Gender Disparity in STEAM Apprenticeships

We have all heard about the gender disparity in STEAM careers, it’s been a long-standing issue.

To give some context via statistics:

• Only 16.5% of engineers are women
• In the tech industry, 26% of the workforce are female, and only 10% of leadership roles are taken up by females.
• Less than 20% of IT apprentices are female
• Women taking up construction apprenticeships is as little as 2%?

This has a tremendous knock on effect, with women representing 40% of the available boardroom positions only 10% of CEOs in FTSE 100 companies being female.

All of these stats taken from data gathered on 2023

This is all switched on its head in industries such as Health & Social Care, due to the cultural stereotypes of women pressured into going into certain careers throughout school. I am hoping these pressures don’t happen anymore, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Lots has been done in recent years to encourage women into STEAM careers. Everywhere you look you see initiative by large companies trying to address the situation within their company.?

You have:

• Googles Women Techmakers?
• Intel’s Women in Tech
• Tech She Can from PwC
• & many more?

Whilst this is fantastic, I’m particularly taken by the role models with industry doing their bit to encourage STEAM careers by standing tall and sharing their experience.

One of those is Becky Ridler who is a Project Engineer within STEAM industries and this May completed her apprenticeship in Digital & Technical Solutions. She now looks after the apprentices for the company she works for.

She has since started a business called Not Just Girls . Her aim is to inspire and guide young women and underrepresented groups into STEAM careers.?

What I love is that’s it’s not just a promotional page, but a space for women to feel supported and empowered.?

Newsletters with educational material as well as case studies of female role models will aim to generate interest in careers. Then going forwards the aim is to have mentorship opportunities for young women.

Within just 1 month of starting she gained over 250 followers and counting. A clear statement that the aim is popular!?

According to stats, 35% of students studying STEM subjects are female, but currently this only translates to 24% of the STEM workforce.?

Somewhere the message is being lost, so there is more to do to encourage those students to continue being passionate and growing into those careers.

It’s vitally important, a diverse workforce is a much much more successful one. Every idea needs different perspectives and different ways of thinking to generate the most success.?

Hopefully organisations like Not Just Girls can turn the tide for good.

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