Diverse routes can lead to diverse engineers

Mar 18, 2021

Every month our Chief Executive, Dr Hilary Leevers writes a blog for The Engineer, on topics, news and issues in the engineering industry.

In this month's blog Hilary encourages the engineering community to step up efforts to encourage young people from underrepresented groups to consider a career in engineering.

"Following hot on the heels of National Apprenticeships Week and International Women’s Day earlier this month, I’ve been thinking about what the engineering community can do to improve the balance between male and female apprentices across the UK and the urgency of doing so.

"We know from our 2019 research report Gender disparity in engineering that female under-representation in the engineering workforce is largely due to girls dropping out of educational pathways at every decision point, despite generally performing at least as well as boys in STEM subjects at school.

"The pattern is even more pronounced for apprenticeships with just 1 in 10 of those on engineering-related apprenticeships being female."

Read the rest of the blog on The Engineer website.