnt to manage geeks (and manage her own shiny lust!).
At the end of her talk she mentioned some of the company stats which illustrated how few women go from engineer to “executive engineer” (a broad term used for a specialist or project manager, I believe).
The discussion that followed the talk was broken up by diner – burgers, chicken, stuffed mushrooms, corncobs and veggie kebabs. Al of the food I had was lovely (definitely worth going there again!).
After food was consumed and drinks were had we continued discussing how to change the perception that women were only there to fill quotas. My personal opinion on this is that I think it really does revolve around getting into schools at an early point (say around Year 4 – Year 6 [8-11year olds]) and educating kids about what interesting things they could do – not just girls do art/beauty treatments/teaching and boys do science/tech/building. Doing workshops and activities that get kids involved could well be a good foot in the door to getting more women interested in the future.
I would like to add many thanks to BAE Systems for sponsoring the event and *squishes* to Ruby_Gem for organising a great night out!
Hope to see some of you tonight at Manchester GeekUp!
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