91av

Even the most monkish among us must have heard some of the trumpeting
which surrounded the launch of Opportunity 2000, the government’s push to
improve women’s career prospects. Yet only the dedicated few will have recalled
the tenth anniversary of the Open University project which has given practical
help to almost 700 women who wanted to advance their careers in technology.

These women persevered and won through in the teeth of Britain’s reputation
as the country with the most restricted maternity rights of any within the
European Community (a position reinforced by our behaviour at Maastricht),
and the poorest state provider of preschool nurseries (bar Portugal). They
have also had to survive in the engineering industry – notoriously the most
chauvinist in the nation. ‘Have you had a hysterectomy?’ was the question
fired by one managing director to a qualified electronics engineer not all
that long ago.

The women in the scheme (Women in Technology) had almost all left work
because of pregnancy and family. Ailsa Swarbrick, of the OU’s Yorkshire
Region, and Geoff Chivers, of Loughborough University of Technology, both
noticed a shortage of women engineers and the Finniston committee reported
that ‘less than 0.5 per cent of the current stock of engineers are women’.
Swarbrick and Chivers reasoned, a decade ago, that almost no effort was
being made to attract back the women who had left to start and nurture young
families.

Ailsa Swarbrick devised the Women in Technology approach by setting
up 10 different refresher courses – modules which she selected from degree
courses in mathematics, science and technology – for qualified women to
take over a year. At that time (1981) pitifully few women were taking OU
technology courses – in one year 7 out of 400 students.

Swarbrick, a senior OU counsellor with an arts background, got the idea
when she was doing research into the effect of OU studies on women in general.
She advertised the scheme in the national press and waited, and hoped. She
got little encouragement from OU academics, who were worried about the extra
workload, yet one of them bet her there would be no more than a dozen inquiries.
To her mild surprise 160 rolled in, which turned into 49 formal applications
and 40 confirmed starters. The women were mostly graduates, with two HNDs
and one ONC in the first wave.

Apart from the scheme itself, one of the smartest ideas was to run a
compulsory residential weekend at Loughborough University: the women attended
talks which stressed the difficulties faced by women returning to work,
but which also contained subtle encouragements designed to bolster their
self-esteem, which had largely reached vanishing point. By stipulating qualifications
the OU and Loughborough knew that they were getting motivated women, but
they little realised how timid, rusty and remote most of the putative students
felt.

I was this magazine’s reporter at the first snowy weekend at Loughborough
(91av, 29 April 1982) and I have retraced the careers of some of
the women I met then. I have also talked over the 10-year perspective with
Ailsa Swarbrick at the OU. There is no doubt now of the success and value
of her scheme and of the stimulus it has given.

Take Suzanne Flynn, for instance. She was one of the women on the first
course and she elected to study microprocessing. Married to an RAF fighter
pilot, she had to be prepared to move around the country because her husband
could be switched from station to station. While they were based in London
she got a job with Marconi at Stanmore as a senior systems engineer – playgroups
and schools taking care of the children. (Flynn wishes she had tax relief
on all the money she spent on childcare.)

Moved to Scotland, she joined a company in Motherwell making automatic
systems for the power generation and oil extraction industries. She is now
their quality assurance manager and her two children have developed happily,
although she felt guilty at the time and her progress has not been so easy
as it sounds here. To her, as to most of the women I talked to, the weekend
at Loughborough was crucial. She gained from being treated as an adult with
recognised skills. Most of all, the women gained confidence in themselves,
partly from discerning how to catch up, but also in discovering that their
families could exist without them – at any rate for a weekend. Husbands
are discouraged from making importunate phone calls about the children or
the cooking arrangements.

Jacqui Brookes is another success from the original course. She is project
executive of the Federation of Communication Services, a trade association
which represents the interests of the mobile communications industry. She
did a computing course 10 years ago. She had already worked in information
science and in a software house. She did not want to go back to work until
her youngest child was five – by that time she had joined the Women’s Engineering
Society and she is now on the council. Much of her work is administrative,
but she could not have restarted without the boost given to her by the OU
course and the Loughborough weekend.

