Women in Aerospace Canada

Many women in Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU) aerospace engineering program say better representation is needed at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Wintta Ghebreiyesus, an aerospace engineering PhD candidate has done her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering at the university. She estimated that in her time at TMU, women generally made up between 13 to 20 per cent of students in the program.

“Frankly, women are hanging on.”
In the article, The state of burnout for women in the workplace by McKinsey and Company, this is the one sentence that stuck out. Being a woman in corporate has always been tough, being a woman in general has always been tough, however external forces, such as a pandemic, has shifted the perception unlike anything seen before. A whopping 42% of women report being burned out.

Role Incredulity – a term I had not heard before until I read this article from Harvard Business Review. Through the course of my career I have experienced this “role Incredulity” many times, as many women in industry have. People assuming you are not in charge because you are a woman, and think you are in meetings to take notes or serve coffee.

As WIA-Canada prepares for our upcoming Book Club this fall, I have been reflecting on some of the articles we read and discussed at last year's book club. The McKinsey & Company report on The Present and Future of Women at Work in Canada is something that I rely on often, as I find it to be one of the most complete Canadian studies published on this topic.