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The UK is on target to employ 1M women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) roles by 2020, according to new research from WISE, the UK STEM gender equality campaign group.
The news was announced at the WISE 2018 Awards on November 15 by HRH Princess Anne, the campaign’s patron, who said that the goal was achievable as long as employers endeavoured to recruit at least half of the estimated 200,000 girls currently studying STEM subjects.
Considering that between 2017 and 2018 the number of female STEM employees rose from 864,000 to 908,000, this certainly looks achievable. WISE’s CEO, Helen Wollaston, echoed Princess Anne’s call to action, encouraging employers to “follow the great example” set by the WISE award winners, who “have managed to get more women into engineering and technology, removed barriers preventing women moving up through the ranks and seen the benefits of doing so in terms of improved business performance.”
As it stands, only 24% of UK STEM roles are held by women and the country has the lowest percentage of female engineers in Europe – something that none governmental organisations such as WISE and the government’s Industrial Strategy are working to tackle.
This push goes beyond the need for simple gender parity. It is not just a case of making the STEM workforce fair – we need more women in STEM roles to make scientific innovations useful and, more importantly, safe . After all, how relevant can innovations really be if they do not even take into consideration the needs of half the population?
HuffPost used the example of the seat belt to exemplify this point. When it was first invented, it was modelled solely on the physical attributes of men so when it was first introduced as a safety measure in cars, several women and children died because their physicality had not been considered.
More recently, Fitbit came under fire for limiting its period tracker to 10 days. Though basic science has taught us that, in the average menstrual cycle, a period lasts no longer than a week, if the innovators behind this feature had consulted more women they would have realised that, in reality, this isn’t necessarily accurate.
Without more women being present when these decisions are made (and a diverse range of women at that) STEM innovations, progressions and discoveries can only go so far.
Besides this, enabling women to flourish in the UK work force is worth a lot financially. According to research undertaken by the McKinsey Global Institute, gender parity in the workplace could add up to $28 trillion (or 26%) to the annual global GDP by 2525 .
The ripple effect of encouraging women into STEM reach far and wide. As Wollaston reflected at the WISE 2018 Awards, “science and engineering and tech are fundamental to the future of the planet, we need women to take their rightful place in creating that new future.”
