International Women's Day 2022

I'm a journalist who has been working within the technology/engineering/manufacturing sector for around seven years and during my career, I feel this statistic ...

Sarah Black-Smith, Head of Factory Operations at Siemens Congleton explained: “We are really keen to encourage more women and people from minority groups to join the manufacturing sector. I recently spoke to a first-year apprentice with Make UK working for Seco Tools as part of National Apprenticeship Week in February. Aisha Mustafa is breaking gender stereotypes and helping to inspire the next generation of engineers, offering some advice to her fellow peers, she said: “Engineering and manufacturing are very male dominated sectors, but I don’t think that should be something to put women off. We really want to up this, but it has been a challenge in terms of encouraging more females that this is a good career path. Ward also shared her top pieces of advice for young women looking to enter the manufacturing sector: “If you get told ‘no’ – do not let it defeat you; be determined that this is what you want to do. One of the things I often see in young women is that they can often go quiet, particularly when they are outnumbered by male colleagues. There is the obvious misconception that it’s a dirty, oily rag kind of craft but it truly isn’t. There’s a huge bias towards what people think being in manufacturing looks like and this really needs to change for our future generation.” Joe Bush, Editor of The Manufacturer said: “The fact is that there aren’t enough young women entering a sector that is in dire need of talented young individuals – for me therefore, the answer is simple; encourage more young women into manufacturing and you will not only see greater gender diversity and parity, you will also see that skills gap begin to close. We need to show that there are plenty of women in the sector who can be role models, but we currently do not have enough. We need that of course, but what we’re not seeing are people focusing on the R&D side of manufacturing where it might be more technology- and software-based. We need to show young women what a career in manufacturing actually entails; it’s not just wearing a hard hat and muddy boots, it’s so much more than that. Young people equipped with the right skills will enable the sector to thrive, and as we all know, the more diverse a company is, the more successful it tends to be. “The manufacturing sector also needs to be presenting images of the sector that are genuinely diverse.