SCOTLAND has produced a number of world-renowned engineers, including shipbuilder Robert Napier, bridge and canal designer Thomas Telford and steam engine pioneer Thomas Watt.

But despite a rich history of engineering there is only one woman in the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame – Dorothée Pullinger – a car designer and businesswoman who worked at the Arroll-Johnson car plant in Paisley.

Now it appears that a gender imbalance in the industry stubbornly remains and for the small numbers of women who are engineers many are subjected to unacceptable behaviour in the workplace.

A new report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers revealed numerous incidents at meetings where male colleagues would assume that a woman must have an administrative role rather than being a professional with technical expertise.

The study reveals the problem of unequal treatment is an issue even early on in training, with almost half of female engineers experiencing differential treatment at some stage before graduation either as a student or while on work experience.

One female engineer who has reached the top of the engineering profession is Trish Sentance, who became one of the first female Oil Installation Managers in the North Sea in 2005, while she also helped raise two children.

She did a degree in chemical engineering after completing a week-long summer school at Swansea University which she heard about from her chemistry teacher.

Mrs Sentance, 57, moved to Aberdeen and worked at a paper mill, trouble-shooting machine performance and developing new products. She went into oil and gas after completing an MSc in offshore materials and corrosion engineering.

She joined Marathon Oil UK, initially as a materials engineer before moving into technical safety where she led the response to the Lord Cullen report following the Piper Alpha disaster.

Later she became an OIM responsible for all activity and all personnel on board in 2005 and was only one of a handful of women on her platform.

She said: “I absolutely loved the job. You had problems you had to solve, you had to make big decisions, but you knew you did so with the support of the people around you who, when you work offshore, can be like family.

“Chemical engineering gave me the opportunity to work in different industries and also overseas.”

“And it must have seemed an attractive option to my daughter who also did a chemical engineering degree and is now working in the water industry.”

It comes as Scotland faces a severe skills shortages in the engineering sector with two-thirds of firms reporting problems recruiting. The industry has made a push to recruit more women but statistics produced last year reveal that only nine per cent of the engineering workforce is female.

“Equity is one of the key themes in our STEM Strategy for Education, which encourages a better gender balance in STEM courses and careers.”