Teach your daughter to fix a bicycle

The deficit in our engineering workforce comes at time when innovation has never been so vital to our economy – let alone our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Expert design and engineering can be a powerful catalyst in enabling a modal shift to greener modes of travel.

Ann Dowling is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and has spoken about her desire to see more girls encouraged into sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (so-called STEM subjects) and professional fields. She suggested this could be achieved by parents avoiding a ‘little-girls-shouldn’t-get-their-hands-dirty’ attitude, by encouraging them to play with building toys such as Lego or teaching them how to maintain and fix a bicycle.

Fewer than one in ten engineers in Britain are female. Despite recruitment drives aimed at women, just 17% of students enrolled in the subject are female. However, evidence suggests that female representation in engineering courses and professional positions is higher than industry average where the subject of sustainability is core to the programme or role.

If we’re to tackle the great challenges that face modern society – how to live cleanly, safely and efficiently – opening girls’ horizons to the possibilities of building will be vital. The challenges we face – congestion, reducing the impact of transport on the environment and on our health and quality of life – are all likely to have engineering solutions at their core. The engineering sector itself is gearing up to face these challenges – with the Transport Hierarchy published by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers a great example.

Dame Ann Dowling herself, whose specialisms lie in combustion and acoustics, began the Energy-Efficient Cities Initiative in 2000 and was on the award-winning team that came up with the Silent Aircraft initiative – a concept for eliminating noise from air travel beyond the airfield perimeter through the design of aircraft themselves

So perhaps by getting to grips with the basics of how to fix a bicycle yourself (training is commonly offered by local eco-op initiatives or Dr Bike tutors – or even online), and more importantly, passing these skills along to your daughters, we can all look forward to a rosier and more environmentally-benign transport future.

Fix a bicycle

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