International Women in Engineering Day is a global awareness campaign designed to raise the profile of women in engineering and spotlight the career possibilities open to girls who like solving problems, building things, or asking “why” one too many times. It celebrates the achievements of women engineers across every discipline, from the people who keep bridges standing to the minds behind medical devices and clean energy systems.
Engineering shapes daily life in quiet, essential ways. It shows up in safer drinking water, more reliable transportation, faster communication, and buildings that can handle heat, wind, and time. It also powers the less obvious conveniences, like the packaging that protects food, the systems that route internet traffic, and the manufacturing processes that make everyday products affordable and consistent.
Even with all that variety, engineering is still widely perceived as male-dominated. International Women in Engineering Day pushes back on that outdated picture by making women’s contributions more visible and by encouraging workplaces, schools, and communities to widen the welcome mat. The message is simple: talent is not limited by gender, and the future of engineering gets better when more people can see themselves in it.
How to Celebrate International Women in Engineering Day
International Women in Engineering Day is an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and focus attention on the amazing career opportunities available to girls in this exciting industry.
Celebrating this day can be as small as sharing a story or as ambitious as organizing a full-on event at a school or workplace. What matters most is choosing actions that make engineering feel accessible, human, and relevant, especially to kids and teens who may not have met an engineer before.
Celebrate Women’s Achievements
Taking time to learn about women’s accomplishments in engineering is more than an inspiring history lesson. It helps correct the common misconception that women are “new” to technical work. Women have been designing, testing, analyzing, and leading in engineering for generations, even when they were not always credited as loudly as they deserved.
A good celebration activity is to pick a handful of engineers and explore the range of work they represent. That might include pioneers who worked in electrical power systems, innovators in aerospace, leaders in civil infrastructure, and modern engineers tackling cybersecurity or climate resilience. The point is not to memorize names, but to notice patterns: women have contributed at every stage of engineering, from hands-on field work to research, from project management to entrepreneurship.
It can also be meaningful to look closer to home. Many communities have women engineers working in public utilities, transportation agencies, hospitals, manufacturing plants, software companies, and research labs. Highlighting local role models makes engineering feel less like a distant concept and more like a real, achievable path. Schools and organizations can invite women engineers to share what they do in plain language, with photos, prototypes, or stories about projects that went sideways before they went right.
For workplaces, celebration can include formal recognition, but it should be thoughtful. Instead of vague praise, focus on specific contributions: a safety improvement someone implemented, a product issue they solved, a process they streamlined, a junior colleague they mentored, or a customer problem they turned into a better design requirement. Engineering is a team sport, and recognition that reflects real work tends to land best.
Help a Girl Out
Supporting girls interested in engineering does not require a grand gesture. Small, practical interventions add up, especially when they reduce friction at key moments such as choosing classes, applying to programs, or deciding whether they “belong” in technical spaces.
One effective approach is to contribute time, money, or supplies to groups that expand access to STEM education for girls. That might mean supporting robotics teams, after-school design clubs, maker programs, scholarship funds, or mentorship networks. The goal is to make sure girls can actually try engineering, not just hear about it. Exposure matters, but hands-on practice is what transforms curiosity into confidence.
Mentorship can be powerful when it is structured and respectful. A helpful mentor demystifies the path: what classes are useful, how internships work, what entry-level roles look like, and how to handle the inevitable moment of feeling behind. Mentoring can also be “micro-mentoring,” like reviewing a résumé, doing a mock interview, or explaining what a particular engineering field does day to day.
Families and educators can help by watching language. Girls often get praised for being “good students,” while boys get praised for being “good at math” or “naturally technical.” International Women in Engineering Day is a great moment to shift toward encouragement that builds agency: praising persistence, creative problem-solving, teamwork, and the willingness to test and revise ideas. Those are engineering skills, and they can be practiced at any age.
It also helps to broaden what engineering looks like. Not every engineer wants to build a rocket or design a robot arm. Some engineers focus on clean water systems, accessible technology, safer roads, agricultural efficiency, or medical imaging. When girls see that engineering connects to real human needs, it becomes easier to imagine a place in it.
