While the world is becoming more equal in terms of gender equality in the workplace,  in many professions it’s still very one-sided in terms of representation.

One such profession is engineering. Studies show that currently only 13 percent of engineers are women. Thankfully, many companies are working to change that, including the ARaymond Network, which manufactures assembly and fastening systems worldwide and has more than 7,000 employees.

Mareike Pollichino is an engineer who works for ARaymond in Germany as a parts designer and development engineerfor metal fasteners used in the automotive industry. She has been with the company for more than 12 years.

Pollichino says her decision to pursuing this automotive engineering as a career was a delayed decision, because initially she viewed working in the automotive field as a male profession.

“I was always curious about how things worked and was interested in the subject. But I decided very late that I wanted a technical profession in automotive. Prior to that, I had thought of other roles like media design and graphic design being for women, and automotive for men,” Pollichino said. “Thankfully my family motivated me to pursue this, including my brother who is an engineer. Through encouragement from my internship in ARaymond, I was positively surprised how open the company was to me as a young woman. After my internship, I wanted to continue my career in this field.”