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Gender Diversity

From space exploration and autonomous vehicles to advancements in healthcare and sustainable energy – engineers are inventing new ways to do things and finding solutions that will make this world a better place.

The opportunities are endless and the industry is always evolving, but there is a huge shortage of engineers – just 12% of those working in engineering occupations are women (source: Engineering UK).

Improving our gender diversity – and indeed our diversity more generally in engineering – has a strong economic motivation. There are so many big, global and small, local challenges that engineers need to crack, with not enough engineers available to do so. It’s proven that organisations with a diverse workforce in the form of different backgrounds, upbringing and sexes are more likely to come up with ideas and innovation that will be relevant to a broader range of society.

As one of the largest engineering institutions, we promote engineering and technology careers to young girls and women, helping them to see that engineering provides an exciting, creative and rewarding career option.

9% is not enough

One of our most successful social media campaigns, #9percentisnotenough launched in 2016 to highlight the fact that (at the time) only 9% of the UK’s engineering and technology workforce were women. We captured the imaginations of engineers and non-engineers, politicians and TV personalities. We even won four industry awards for it!

We even hosted a range of tailored events off the back of this, including a conference and workshop in 2017 by the same name – providing engineering and HR managers the opportunity to debate practical solutions to recruiting and retaining more women in STEM.