Penny Taylor has built a highly successful career in engineering in Coventry and Warwickshire and does not hesitate to encourage other women to follow in her footsteps.

 

The engineering sector is fascinating, rewarding and remarkably diverse. It also presents opportunities to make a real difference to the world, says Penny.

 

“When I talk to young people in schools, and particularly girls, they say they are interested in making society better. You often hear, ‘I want to be a doctor because I can help people’ - well, engineers have helped more people than doctors ever did. It was engineers who put in a clean water supply, sanitation and flushing toilets. Almost everything you see and use in daily life has had an engineering input. All the stuff we take for granted had to be designed and made by an engineer.”

 

“Britain doesn’t have enough engineers in lots of different disciplines, so there are real opportunities there and it is great to see more women coming into the sector. There are still nowhere near enough, but the situation is improving and I think that is partly because women who go into engineering do so with a passion for it. Men sometimes go into it because it is just the default setting. As a woman, you would never sleepwalk into engineering. It has to be an active choice - a vocation."

 

Penny’s vocation grew very early, from the passion for engineering she inherited from her dad who spent all his working life at Joseph Lucas, a huge employer across the Midlands in the second half of the 20th century.

 

“Dad set me up shadowing other women in the company and got his colleagues to show me different aspects of engineering. I think he was trying to put me off engineering - it didn’t work! When I was still at school I joined the Women’s Engineering Society. Dad was a work-study manager so from an early age I was brought up asking, how can you do things as efficiently as possible? I really like the problem-solving and the making-things-work. I have an engineer’s mindset in that you see something and automatically think ‘how can I make that better or faster or cheaper?

 

“I left school at 18 with maths, physics and chemistry A Levels and went to Lanchester Poly, now Coventry University, where there were three girls out of 120 studying mechanical engineering. I was one of the first female apprentices to be allowed on to the shop floor at Jaguar. These were the days of Pirelli calendars and page three of The Sun and all that kind of stuff which, back then no one took any notice of. It was just what industry was.

 

“I didn’t encounter prejudice, as such, it was more a kind of bemusement – ‘what are you doing here?’ Nobody was outwardly nasty, just confused. It is when you become a bit more senior that there can be some unpleasantness. ‘We’ve never had a woman in that job and we’re not going to now’ – thankfully that mindset is now mostly in history where it belongs.”

 

Penny worked for Jaguar Rover Triumph at a number of different midlands factories, before moving into the component-supply industry. She also taught automotive engineering at the University of Hertfordshire for five years before returning to first tier component supply as a programme manager, developing the programmes for new products.

 

Engineering is an incredibly diverse sector and Penny has sampled many of its strands.

 

“I have a very low boredom threshold,” she says. “I’ve worked in IT, design, manufacturing and HR because it’s interesting how they interface with engineering. An engineering degree is a great foundation for lots of different careers. Engineers are sought after by all kinds of companies, so those skills are really transferable. I now run a consultancy business, teaching engineers about communication, management, team-building – all the core-skills based on the lessons I have learned through my career. In engineering, you never stop learning.”

 

Sharing that learning is another passion for Penny who is a member of the Worshipful Company of Engineers and currently its Master Engineer. The historic organisation brings engineering professionals of all disciplines together and encourages and supports the coming generation of engineers.

 

Of its 350 members, Penny is one of 35 women. Turning round the weight of history is a slow process but, over time, that ratio will improve.