Interview with Shirley Chen (02/09/2012)

1st PART: Woman’s history comprehension/understanding

• Can you present yourself in a few words and explain us what is your job/responsibilities?

I joined St Gobain last May so I’ve been here for less than 1 year. Previously, I worked as an EHS (Environment Health and Security) consultant but I wanted to see the applications of projects and not only work on them for one year and then do not see the realizations. Here I work as an environment manager for the China Delegation EHS department. In China we have almost 35 plants, in my team we read the standards of St Gobain group in terms of environment, health and security and translate them to the plants here in China, and we coach the local people to the requirements of the group. We do the local requirements on EHS for the factories of China. We also explain these requirements to local EHS contacts in the plants and in case they have any difficulty or need any explanations we go to the sites to provide our support. We do a lot of training. We go approximately every month in factories; we also do some audit to see whether the management respects our recommendations or if they need improvement in the EHS field.  

• How did you come to engineering and sciences?

Actually I’m not very good at speaking or writing, I like more sciences, calculations, mathematics, informatics… When I had to choose between literature and engineering I choose engineering because I’m better in this field, it was easier for me to do that.

• Did you have to face any difficulty as a woman in your studies/in your job? Or do you think being a woman facilitated it?

When I was in the university, some departments only had 1 or 2 girls, but in environmental engineering, there was 30% of women so it was not a problem to be a woman. My parents were living in a province 2 hours south of Shanghai but I studied in the north of China, I left my house at 19 years old but my parents were really supportive. I did my master in North Korea. My mother is a housewife and my father does some engineering, he does maintenance work in plants. It helped me to think about the idea of being an environmental engineer in a plant. I have an older sister but she is also housewife. I’m married and have a 18 month son.

• How do you conciliate professional and personal life?

Luckily my husband parents already retired so they moved to our house and they take care of the child, in China it’s very normal, the parents help us to take care of the children. My husband works a lot too and for my work I have to travel so we really have no time to take care of our child. I really apologize to my son because of that.

• Could you tell us professional realizations you are proud of?

Our job is to protect human beings so I’m proud of my everyday work. Our job is very meaningful for the people; we provide training to the workers to deliver the message of safety.

2nd PART:  General debate on woman engineer: differences and new things a woman can bring in a male team

• Do you think men and women work differently? Could you give us concrete examples (personal works, project works)?

Yes I think so. I think men are better to work on projects, women are better when you have to look more in details, their thinking way have some advantages and disadvantages, a company can not only have men or only have women. Some balance between men and women would be better. In communication, women are nicer, think sometimes more than men before speaking, but sometimes it depends on personality. About organization in the work, here we are 2 women and 1 man in EHS and we are doing the same work the same way. I don’t think there is that much difference, it depends on your ability to handle with this work. In my previous work we were working in a team, one part, the audit group, had to read the documents to see the way the company was working, another group was investigating on site. In this last group there were more men. It is sometimes too heavy for women to be on the site. Women are more careful and are sometimes better for the audit, they review the documents, for men it’s too much routine, they most of the times don’t like this kind of job.

In my work, I noticed that when there are women in the plant, the EHS recommendations are better applied. For document parts, women are sometimes better, but in technical field, if you have to redesign a machine for example, I think that by nature, men are better.

• Do you think that gender diversity in a team is helpful for working atmosphere and/or is linked to team performance?

I think it’s good. In China we have one sentence: if men and women work together, the work won’t be boring. In a team with only men, they all have the same thinking way, but if there are some women in this team, there will be more brainstorm, much more good ideas because they communicate differently and women are more focusing on the details. Women are better at time management, sometimes men are only focusing on the work and are not good in time management. When you have a time period to finish the work, the men think about HOW to finish this work whether women firstly plan.  So a team with women and men will have a better performance.

When you are doing a project, you don’t only think about the work but you also handle the people relationship in the team, I think women are more careful in that, they think about making the team work together, they would suggest to have some fun after the work, or invite the team in their family to cook something, men would sometimes only focus on the project.    

3rd PART:  Vidéo

• Short representation

My name is Shirley Chen and I work in St Gobain China delegation EHS department and currently I work as an environmental manager to oversee and provide a support training to the plants within St Gobain China.

• Which advice would you give to any young women who hesitate to start engineering studies?

My first advice is that if you are interested in engineering just do it. Nothing is much more difficult, if you are interested in it you will find the energy and focus on everything of this topic and do it much better. Don’t worry about the fact of being a women, you will see in the future that it’s not that difficult. And if you’re scared not to find a job, you should know that it’s really changing know, especially in China, and you will see that big companies like St Gobain have diversity programs and they will not refuse you the job because you are a women, they will only see your professional reasons, your studies and professional experience.

• What has been your biggest difficulty as a women engineer?

I think sometimes men have more energy for physical work, on the site men can work faster, they can handle heavy things.

• What has been your best satisfaction as a women engineer?

I think I don’t have big projects to be proud of, but in daily work I sometimes can feal proud, when I visit the plants I stop some actions of the workers, they sometimes don’t realize that they are behaving dangerously, when I stop those actions I avoid accidents dangerous for their lives. 

• What is your next challenge?

EHS is a very professional work, we should understand lots of standards, lots of regulations so I hope my challenge is to work more to expend my professional scope.