23 February 2021
WE50 will profile the women leading vital engineering in year of COVID
Assystem, in partnership with The Guardian, will be this year’s official sponsors of the Top 50 Women in Engineering Awards -WE50, a UK event linked to International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) – the celebration of women in engineering that takes place each year on 23 June.
Founded by the Women's Engineering Society (WES) in 2016, the WE50 awards is an annual search for women currently making their mark in engineering today.
The awards aim to encourage women and girls with potential in STEM to pursue this path and combat the minority status of women in UK engineering. It is a statistic that Assystem perceives as a risk to today’s rapid science and technology development that is pressing ahead in creating medicines and infrastructure with limited influence from women.
Assystem is developing the UKs most advanced low carbon energy technology, from nuclear fusion to small modular reactors (SMRs) and it knows that it needs to draw on the perspective of men and women to crack the hardest engineering problems of today.
This year’s WE50 theme celebrates engineering heroes: the best, brightest and bravest women in engineering, who recognise a problem, then dare to be part of the solution; who undertake everyday ‘heroics’ as much as emergency ones.
Assystem’s UK Managing Director, Simon Barber said: “WE50 is the opportunity to find the women who have the power to send a message to millions of women and girls that yes – engineering is for you, so go for it and take your place at the table today.
"The nuclear sector is aiming for 40% of women employed in the sector by 2030. We must meet this target if we are going to deliver the projects driving Net Zero – the most challenging engineering of our time."
"If you know a woman who is really taking the lead and making their mark in engineering, then nominate them today and help to give women a greater stake in building our future.”
Elizabeth Donnelly, Chief Executive Officer, Women’s Engineering Society (WES) said: “WES is delighted that Assystem are sponsoring the 2021 Top 50 Women in Engineering Awards. Assystem has a great track record in supporting women in engineering, including its terrific gender diversity programme, #INCREDIBLEWOMEN and its commitment to the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles. Assystem have made fundamental changes to their employment practices that support and enable female employees. They are a great example of what can be achieved by promoting women in engineering.”
Assystem believes that gender diversity in the workplace is a driving factor for business performance and is working to achieve this through its gender diversity programme #INCREDIBLEWOMEN. As part of this initiative Assystem has this month pledged to attract 100 women to UK nuclear roles with the launch of a new technical graduate scheme. It offers a more accessible route to students into the industry, providing a mixture on-the-job training with Assystem’s in-house technical development, mentoring and wider industry recognised training.
Assystem, who have UK head offices in Blackburn, as well as bases in Bristol and Sunderland, are Tier 1 suppliers to the nuclear industry, supporting the development of HPC and the UK SMR programme, and is a leading nuclear fusion engineering company.
You can enter yourself or someone else into the Top 50 Women in Engineering Awards here, applications close at noon on March 8th.
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