The proportion of women working in engineering and technology roles in the UK has fallen.
New workforce data released today by EngineeringUK reveals the proportion of women working in engineering and technology roles has declined in the past year from 16.5% to 15.7%. In contrast, women make up more than half of the rest of the UK workforce (56.1%).
In 2023, there were 996,000 women working in engineering and technology occupations compared with 1,034,000 in 2022.
The largest fall in women was among those aged between 35 and 64; 2023 saw a rise in the numbers entering the engineering and tech sector between the ages of 16 to 34.
Registration data published by the Engineering Council shows the average age of women leaving the profession is 43, in contrast to 60 for men.
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For EngineeringUK chief executive Hilary Leevers, the figures indicate companies must work harder to retain female employees: “The sector as a whole needs to better understand why women are leaving and work harder to improve their retention, including creating opportunities for those who have left the profession to return. The various government skills taskforces must also ensure retention is core to the strategies they are working on.”
She added that it was positive that in 2023 there were more women entering engineering and technology occupations in the 16 to 34 age groups. “This indicates more women are entering the workforce straight from education and training,” she said. “It’s important we drive forward on all fronts – inspiring and recruiting more young people into engineering and technology and then retaining their talent and experience too.”
EngineeringUK has highlighted good inclusion practice among companies, such as at global engineering firm AtkinsRéalis, and Siemens, which have both implemented policies designed to recruit and retain women including enhanced parental leave and flexible bank holidays.
Meanwhile, research by the London School of Economics and Political Science has revealed that women are even less likely to be top earners in the City than they were before the Covid pandemic amid widening gender pay gap in the Square Mile.
The report underlines previous findings that lockdown set back the drive for equality and increased home working.
It found that men were more than four times as likely as women to be among those with very high incomes, with women making up only 19.4% of the top 1% of earners. This compared with 19.7% pre-pandemic.
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The UN warned during the pandemic that Covid-19 was likely to set gender equality back by decades, with women more likely to be in lower-paid work than men, more likely to be the head of single-parent households and more likely to take on unpaid domestic work.
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