More young women forge careers in engineering

The stereotype of manufacturing as a male preserve is breaking down rapidly with increasing numbers of young women aiming for a career in industry, according to data from a trade body.

Perceptions of the sector being low-paid and male-dominated have shifted markedly in recent years, Make UK said in its report.

Almost half of parents consider manufacturing to be a well-paid career and more than a third were happy for their daughter to go into industry, compared with just 14 per cent five years ago.

A number of firms said they had seen a big increase in girls joining as apprentices.

Warren Page from Xtrac, a Berkshire-based firm that specialises in making high-end gearboxes for race cars, said the company had seen a spike in female apprenticeship applicants since the end of the Covid pandemic.

‘This year, 40 per cent of our apprenticeship starts are female,’ he said.

In Worcester, engineering group C Brandauer & Co noted that in the last couple of years it had gone from having no female apprentices to having two for every five men.

‘Young women have started to see engineering as a career that inspires them,’ said chief executive Rowan Crozier.

‘For a long time the industry has been working hard at debunking the misconceptions that it is a male-dominated, dirty, and unsafe one,’ said Tony Hague, boss of West Midlands-based engineering firm PP Control & Automation, adding that half his company’s workforce is now female.