Which industries are still under-represented by women?

There are many industry’s out there that are still unbalanced in terms of gender. Some trades are still considered very masculine, both in the makeup of the workforce and the nature of the work itself. This is not just counterproductive to women, it’s also damaging to the UK economy, with the Fawcett Society suggesting the UK could reap an extra 2% in GDP (£23billion) if it could better harness the talents of women.

Our own government certainly doesn’t seem to be setting the standard: only 1 in 4 MPs in the UK is a woman, and the UK is ranked an alarming 58th in the world when it comes to female participation in parliament.  The very lens with which we see the world – the national media – is little better.  There’s currently only one female editor of a mainstream daily paper, and according to the Global Media Monitoring Project, 46% of our news confirms gender stereotypes.

IT and Engineering in particular stand out as trades which either don’t attract women, or put up boundaries to their inclusion. Only 16% of the entire IT workforce is female, and it doesn’t look to be getting any better. Of all the A-level students registering on computing courses, only 6.5% are girls, despite recorded evidence that girls often achieve higher than boys in the subject.

IT is a perfect example of an industry which is only reaping the talents of the masculine half of the UK’s population. Engineering is equally devoid of female representation; figures produced by Working Mums show that only 6% of the engineering workforce are female. 

The reasons for female exclusion may be partly highlighted in a survey of female engineers by WSP.  60% said there were no barriers to female entry, so rather alarmingly, 40% of women obviously thought there were obstacles. 49% of respondents thought that educating careers advisers and teachers on how female friendly engineering could be the key to higher participation.

Women make up a very small proportion of the STEM workforce (around 15%), a figure which needs to change by attracting young female minds towards the sciences, technology, engineering and maths. In reality there’s still probably something of a hangover from the days of heavy industry and a male dominated factory floor, but as the face of engineering changes, so too should the gender ratios.