Innovative Scottish Female Engineers | Glaze & Save

Tomorrow is International Women in Engineering Day , an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering. It focuses attention on career opportunities available to girls looking to enter this field while celebrating the outstanding achievements of women engineers throughout the world.

Scotland has a strong engineering tradition, and given that Glaze & Save is a clean tech construction company headed up by former British Female Inventor of the Year, Dr Tanya Ewing, we’re particularly invested in raiding the profile of women in engineering and opening up all STEM fields to women and girls. So we thought we’d dedicate this very special blog to celebrating some of Scotland’s more innovative and inspirational female engineers, past and present.

Victoria Drummond

Victoria Drummond was a naval trailblazer born in 1894 and raised in Megginch Castle in Perthshire. Despite her aristocratic background (she was the goddaughter of Queen Victoria), Victoria was determined to become a marine engineer, and in an attempt to dissuade her of this idea, her father sent her to be an apprentice at a garage, fully expecting that she would give up on her engineering aspirations.

Instead, Victoria flourished, completing her time and heading off to train at the Caledon Shipworks in Dundee where she was the only woman among 3,000 men.

Against all odds, in 1940 Victoria was the second engineer on the cargo ship Bonita, carrying goods across the Atlantic to the USA. The ship was attacked by Nazi planes, but Victoria used her ingenuity and skill to keep the engines going to speed up the ship and dodge the bombs. She was later awarded a bravery medal.

However, despite her obvious capabilities and having tried numerous times, she never passed the test that would have allowed her to become a chief engineer in the Merchant Navy. It has been said that she would never have been allowed to pass the exam as a woman . Instead, Victoria qualified as a chief engineer to sail for Panama, and became the first British woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers.

Dorothee Pullinger

Dorothee Pullinger was a pioneering automobile engineer, born in France in 1894. As well as being credited with designing the first car “for women”, Dorothee was also one of the founding members of the Women's Engineering Society , and was a life-long member and active in the society's Council.

In 1910, Pullinger began work in the Paisley-based Scottish automobile firm Arrol-Johnston, where she worked as a draftsperson. Pullinger remained at Arrol-Johnston until the start of World War I when it changed from producing cars to aeroplanes. She was appointed female supervisor of the very large munitions facility operated in Barrow in Furness, where women were employed in the manufacture of high explosive shells. In 1916, her father created a new munitions facility at Arrol-Johnston near Kirkcudbright which included an engineering college for women and an apprenticeship program.

After the war, she returned to Scotland where the munitions facility was converted back to the manufacture of automobiles and renamed Galloway Motors Ltd , where she was a director and manager. The company produced a car, the Galloway, for Arrol-Johnston that was designed for women. The company employed a largely female work force under Pullinger's direction and produced automobiles until 1923 when production was transferred to Arrol-Johnston's Heathhall works. She was an enthusiastic race car driver and won the cup in the Scottish Six Day Car Trials in 1924.

Lynsey Lennon

Lynsey Lennon is a Scottish Water engineer who, in 2017, was named one of the UK’s 50 most influential female engineers despite having kicked off her career in engineering just ten years previously.

Lynsey, an ambassador for the water industry and careers for women in the STEM fields, was recognised as part of last year’s International Women in Engineering Day.

She started her career with Scottish Water as a graduate engineer in 2007 and has worked on a range of civil engineering projects including the flagship Glencorse Water Treatment Works which provides 350,000 people in Edinburgh with clear, fresh drinking water.

Lynsey is currently leading an innovative project to ensure that Scottish Water’s £600m a year capital investment programme is as productive as possible.

Anne Gillespie Shaw

Anne Gillespie Shaw was a pioneering production engineer practising in the 1930s to the 1970s, who was inducted into the Engineering Hall of Fame in 2017 .

In 1930 Anne became a personnel officer for Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company in Manchester, and in 1933 was made the chief supervisor of women workers. From 1930 to 1945 she was the firm’s first and chief motion-study investigator, and as consultant to the entire Associated Electrical Industries group, of which Metropolitan-Vickers was a part, she organized motion study courses.

In 1935 Shaw joined the Women’s Engineering Society and helped the Electrical Association for Women produce an experimental film demonstrating the application of motion study to food preparation in the home. Also in 1935 she gained a private pilot’s licence.

During the Second World War the government requested that her motion study courses for AEI be given to the rest of the munitions industry. In 1942 Stafford Cripps, Minister of Aircraft Production, recruited Shaw onto his Production Efficiency Board, to advise on work methods in the aircraft industry. In 1945 she organized a national exhibition to demonstrate that her motion study methods applied to all industries.