New Zealand aspires to be an ‘aerospace nation’ – but to realise that potential the industry needs to become more diverse, according to a panel at the inaugural national aerospace conference.
The conference room is lit like the night sky. There are black holes where there are circular tables, ready to pull the 300-strong audience into oblivion. On stage, five women stare out into the abyss. Four of them have engineering backgrounds, the fifth in plant biology. Two of them have made it to the final round of astronaut selection processes with Canada’s Space Agency and Nasa. One was born in Mumbai, India, and two in the US. All five work in New Zealand’s fledgling aerospace industry – and they are panellists.
Their topic? “Women in space”, one of several discussions held at the first-ever New Zealand Aerospace Summit. Aerospace is the kind of innovative, high-value research and development-intensive industry the government believes is needed to help build a more sustainable economy, so much so it’s set to fund the industry $16 million to help drive growth. Spacecraft and other rockets are some of the first things conjured up when people think of aerospace, but the industry covers everything from Earth imaging and GPS to researching potential new uses of outer space. It’s not without its problems though – space junk is only getting worse, and the industry is often criticised for militarising the final frontier, by transporting into space valuable satellites, equipment and other “payloads” belonging to military and espionage customers.
Hosted at the newly built Te Pae convention centre in Ōtautahi, the conference’s theme was “building an aerospace nation”. The local industry in 2018/19 created some 12,000 full-time jobs, and earned an estimated $1.75 billion in revenue, mostly from weather services, navigation systems and other space applications using data generated from satellites. But based on the convention’s gender makeup, and the estimate that between 10% and 20% of women comprise the industry’s workforce, Aotearoa as an aerospace nation presents overwhelmingly male.
The same can be said for the industry globally: its share of women employees has, for the last 30 years, stagnated at 20%; that figure falls to 10% if only technical roles are accounted for. Nearly three in 10 science, technology, engineering and mathematics researchers are women, and only 5% of women are promoted to senior roles at space sector companies. If those figures hold up by 2040, men will inherit an industry worth a projected US$1 trillion in annual revenue. “With those stats to set the scene, let’s glean some wisdom,” said panel moderator Kate Breach, an aerospace engineer and president of professional networking organisation Women in Space Aotearoa.
Why should the space industry care about diversity? The answer is simple to Dr Priyanka Dhopade, an aerospace engineer herself and an Auckland University lecturer. “It’s in their best interests. There are multiple concrete studies that show diversity is beneficial for innovation. This is not really a secret – and it’s not rocket science.”
To reap the benefits, companies must target diversity in recruitment and entry-level roles, at times of promotion and retention, and in senior leadership and governance positions, said Mumbai-born Dhopade, who was one of the top 72 astronaut candidates with the Canadian Space Agency in 2017 – out of an initial application pool of 3,700. “Active allyship” from male colleagues would help “foster a sense of belonging for those who have been historically excluded from these professions.”
Sarah Blyde, a project engineer at Rocket Lab, admits to having never had a female manager in her career, which includes working in Australia’s oil and gas industry. “I know I have a gender bias so I quite often catch myself assuming a manager is a male,” she said. “But that’s just reality.” The shortage of senior women leaders, in her view, comes down to them leaving the workforce early and not being promoted at the same rate as men, even when outperforming them. The solution isn’t to “fix” women, she said; reforming the wider system is where attention should be focused.
How might other people ensure women stay the course to becoming sector leaders? US born Jessica Tucker, a senior associate systems engineer at professional services firm Beca, points to three ways she’s progressed in her career: having supportive, encouraging parents; having access to female role models immediately above her and in top positions; and having several male colleagues and managers who helped make way for her through “active and proactive engagement”.
Earlier in her career, Tucker was often brought to meetings by her boss’s boss, who showed people in the meeting that “there’s nothing strange or unusual about engaging across gender lines”. The engineer, whose background is in materials science, acknowledged the male leader took a risk in raising her profile, but it showed “he was willing to put some of his reputation and confidence on the line for me”.
How might women respond to the suggestion that prioritising diversity over excellence reduces capability? It’s not an either/or, said Dr Sarah Kessans, a lecturer in the school of product design at Canterbury University. Even taking into account the small female workforce, there were still countless “data points” of excellence, said the US born plant biologist, who made it into the final pool of 50 candidates for Nasa’s astronaut recruitment drive in 2017. “Look at those of us here up on stage, look at the companies that are getting started.”
She means companies like Astrix Astronautics, which makes small satellites more affordable, and was co-founded by chief executive Fia Jones. Or Pyper Vision founder Emily Blythe, whose fog-dispersing technology is solving the expensive problem of flights grounded by adverse weather. “Excellence doesn’t necessarily look like a cookie-cutter version of yourself… and may not have the self-promoting ego, may be driven by a different set of values,” Kessans said. “But excellence is absolutely out there – and can be achieved with diversity.”
Seated around tables that resembled black holes, the majority male audience heard Breach’s stark reminder: “Quite simply, New Zealand cannot achieve its true potential as a world-leading, innovative space nation if we continue to not draw on 50% of the population.” The conference room still twinkled.
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