Member Article

Helping women to engineer economic growth

Lynn Tomkins, UK operations director of leading Sector Skills Council Semta discusses the need to harness women to support the growth of Britain’s highly valuable advanced manufacturing and engineering industry.

Women could provide part of the answer to Britain’s potential skills crisis in advanced manufacturing and engineering if we can continue to explode the myth careers in these industries are more suited to men.

Overall, the science, engineering and manufacturing talent pool in Britain is shrinking at a time Semta research indicates that over 82,000 scientists, engineers and technologists will be needed across the UK by 2016 to take advantage of growth opportunities and to reduce the impact of skills lost through retirement.

While approximately half of the overall UK labour market is made up of women, only six per cent of engineers are female. And when women study engineering at university, fewer progress into industry careers.

Despite similar career expectations on graduating, six months after finishing their studies just 39% of female graduates have engineering jobs compared to 50% of their male counterparts. Why should that be?

Surely it makes sense for more employers to see women as an untapped and valuable resource, and for all concerned in the sector to do more to show girls in school and university there are careers with long-term prospects for them.

Semta’s own research found that a lack of female role models and gender specific training were key issues for women working in engineering and manufacturing which is why we developed a programme to support career development and nurture new female talent.

The action-oriented Career Advancement and Progression Programme helps women in any male-dominated industry to analyse their current position and identify specific individual career objectives.

Delivered through three-day workshops, it equips participants with relevant skills and confidence to tackle specific gender behaviour traits. It also helps the business to understand and address possible organisational barriers faced by their female employees.

And it works. Overall, the vast majority of participating women (88 per cent) said they have more confidence and self-belief since completing the programme. And the businesses have reported an increase in ambition.

So far, around 1,300 women in leading engineering companies such as BAE Systems, Jaguar Land Rover, Atkins and Airbus, have benefitted from the Career Advancement and Progression Programme, with well over half reporting that they have taken on more responsibility (58 per cent) while a fifth of participants (18 per cent) moved to a new role. The programme is available across the UK and in England it is backed by a recognised qualification from awarding organisation EAL.

Jacqueline Russell, skill group leader for performance and parasitics at Airbus has no doubt about the importance of the programme having successfully completed it.

“Being a woman in a male-dominated profession, while challenging, was never a real showstopper for me, lack of confidence and career focus was,” she said.

“I can definitely say that the Career Investment and Progression Programme gave me the extra push I needed to progress in my career. You still have to be ambitious of course, but this training has focused that ambition and helped me deal with my insecurities.”

By ensuring more women are motivated and supported to reach their potential, the programme is an important step in addressing recognised gender disparity in the industry. It is also a way of harnessing the skills of women working in the industry and encouraging them to progress – which in turn will help attract more women into advanced manufacturing and engineering careers.

Employers interested in finding out how the Career Advancement and Progression Programme could support their business strategy can visi twww.semta.org.uk/advance or contact Semta customer services on 0845 643 9001

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Semta .