Femgineer CEO: 'Be the token in the Boardroom, and be proud of it'

Engineering has some of the lowest percentages of women working within the sector - with just nine per cent of the UK’s engineering workforce being made up by females.

Poornima Vijayashanker, the Founder of Femgineer, a company which aims to get more women into tech, is hoping to change this once and for all. Speaking at Inspirefest 2016, she explained how a common argument put forward by men is that they do not want to give a woman a senior position just because she is a woman.

In her talk she went on to explain how this triggers one of two responses from women; either they will not want to be the token woman, or they will feel obliged to stay silent because they are “just a token”.

She also admitted that she felt like “a token female” in 2008, which inspired her to launch her start-up in the first place.