Women entrants help offset lockdown fall in UK engineer numbers

Figures from EngineeringUK released to coincide with International Women’s Day [March 8, Tuesday] reveal that this coincided with an overall expansion in engineering jobs from 5.3 million to 5.6 million.

However, while the total number of those involved in engineering work dropped during the Covid lockdown period, the number of women continued to buck the trend and maintained a rise.

Chief executive of EngineeringUK Dr Hilary Leever said: “It’s great to see an increase of women working in engineering roles, particularly for International Women’s Day, with almost 370,000 more women in those roles in 2021 compared with in 2010.”

Women remain a minority of UK engineers overall; in 2010 they comprised only 10% of the whole. But their increase in numbers has seen their share increase to 16% of the workforce.

Said Leevers: “The fact that women represent only 16.5% of those working in engineering should still be a major concern to the engineering sector. We hope that our analysis stimulates more exploration of how we can do better.

“We need to ensure that engineering is a career choice that attracts the next generation of young women and that we respond to the needs of women who have left the engineering workforce and actively bring them back. Engineering businesses and organisations recognise these needs and are working together more effectively to learn how to improve our efforts.”

Research has also revealed differences by industry and by sector. Within the actual engineering sector, women still comprise just 12.5% but outsiede the traditional limits of the sector, their representation swells as high as 28%.

Photo: Women engineers in attendance at a Siemens recruitment event for graduates