Karen Horting, Executive Director & CEO of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), was invited to be a keynote speaker at City of Innovation & She Power, the 2018 Shanghai International Forum on Women’s Development, September 18-19, at the Shanghai International Dance Center.
Horting’s presentation was titled The State of Women in Engineering in the U.S. She summarized the latest research, trends, challenges and successes related to women engineers in America. Horting also discussed ways to increase diversity and inclusion.
“Trainings alone are not enough. One of the things we’ve seen in the U.S. is that just doing a traditional one-shot training on unconscious bias does little to improve diversity, and sometimes has the opposite effect. When you do those trainings, you really need to be equipping people with what we call ‘bias interrupters.’ How do you tweak the systems within the organization to account for those unconscious biases and make improvements?” she said.
Horting encouraged the audience to access SWE resources such as SWE’s Inclusion Solutions Cards and webinars in SWE’s Advance Learning Center.
More than 750 attendees took part in the forum. Speakers included officials from the United Nations, city of Shanghai, All-China-Women’s Federation, Shanghai Women’s Federation as well as multinational companies, nonprofits, and academic institutions.
The forum focused on efforts to improve the lives of women around the world and to inspire and motivate women to make the world a better place. Panel discussions were geared toward: action, cohesion, and creativity.
Shanghai has endeavored to become a global city known as much for innovation and culture as it is for products, services, and shopping. According to the Shanghai Master Plan, Shanghai women are encouraged to showcase their ingenuity and power along with their male counterparts to highlight Shanghai as a science & technology innovation center with global influence and cutting-edge advances.
