So, I have been wondering where to put this but, of course, a blog is the place.

A couple of weeks ago the IStructE stirred up a twitter storm by printing a letter that suggested women shouldn't be encouraged to be engineers because they didn't like getting dirty, wet and cold.

My response was coloured by my wife and daughter who both love getting cold and dirty (though better just dirty) for the benefits it brings. And also @RedShepherdess aka Hannah Jackson, aka recruit 25 who certainly shows no reluctance to get cold wet and physically wrecked.

No matter how you dress it up, there is no better way of discouraging people than making them feel unwelcome and if members are allowed, even encouraged, to express views like that the balance is not going to get better.

It's my view that the women in our profession are, indeed, a threat to the men because on the whole they are better. They are better because they are few, and those few have fought their way against resistance because they love what they do.

So, when I was in HQ in Bastwick Street this week for a council meeting I was pleased to see that though there are still relatively few more senior women (though including one past and one soon to be president), in the younger age group there are many more.

Then you notice that of those many, one is from the Balkans and working in Dubai, one from the Carribean, One from South Africa, one from Australia, and they are just the ones I got to speak to.... Of course there are Brits too but the balance is being brought about faster by becoming a worldwide institution because literally nowhere else in the world is engineering so reactionary male as the UK.

My response to the original letter was that it was basically blinkered nonesense. That the same, over entitled, men thought nothing of expecting women to clean toilets after them.

And then I got to the meeting and.....

The designers of the HQ refit debated long and hard but took the only sensible step and installed a toilet facility that was gender neutral. Small, self contained, rooms off a corridor. Perfect.

But some men used the rooms in haste, left the seats up and drips on the rim of the bowl and the floor.

Would you do that if you thought your daughter or you new girlfriend was following you in there?

Do you, guys, think it is welcoming to these lively, enthusiastic, colleagues if they have to look along the row to find a place they are prepared to use in the only way they can?

It's called empathy.

As Burns said, so long ago:

Oh wad some geist the giftie gie us
to see oorsels as ithers see us.

Isn't empathy a necessary qualification for the best engineers? I suspect it is because the best design for everyone, not just for people in their own image.