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In Part One, Pam Liversidge proved that women belonged in engineering.
In Part Two, she changes the institutions that once excluded them.
In 1997, Pam became the first female President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in its 150-year history. She did not treat the position as a ceremonial prize. She used it to challenge an organisation she believed had become too academic, too elitist and too distant from the practical engineers who founded it.
Her Moving Forward programme opened the institution to people from vocational and non-traditional routes and created a strategy that guided it for the next decade.
But that was only one glass ceiling.
In this episode of The Digital Forge, David Richards MBE follows Pam through medical engineering, the creation of a new forum bringing engineers and clinicians together, her year as High Sheriff of South Yorkshire and the moment she became the first female Master Cutler in the Cutlers’ Company’s 387-year history.
Pam reflects on the pressure of being the first woman, knowing that any mistake might be used against those who came after her. She also reveals how it felt to move from President of an international engineering institution to Mistress Cutler during Doug’s year in office, before the roles were reversed and he became her Consort.
This is not simply a story about breaking glass ceilings. It is about what Pam did after breaking them.
She widened access. Modernised institutions. Championed women through WISE. Helped young people see engineering as a career. And became such an important figure in Sheffield that the University named an engineering building after her.
Looking back at the young woman who entered a lecture theatre as the only female engineering student among 120 men, Pam’s advice is strikingly simple:
“Don’t worry so much.”
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