Engineering UK report investigates why the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in the EU

A report commissioned by Engineering UK has attempted to explore the reasons why, according to an analysis of the European Labour Force Survey conducted by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC) revealed that ‘the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineering professionals across the EU states’.

The Engineering UK report compares the education systems in the UK, Ireland, Italy and Sweden in an attempt to investigate why this is the case, and to determine if there are any successful national characteristics or strategies which could by adopted by the UK to help promote the uptake and retention of women within SET.

The report identified 3 major themes:

The table below, lifted directly from the report, is a qualitative assessment of the relative performance of the UK, Ireland, Italy and Sweden, in order to provide a pictorial representation of the combinations of successful national characteristics or strategies which appear to contribute positively towards promoting uptake by women into SET employment.

The report makes a number of recommendations and observations across a range of broad themes including education, careers IAG, Teachers’ attitudes, and gender equality as to how to help promote the uptake of SET subjects.

Some of the recommendations include the need for greater enrichment activities within the curriculum, the importance of having a strong practical orientation to SET subjects, the need for teachers to actively challenge gender stereotypes when advising on careers, the value of enthusiastic female role models in “non-traditional” occupations.

A few of the observations in the report include the social barriers for women entering STEM occupations, such as male-dominated workplaces, a lack of females in senior positions within STEM industries, as well as a general reflection that in countries such as Italy and Sweden there is a much larger presence of STEM industry sectors employing a much larger proportion of its female workplace than in the UK.

The full report, produced by Engineering UK, can be downloaded below.

Visit the Engineering UK website.