A later entrant is Jenny Pioli of Thornbury, in Gloucestershire, who
joined WIT in 1985. She had a degree in physics and chemistry and ‘suddenly
realised’ she would have nothing to do once her three children were at school.
She is now freelance programmer, doing four hours each day with a firm specialising
in the computer systems of road transport companies across the country.
‘I loved the Loughborough weekend, going away on my own, putting myself
before the family and discovering that they could manage on their own.’

The psychological value of the weekend is obviously greater than its
educational content. Women who have been out in the world and ‘got on’ are
the best role models, but it is important that they neither overstate nor
understate how hard the real world can be for aspiring returners, however
mature and assured they appear to be. Just as valuable is advice about the
nitty-gritty. What happens to study when the babies are screaming – do you
try reading them the OU course unit? How are husbands to be trained – gently
– to an increasing household role, and how to deal with anxious dependent
parents?

These anxieties are common to all women who wish to return to work.
Many will choose part-time jobs. Their needs are met by a mix of full and
part-time worker/advisers at the WIT weekend. Some special arrangements
can be made to help single mothers, and women from ethnic minorities, and
the disabled get extra assistance.

What are the results? Ailsa Swarbrick and Rosie Atkins, also of the
WIT team, have done some detailed research on the progress of WIT women
for five years after they complete their studies. Educational and vocational
guidance are always available to all applicants. WIT has a low dropout rate
and a high employment success rate. The course modules are generally suitable
for those who select them, although a minority find the technological content
too difficult.

Even so, 80 per cent of each year’s group have eventually found jobs
– 55 per cent in full-time and 45 per cent in part-time work. Moreover,
the women are finding work faster. For the class of 82 it took five years
for 80 per cent to find jobs. But in the class of 87 about 80 per cent were
employed within one year. Better vocational counselling has played a part
here. The present industrial slump is causing some problems, but the exact
statistics are not yet known.

For the minority of women not immediately finding work OU staff have
worked hard to find unpaid work placements lasting between six and eight
weeks. This is a recent scheme, but first reports say it is very successful,
with employers providing stimulating projects and giving good support.

The study by Swarbrick and Atkins shows how much personal circumstances
bear down on the students. One, who took a high-level microprocessor course
in 1982, and after four years at home with two small children got an excellent
course result, found that her husband’s career moves prevented her from
finding work. The moves constantly disrupted her support and childcare network.
Not until six years after her WIT work could she go back to professional
work with a company just walking distance from her new home. Her employer
values her experience in the chemicals industry, her updating via WIT and
her voluntary work, which had given her wider experience and greater responsibility
than she had before.

Of course, demands of family always compete with those of work. A civil
engineer returned to civil engineering soon after completing a WIT course.
But after two years patching together different care arrangements for her
two small children she had to leave. However, she is now in further education
with new career possibilities ahead of her.

The women get bursaries which are not related to income to cover the
course and residential fees, as well as travel expenses. The fees would
normally be beyond the means of women who are not earning themselves. Unless
she has one already, each student gets a personal computer which she returns
at the end of the course.

Finding the funding for WIT has developed from a maze into a nightmare.
The programme has benefited from the public bodies set up by successive
governments to organise a vocational education and training service for
Britain. At first Swarbrick obtained the money from the Manpower Services
Commission, then the source changed to the Training Agency. Now that the
responsibility has devolved upon the Training and Enterprise Councils, Swarbrick
and her team have had to write to every TEC in the country for support.

They conclude: ‘The major limitations on the success of the scheme result
not from the women or WIT itself, but from the lack of long-term or larger
scale funding. Two main barriers remain to women utilising fully their technological
skills for the benefit of themselves and the economy: the lack of flexible
working arrangements offered by employers, together with the widespread
inadequacy of childcare provision.’

Glyn Jones is a science writer and film-maker based in Wiltshire