Get creative to solve engineering's image problem

We know we have a shortage of engineers and we know that if more women went into engineering it would be a big step towards solving the problem. Many reasons are put forward for why girls don't see themselves as engineers - from gender-specific toys to lack of female role models and, unfortunately, old-fashioned sexisim - but a core problem seems to be the image. Engineers are portrayed as greasy, spanner-wielding, hard-hat-wearing burly men rather than as creative, intelligent, well-paid professionals who work in challenging and exciting fields from the Internet of Things to synthetic biology. With this in mind, we asked some of the UK's leading creative agencies how they would market the sector so that it would appeal to women. The following pages provide examples of their diverse 're-branding' ideas to achieve this goal.