Women and technology – yes, it works!

It’s not always been easy in your youthful years to make a decision when it comes to choosing a career. Often you don’t yet know precisely what field is best suited to your own particular strengths. This process of self-discovery, however, is already being supported in the schools. In addition, there is also an option for obtaining information beforehand in a careers advice centre on jobs that may fit in with your own profile and be given the appropriate counselling. You can’t always be stereotypically pigeonholed, and that applies to choosing a career as well.

There is a clearly discernible trend among female career entrants towards the commercial job categories. Training courses like retail, wholesale or foreign trade executive or salesperson continue to top the list, but gratifyingly enough there is meanwhile a significant increase observable in the number of women pursuing industrial-technical careers.: So strict gender separation at the workplace has been consigned to history.

The subject of woman doing technically oriented jobs is evolving into a megatrend of the near future. “Trend” is generally comprehended to mean a development in a defined determinant direction. Particularly sustainable trends are referred to as megatrends, extending far beyond the confines of a limited trend. How drastic ongoing changes in the working world are is demonstrated, for example, by the statistic that in 2012 one in four freshwomen opted for a technical-scientific degree course.

But what does it look like, collaboration between men and women?

The genders differ from each other in the nature of their thinking, and thus in their modes of problem-solving.

Does communication suffer from this? – I would say no, because a mixed-gender group can also approach and scrutinise circumstances from different perspectives. A project’s overall efficiency can thus be upgraded. Of course, women often differ from men in their modes of working, but that’s a good thing. Everyone has their own way of tackling problems, and this may be gender-dependent or not. Because as we all know, people are individuals, and not copies of anyone else. So is the difference between typically male and typically female modes of working still in any way meaningful, when after all everyone has their own personal thought processes?

What ultimately matters is a multi-perspective approach to problems, efficient collaboration and joint achievement of the project’s goal. One complements the other, irrespective of gender – that’s how teamwork is supposed to function.

I, too, decided to learn a technical profession. In June 2016, I successfully completed my training as a Technical Product Designer. The remit here focuses primarily on technical draughtsmanship, materials science, and machinery elements. I am now a member of the CRD Direct Print team, working as a detail designer hand in hand with predominantly male design engineers. A diversified field, confronting me with fresh challenges every day. I can confirm there are no communication problems whatsoever; on the contrary, an excellent division of labour ensures that collaboration and mutual feedback are highly successful .

At Krones AG, numerous industrial-technical career options are offered. How about training as a technical product designer, an industrial mechanic, a mechatronics specialist or an electronics engineer? In addition, Krones also provides opportunities for sandwich courses. Have you perhaps (as a woman) ever thought of becoming an engineer?