Women in 3D Printing: "We should be championing what equality looks like"

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#BeBoldForChange - that was the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day which took place in March to celebrate successes and recognise areas where change is needed for a more equal world. It resonates particularly strongly in the manufacturing industry where, let’s be honest, we’re pretty outnumbered.

I wrote this letter (originally published in TCT Magazine Vol 25 Issue 2: download for free here) on the flight home from the Additive Manufacturing Users Group Conference in Chicago where on numerous occasions, I sat down to dinner joined by only one other woman at the table. In a room of 1,600 delegates, there simply weren’t enough of us to go around.

In contrast, our recent North American and European edition magazines are filled with stories from women who are using 3D technologies in businesses and labs across the globe. Kara Ann Noack is heading up BASF’s 3D Printing business in North America, Alexandra Fletcher and her team are uncovering history in a reconstruction project for the British Museum, and Stacey DelVecchio, Additive Manufacturing Product Manager at Caterpillar is flying the flag for women in engineering.

But I wanted to use this Editor’s Letter, which TCT Group Editor, Dan kindly allowed me to hijack, to address something I’ve wrestled with for quite some time. In the TCT office, over half of our staff is female and the majority of those women have, in some way, shape or form, experienced harassment at a trade event, namely post-show events.

This industry is supposed to be progressive and in many ways it is. While it’s great that affirmative action is being taken to encourage more women into STEM roles, if being whistled at, spoken to inappropriately or touched when you don’t want to be, on a business trip is something we just pass off as no big deal, the positivity is sort of lost.

I’m saddened, but not shocked which is incidentally even sadder, by the various accounts I’ve come across from women who have experienced this type of behaviour, the kind you might expect in a bar on a Friday night without the added benefit of never having to interact with the person again. Every sexist joke we’re expected to politely laugh along with, every inappropriate comment, every pleather cat suit, highlights a lack of consideration for the women in our industry due to something that is socially accepted as “harmless” fun.

This industry is all about forward thinking and we’re lucky to have so many intelligent women, and men (because this is by no means all men, far from it) that we should be championing what equality looks like. It may not be exclusive to our industry, but if we don’t crush the lingering stereotype in our own little piece of the working world, as insignificant as it may seem against a wave of inequalities and political steps backwards, all of our efforts to challenge statistics will be futile. Every one of us can do our bit to be bold for change, and not just for one day of the year.