A brand new eBook modelled on the popular ‘Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls’ has been created to mark International Women in Engineering Day today (Wednesday 23 June) to help inspire more young girls into careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Celebrated annually on June 23, INWED is an international awareness initiative celebrating the work and achievements of women engineers.

‘Five Stories from Five Inspiring Engineers’ tells the personal stories of five women engineers as a way of bringing this career choice to life for young girls aged between five and 10.

The book, which is the brainchild of recruitment agency, Rullion, was written by Alexia Saleem and illustrated by Jennifer Hayashi, and features two female engineers who work for regional water and wastewater firm, United Utilities.

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One of the engineers featured is Dawn Buck from Preston. From a very young age, Dawn, a construction supervisor at United Utilities, loved taking things apart and building them up again.

Although she wasn’t encouraged to pursue engineering at school, she eventually got her dream job and says any girl can be an engineer if she wants to and shouldn’t let the ‘world of grownups’ put her off.

Rullion’s Client Services Director Rachael Langton explains: “Despite growing evidence that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) outreach can and does work, only 12 per cent of all UK engineers today are women. We want to be part of the solution to address this gender disparity and to encourage more young girls to consider a career in engineering.”

“If we are serious about solving the problem of gender equality in engineering, we need to concentrate less on searching harder for more women to recruit and more on making sure more girls aspire to become engineers in the first place. This is the only way to correct the gender imbalance in the long term.”

The eBook, is available as a free download from the Rullion website at https://info.rullion.co.uk/women-in-engineering.

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