The Civil Engineering Contractor January 2019 | Page 39

THOUGHT LEADERS
blue-sky solutions more often. “They
think about problems in a different
way than might have been expected,
which is both essential and beneficial
from an engineering perspective.”
He says while it is always worth
looking back to view progress,
recent weeks have given SAICE the
opportunity to drill deeper into
the demographics that make up the
civil engineering sector, and the
combination of historical and current
numbers, together with projections,
makes for some interesting statistics
and forecasts.
Many more women
From 2013 to 2018, there has been
a notable increase in the percentage
of female members of SAICE (of the
15 964 members in total). Registered
practitioners increased from
2.85% to 4.46%, graduates from
17.76% to 30.44%, and students
from 35.2% to 48.12%. In total,
female representation increased
from 14.42% to 17.88%. Kaplan
points out that approximately half
of all civil engineers in South Africa
are members of SAICE — so its
statistics are most likely an accurate
reflection of the broad industry.
“These numbers tell only one side
of the story and they can’t be viewed
in isolation. Key to understanding
how the future looks for civil
engineering is to look at combined
race, gender, and age for male and
female members. These are the
statistics that tell the real story for
the future demographics of SAICE
and civil engineering,” says Kaplan.
Current
universal
SAICE
membership comprises 13 150
males and 2 814 females across the
age spectrum. While white males
are prevailing in the 40+ age groups,
with virtually no representation of
other races in the older age groups
(over 65 years), a notable statistic
here is the number of young black
male civil engineers currently in
the 20–40 years window: a total of
7 297.
The picture for female engineers
tells an even more compelling story
about the future of demographics
www.civilsonline.co.za
Gender by age — male.
Source: “Do Pro-Diversity Policies Improve Corporate Innovation?” by R.C. Mayer, R.S. Warr, and
J. Zhao. Wiley Online Library (2017).
Gender by age — female.
Source: “Do Pro-Diversity Policies Improve Corporate Innovation?” by R.C. Mayer, R.S. Warr, and
J. Zhao. Wiley Online Library (2017).
for SAICE, with the growth of
black female candidates showing a
significant upswing, at 25% in the
20–40 age group compared to the
universal membership percentage
that sits at 18%.
The future will look
quite different
“Should current demographic trends
within SAICE continue, the future will
look very different. Going forward,
the split by race and gender for males
and females in the age ranging from
20 to 40 will eventually spread evenly
throughout the membership, and
while these changes won’t become
apparent overnight, we urge all players
in our sector to focus on and strive to
continue to grow and replicate these
numbers,” says Kaplan.
“The civil engineering profession
needs commitment from all players
— individuals, companies, and
tertiary institutions — to ensure
the growth of our profession and
to facilitate the changes needed
to ensure that diversity becomes
broadly entrenched as we work
towards constantly developing and
increasing our numbers to match
population categorisation,” Kaplan
says. nn
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