About INWED

​Background 

National Women in Engineering Day was launched for the first time in the UK on 23 June 2014 by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) to celebrate its 95th anniversary. Since that launch in 2014 the day has grown enormously over the subsequent years to the point where it received UNESCO patronage in 2016.  

In 2017, National Women in Engineering Day became international for the first time due to the interest and enthusiasm developed by the international audience and participants in the previous years. International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) was born to enable the celebration of women in engineering to become global.  

2019 Highlights
  • Over 280 separate events registered with the INWED website
  • 60 international events registered with the INWED website in Panama, Canada, Rwanda, Hong Kong, Sierra Leone, Australia and New Zealand
  • Over 1200 downloads of the Resource Pack from the INWED website
  • The campaign on Twitter alone, had a potential impact of 175,706 million with a potential reach of 63,505 million!
  • Around 40,000 Twitter individual accounts contributed to the Twitter campaign
  • Followers on the @INWED1919 account increased by 35% since INWED 2018
  • In the week of INWED alone, the INWED website was viewed 60,000 times
  • The ‘Draw an Engineer’ competition received over 250 entries from children around the world (including UK, Germany, Hungary, Japan and India). You can see the competition winners here

In 2020 the theme is #ShapeTheWorld. We want to hear your stories of how engineers shape the world and help make our planet a better, safer, more innovative and exciting place to be.

INWED's aim is to encourage all groups to think about organising their own events in support of the day, and link them together for maximum impact through the use of the INWED logo/campaign, corresponding website, and supporting resources.

Target Groups:
  • Government
  • Education
  • Corporate
  • Professional Engineering Institutions
  • Other companies and organisations in the Sector
  • Individuals
  • Young people’s groups
  • Special interest networks and groups
  • Press
We suggest organisers get as much publicity for their events as possible, to get ‘engineering’ and ‘girls’ (or women!) into the same sentence as often as possible, and to start to raise the profile of an engineering career as a great choice, with an exciting future, and amazing opportunities.
WES Background: 

The Women’s Engineering Society is a charity, born in 1919 at the end of the First World War, when the women who had worked in technical jobs during the war wanted to continue with this work and found it a difficult path. Click here for more information. A change of law to ensure that the country reverted to a pre-war setting when the War finished meant that women were unable to continue with their (engineering) jobs, and were unwanted in the technical professions. The pioneering and influential women of the time set up the Women’s Engineering Society, and have been working since that time to ensure equality for women in this non-traditional sector. Today WES is a membership organisation which has the following three objectives:

  1. Women: Support women to achieve their potential as engineers, applied scientists and leaders and to reward excellence.
  2. Education: Encourage and promote the education, study and application of engineering.
  3. Sustainability: Work with organisations and influencers to promote gender diversity and equality in the workplace and sustain the historic legacy and future effectiveness of the Women’s Engineering Society.​
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