Share with Others
Awareness grows fastest when people share stories, not slogans. Posting about women engineers in a personal, specific way is often more engaging than a generic message. A short profile of a woman engineer, a photo from a lab tour, a quick explanation of a project, or a quote about what surprised someone in their career can make engineering feel approachable.
Organizations can amplify impact by spotlighting women engineers across different roles and experience levels. That includes interns, technicians, early-career engineers, and senior leaders, not just executives. It also helps to show the breadth of engineering work: design reviews, site visits, user testing, maintenance planning, code reviews, quality audits, risk assessments, and all the behind-the-scenes work that keeps systems reliable.
Workplaces can also use the day as a prompt to take a hard look at inclusion. Celebrations are great, but results matter too. Useful actions include reviewing recruiting practices, making sure job descriptions invite a broad set of candidates, checking whether high-visibility projects are distributed fairly, and ensuring professional development is accessible. Even simple changes like structured interview rubrics or transparent promotion criteria can reduce bias and improve retention.
Schools and community groups can share engineering opportunities more widely by making them visible and low-pressure: open houses, engineering challenges, maker fairs, classroom demonstrations, or career panels that include women engineers. The more normal it feels to see women talking about engineering, the less intimidating the field becomes.
Ultimately, the campaign’s long-term goal is to encourage a future engineering landscape shaped by people of all genders working side by side. When engineering teams reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, they tend to ask better questions, anticipate more user needs, and build solutions that fit real life.
International Women in Engineering Day Timeline
Elizabeth Bragg Earns a Civil Engineering Degree
Elizabeth Bragg graduates from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and is widely regarded as the first woman in the United States to earn an engineering degree.
World War I Expands Women’s Engineering Roles
During World War I, large numbers of women in Britain move into engineering and munitions work, taking on skilled technical tasks in factories and workshops that had previously been reserved for men.
Women’s Engineering Society Is Established in Britain
In the aftermath of World War I, a group of British women including Rachel Parsons and Lady Katharine Parsons found the Women’s Engineering Society to promote women’s continued participation and advancement in engineering.
Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan Joins Institution of Civil Engineers
Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan becomes the first woman admitted as a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in the United Kingdom, signaling growing professional recognition for women in civil engineering.
IEEE Women in Engineering Program Begins
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers creates the IEEE Women in Engineering program as a global network to support women engineers and scientists and to increase their participation in the profession.
History of International Women in Engineering Day
International Women in Engineering Day was launched for the first time in the UK in 2014 by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) to celebrate its 95th anniversary. Since that launch, the day has grown enormously over the subsequent years to the point where it received UNESCO patronage as it expanded internationally.
In 2017, International Women in Engineering Day became international for the first time due to the interest and enthusiasm developed by the international audience and participants in the previous years.
The idea behind the day is both celebratory and practical. It shines a light on women engineers who are already doing outstanding work, while also encouraging the next generation to consider engineering as a realistic, exciting option. The campaign also speaks to a larger workforce challenge: many industries rely on engineering talent, and encouraging more girls and women into engineering expands the pool of problem-solvers available to design, build, and maintain the systems society depends on.
WES, the organization behind the day, has deep roots. It was founded in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War. During the war, many women took on technical and engineering-related roles in factories, transportation, and manufacturing, helping keep critical operations running. When the war ended and industries shifted again, women who wanted to continue in engineering faced pressure to step aside. WES formed as a professional home and advocacy network for women determined to keep working, to gain training, and to be taken seriously as engineers.
That early context matters because it highlights a theme that still feels familiar: access is not just about interest, it is about opportunity. People can be curious and capable, but if training is discouraged, entry routes are unclear, or workplaces feel unwelcoming, talent gets pushed elsewhere. International Women in Engineering Day builds on the long-running effort to make engineering education and employment more open, more visible, and more supportive.
