A great profile article on Dame Ann Dowling appeared earlier this week in The Independent, and – as is to be expected in a piece on a fascinating and successful person of our times – it makes for really interesting reading. We can learn so much from other people’s lives: the twists and turns of life events that have affected them, the motivations and inspirations that have driven them, and the day-to-day issues that concern them now. When we practise seeing the world through the lives of others, it adds a depth to our own understanding of society around us; we cannot fail but to be enriched.
As an engineer – and Head of Engineering at the University of Cambridge – Dame Ann Dowling has, understandably, a passion for the subject, and is keen to make sure that engineering is seen as central to society. For years, engineering has arguably suffered from an image problem, to the extent that a society-wide shortage of engineers is becoming apparent; strenuous efforts on the part of Professor Dowling, her peers and many others connected with engineering are being made to try to redress the balance. Demystifying engineering – which is part of what this article seeks to do – is a step forward in this respect. After all, engineering is essentially just all about “how things work”.
The main reason for the profile, however, was that Dame Ann Dowling has just achieved another ‘first’ – she has just been made the first female President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. One sometimes wonders what those feminists of the 1970’s must think, when – almost half a century later – we are still experiencing the phenomenon of ‘the first woman to …’. At what point, they may ask themselves wearily, will this end? At what point will we celebrate achievements of individuals regardless of their gender?
Whatever the future answer turns out to be, we know that the moment is not yet upon us; we have further still to go until ‘the first woman to …’ is consigned to the archives of history. Yet there are shoots of hope springing up, and visibly flowering even in Dame Ann Dowling’s ‘first woman to …’ profile. As she herself says, “I guess I don’t really just define myself as being a woman. All I’ve tried to do is the things that really interest me.”
We move onwards to the future with that thought in mind.
