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We’re Supporting National Women in Engineering Day 2016

National Women in Engineering Day, 23rd of June 2016

Our Involvement

Being part of the SOLIDWORKS community, we have always recognised the importance of championing women in engineering and our own team is made up of almost 40% women.

We’ve always taken a keen interest in the SOLIDWORKS’ Women in Engineering Recognition Program and just yesterday we attended a STEM careers event to inspire young men and women to consider a career in STEM.

That’s why we’re getting involved in National Women in Engineering Day 2016.

National Women in Engineering Day was set up by the Womens Engineering Society (WES)to focus attention on the great opportunities for women in engineering, ata time when it has never been more important to address the engineering skills shortage. By encouraging girls intoengineering careers we will not only be increasing diversity and inclusion a business imperative but enabling us tofill the substantial future job opportunities that have been predicted in this sector.

The idea behind National Women in Engineering Day is to encourage all groups to organise their own events insupport of the day, and link them together for maximum impact through the use of the NWED.

This year National Women in Engineering Day will take place on June 23rd and throughout the week we will be posting profiles on the women here at DriveWorks as well as some of our friends in the industry.

Why Get Involved?

The Women’s Engineering Society want National Women in Engineering Day to focus on the opportunities for women in engineering to address the engineering skills shortage, and here are some of the reasons why:

  • Only 9% of the engineering workforce is female. And only 6% of registered engineers and technicians(i.e. CEng, IEng, EngTech) are women.
  • The UK has the lowest percentage of female engineering professionals in Europe, at less than 10%,while Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus lead with nearly 30%.
  • 15.8% of engineering and technology undergraduates in the UK are female. Compare with India:where over 30% of engineering students are women on engineering courses account for over 30% ofthe students.
  • 64% of engineering employers say a shortage of engineers in the UK is a threat to their business. 32%of companies across sectors currently have difficulties recruiting experienced STEM staff, and 20%find it difficult to recruit entrants to STEM.
  • Women Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering: 2% in 2006 and 4% in 2014.
  • Diversity matters: companies are 15% more likely to perform better if they are gender diverse.
  • Diversity is crucial for innovation: in a global survey, 85% corporate diversity and talent leadersagreed that A diverse and inclusive workforce is crucial to encouraging different perspectives andideas that drive innovation.
  • According to a British Gas survey, almost half (48%) of young women do not even consider careers inSTEM sectors, citing a lack of STEM knowledge (30%), a perception that the industries are sexist (13%),and a belief that STEM careers are better suited to the opposite sex (9%).
  • Only 36% of STEM teachers felt confident in giving engineering careers advice.
  • The gender gap in Physics, a key requirement for engineering programmes, remains striking: in 2012it was the second most popular A Level subject for boys in England, but only 17th amongst girls.
  • In 2015, only 21.5% of A Level physics students are girls (and a slight drop from 23.7% in 2014). Theproportions have remained at around 20% over the past 25+ years.
  • Of those who do take STEM A Levels, proportionally more females achieved A*-B combined gradescompared to males in nearly all STEM subjects in 2015 (only in Chemistry do boys seem to do slightlybetter).
  • Women and men engineering and technology students express similar levels of intent to work inengineering & technology, but 66.2% of the men and 47.4% of the women graduates in 2011 wenton to work in engineering and technology.
  • In 2010 nearly 100,000 female STEM graduates were unemployed or economically inactive.

How To Get Involved

There are lots of ways that you can get involved in #NWED2016, here are some of the easiest:

See what else you can do at www.nwed.org.uk