Over time, engineering itself has changed dramatically, expanding into fields that barely existed a century ago. Today, engineering covers traditional areas like civil, mechanical, and electrical work, and also spans software, biomedical devices, environmental systems, materials science, data-driven design, and more. The day’s “international” focus reflects that reality. Engineering challenges are global, and so is the need for diverse engineering teams.
As the campaign has grown, participation has broadened beyond professional societies. Educational institutions, companies, government agencies, research groups, and community organizations are encouraged to organize events and share stories. Some focus on outreach to students, while others emphasize workplace culture and retention. Both approaches matter: it is hard to build a balanced profession if people cannot get in, and it is equally hard if they enter and then leave due to lack of support or opportunity.
International Women in Engineering Day also serves as a reminder that representation is not only about fairness, although fairness is important. It is also about better engineering. When teams include a wider range of perspectives, they are more likely to catch design blind spots, ask different questions, and create solutions that work for more users. In a field built on problem-solving, broader participation is a practical advantage.
Women being encouraged into engineering careers are essential for making the industry entirely inclusive and for ensuring that engineering jobs of the future are filled by today’s best and brightest. And, just as importantly, it sends a clear signal to girls who love puzzles, science, tinkering, and creativity: engineering is not a “boys’ club.” It is a wide-open workshop, and there is room at the bench.
Facts About International Women in Engineering Day
Early Women’s Engineering Society Helped Keep Women in Technical Roles After WWI
When World War I ended, many British women who had taken on wartime factory and engineering jobs were pushed back out of those roles.
In 1919 a group of these women and their allies founded the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) so they could continue working as engineers, lobby against legal and social barriers, and provide training and professional networking at a time when most engineering institutions still excluded women.
Women Still Hold a Small Minority of Engineering Roles in the UK
More than a century after WES was founded, women remain a minority in engineering workforces. Analysis cited by EngineeringUK and WES shows that women made up roughly 16.5% of the UK’s engineering workforce in 2021, an increase from previous decades but still far below parity, highlighting the persistence of structural and cultural barriers in the profession.
Edith Clarke Brought Advanced Math to Power Engineering
American engineer Edith Clarke became a pioneer in electrical power systems by turning complex transmission-line equations into something practicing engineers could actually use.
In the 1920s she patented the “Clarke calculator,” a graphical device that let utilities quickly solve otherwise time‑consuming calculations, and later wrote one of the first comprehensive textbooks on power system analysis.
Tilly Shilling’s Simple Fix Helped Win the Battle of Britain
British engineer Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling tackled a life‑or‑death engineering flaw in early World War II fighter planes.
Rolls‑Royce Merlin engines in Spitfires and Hurricanes tended to cut out in steep dives, leaving pilots vulnerable, until Shilling designed a small brass restrictor ring for the carburetor, nicknamed “Miss Shilling’s orifice,” which largely eliminated the problem and improved combat performance.
Inventor Stephanie Kwolek Transformed Protective Engineering Materials
Chemist and materials scientist Stephanie Kwolek developed the aramid fiber later branded Kevlar while working at DuPont in the 1960s.
Her discovery of an unusually stiff, liquid‑crystalline polymer solution led to a fiber that is five times stronger than steel by weight, reshaping engineering design for body armor, ropes, tires, building materials, and countless safety‑critical applications.
Gender‑Diverse Technical Teams Tend To Innovate More
Research on science and engineering organizations has repeatedly found that teams with greater gender diversity produce more novel ideas and higher‑impact patents than more homogeneous groups, even after accounting for size and funding.
Studies cited by the National Academies and others suggest that mixed‑gender R&D and engineering teams are better at questioning assumptions and combining perspectives, which improves problem solving.
Women Engineers Help Expose Gaps in Safety and Inclusive Design
Engineering safety standards have historically been based on male bodies and use patterns, which has led to higher risks for women in areas like car crashes and personal protective equipment.
Work by women engineers and human‑factors specialists has helped document issues such as crash‑test dummies modeled on “average” men and ill‑fitting PPE, driving changes in regulations and design so equipment, vehicles, and workplaces better protect a wider range of users.
