Magnificent Women Home

Magnificent Women in Engineering

This website is dedicated to the magnificent women in engineering from the past 100 years.
It draws together stories of our inspirational women from UK engineering history, and compiles a resource that can be used by anybody wanting to learn more about the history of women engineers.

NEWS

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Top 100 Historical Women in Engineering

The Top 100 Historical Women in Engineering List was published in 2019 to coincide with the centenary of the Women's Engineering Society. This list of influential UK based women engineers, who were alive between 1919 and the present day, is available here.

Top 50 Women in Engineering

50 Women in Engineering Slideshow (2016)

In 2016 the Women's Engineering Society first published the inaugural list of Top 50 women in engineering, and since then 50 more have been released every year. Find out who they are here.

Follow us on Social Media

Follow Magnificent Women and the WES Centenary on Twitter at:
@magnificentwom
@WESCentenary
@wes1919

Check out the many images of women in engineering history on the pinterest site here.

Women's Trails at Museums

Women's trails at science and technology museums are a way of inspiring the next generation of young women through the stories of the past. As part of International Women in Engineering Day 2018, a number of museums rose to the challenge of producing Women's trails. See more here.

Magnificent Women Engineers

Amy Johnson, Tilly Shilling, Hertha Ayrton, Rachel Parsons, Caroline Haslett and many more. Find out more about the pioneering women engineers of our past through the resource sheets and links here.

Outreach Activity

Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines is a fun and educational outreach activity and resource for schools and other organisations to explore the role of women in engineering, both now and in the past. It was developed by the Women's Engineering Society in 2014 and has been delivered to thousands of children since that time. It is now being delivered by the EDT, the Engineering Development Trust.
It is based on the work that women did during the First World War in engineering and technical professions, and includes a look back at the history of women in engineering and their role as engineers today.

Secret Spitfires

Secret Spitfires is the story of hundreds of women, girls and a handful of men who built Spitfires in secret during WW2. Released on 1 July 2018 to coincide with RAF100 Day, this is the true story of ordinary people doing extraordinary acts. Read the story here.

Engineer of the Week (EOTW)

Throughout 2019 we will be releasing stories of our historical engineers on dates which celebrate their life, death, or significant achievements.
Read the stories of these women as they unfold here.

Timeline of Events

1869 Women get accepted to Cambridge University but are not allowed to be awarded degrees. Sarah Emily Davies was the co-founder and first Mistress of Girton College Cambridge for women
1898 First woman gets elected to a Professional Engineering Institution. Hertha Ayrton becomes first member of IET
1908 Alice Perry was the first woman to graduate with a degree in engineering from Queen's College, Galway
1918 Some women get the vote for the first time. The Act of Representation of the People gives the vote to women over 30 who owned property (or whose husbands did)
1919 Women's Engineering Society forms
1920 Women allowed to obtain degrees at Oxford University

See the timeline of important events here.

Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines

This new book by Henrietta Heald, published by Unbound, will be available in September 2019.
Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines explores one of the fascinating untold dramas of the 20th century – the true story of Britain’s early women engineers and their success in fanning the flames of a social revolution, as well as their achievements in science and technology.
Elegantly written by acclaimed biographer Henrietta Heald, and beautifully illustrated with black-and-white archive photographs, Magnificent Women makes a fitting centenary tribute to a group of extraordinary female pioneers.