The Women in OR & Analytics Network is a network for female OR practitioners and academics.

The gender imbalance in OR and STEM in general still presents many challenges both for academics and practitioners.

Whilst there is a lot of literature about the low proportions of women in STEM careers, no work had specifically been undertaken on the UK OR profession until 2018 when The OR Society sponsored three MSc research projects on the theme of women in OR.

Key findings from the three projects concluded that The OR Society should establish a network for women at work in OR and analytics to build strong, encouraging connections.

We need you

We need your voice, your knowledge and your experience in this group. Help us to build a strong, self-supporting network and to set better conditions for the next cohort of young women launching into their careers in OR and analytics.

Network Committee

Come to our next event

Propellors and barriers: comparing our experiences

20 June 2024 13.30 - 14.30

Register here

We often talk, in WORAN, about the barriers facing women’s full participation in OR careers; and it is true that the ‘leaky pipeline’ leaks more women than men, whilst more men than women reach senior roles. But every story is individual, every person wants different things from their career, and very few of us know from the outset what we want, and even less how to get it.

For this panel event, we are delighted to be joined by Gilbert Owusu, Director of Data and AI at BT and President of the OR Society; Heather Tewkesbury, currently Chief Strategic Relationships Officer and formerly CEO of Smith Institute; Maria Battara, Professor of OR at University of Bath and Paul Harper, Professor of OR at University of Cardiff, who will share their own career stories, before opening up to Q&A.

The aim is to stimulate us all to reflect: on our careers to date, on how we might move forward ourselves, and on how we help each other to move forward. We will encourage our speakers also to reflect on how their demographic characteristics – be it gender, age, ethnicity, social class or any other – may have influenced their professional lives and outcomes.

Join WORAN at other OR Society events

WORAN will be at the following OR Society Events and we hope you can join us:

• New to OR:
  Are you attending the New to OR conference?. Stay tuned for more information on insightful discussions featuring panellists including Katherine Kent addressing the 'Challenges of being New2OR'.
• Annual Conference OR66:
  Are you joining OR66 at Bangor University on 10-12 September 2024? We will be having a WORAN session, offering engaging discussions and networking opportunities. Let's make this event even more memorable together. Watch out for more details!"

Land Lecture - with Dervilla Mitchell CBE, FREng, FIEI

8 October 2024, Ada Lovelace Day, at 16.00 - 18.00 online

register here

Join us for the online Land Lecture event on Ada Lovelace Day. We're honoured to welcome Dervilla Mitchell CBE, FREng, FIEI, our Land Lecturer.

Dervilla brings a wealth of experience, having recently stepped down as joint deputy chair of the Arup Engineering Group,, a giant engineering company that has - in no small part thanks to Dervilla - an exceptionally high proportion of female engineers amongst its staff. Dervilla was Head of Design Management for Heathrow Terminal 5, and also worked on the London 2012 Olympic Village, the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, and a number of other prestigious engineering projects.

For some years she was a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, where she championed the use of computational modelling across the economy; and she is currently Chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering's decarbonisation working group. She has long been recognised as an exceptional role model in engineering.

Events Subcommittee

PR & Media Subcommittee

Mentoring Subcommittee

Past meetings

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR WORAN SPONSORS: