Celebrating our successes on International Women’s Day

March 8, 2023
Celebrating our successes on International Women’s Day
Women from Hatch's office in Sydney, Australia gather together. Sydney is nearing our goal of 40 percent women at Hatch, with women making up 36.3 percent of its office.

It’s International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness, and drive action to create a gender equal world.

As an engineering, project management, and professional services firm, we recognize that there is much work to be done to encourage more women into the engineering and STEM professions. Women continue to represent a minority of engineers across the world. In Canada, they’re just 18% of all licensed engineers, and in Australia it’s only 13 percent[1] while in the USA it’s 15 percent.[2] In the UK, women make up 16.5 percent of all engineers[3] and in South Africa it’s only 6 percent.[4]

We believe in encouraging increased diversity in engineering and the other STEM professions not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because we believe that a diverse and a fully inclusive work environment fosters a plurality of thought and perspectives that solves challenging problems and creates value for our clients, for our communities, and for the world at large.

We believe in encouraging increased diversity in engineering and the other STEM professions not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because we believe that a diverse and a fully inclusive work environment fosters a plurality of thought and perspectives that solves challenging problems and creates value for our clients, for our communities, and for the world at large.

When we strengthened our diversity and inclusion journey six years ago, we set an aspiration to improve gender diversity to 40 percent. To ensure that we are providing equal access to opportunity for women, we have employed the strategy of requiring diverse interview slates—we aim to have 1/3 of all experienced hire and 1/2 of student and young professional interview slates be women. We are proud to report that in this past year, we have seen the largest single-year increase in the number of women at Hatch since we began tracking. As of February 2023, our Western Canada region, home to the largest cohort of Hatch colleagues with more than 3,000 staff is currently at 36.1% women. Our Africa, Europe, Middle East region also has had great success with increasing gender diversity. As a region, they have 34.8 percent women and notably the Johannesburg office has 38.3 percent and the UK offices have 42.4 percent women. Several offices around the world have surpassed our 40 percent goal, including Calgary, Edmonton, Lima, Calama, Shenyang, Beijing, Manchester, London, Gqeberha, and East London.

We’re also leading in other aspects of our diversity journey. For example, Hatch has once again been named Canada's Best Diversity Employers—the only engineering and professional services firm to be named.

To learn more about all that Hatch is doing to build a diverse and inclusive organization, visit Hatch Diversity & Inclusion.

 

[1] ea-diversity-and-inclusion-positioning-statement.pdf (engineersaustralia.org.au)

[2] Women Making Gains in STEM Occupations but Still Underrepresented (census.gov)

[3] Useful Statistics | Women's Engineering Society (wes.org.uk)

[4] Where are South Africa’s Women Engineers? - All Together (swe.org)