Wednesday 20 May 2015

Are Young Women Natural Hairdressers or Repressed Engineers? - Howard Railton, SATRO Trustee

Both women and men make excellent hairdressers and both women and men make outstanding engineers.  So why, when we imagine an Engineer, do we think of a man?  Both Sciences and Engineering in the UK are struggling to attract people into training and careers in their fields.  This is a critical issue for the UK, with growing numbers of technical jobs either being filled from outside the UK or the jobs themselves moving away.  One obvious reason for this problem is that we are only recruiting from half the potential talent pool. 

The number of girls doing A level Physics has not changed in the last thirty years and remains shamefully low.  The number of young women engaged in technical Apprenticeships is tiny; yet, the overall number of women in other Apprenticeships is higher than men.  The reasons for this are both simple and very complex.  Someone said that all children are Engineers at the age of eight and then we beat it out of them.  We seem to beat it out of the girls even more successfully.


Studying Science and the Natural World leads us to some of the most wonderful, dramatic, satisfying and interesting discoveries.   Stimulating children’s interest in the wonders of our world is intensely rewarding.  Being involved in the application of Science in Engineering and Technology is exciting and satisfying.  So why are we so poor at getting young women into Science and Engineering?  We need to change the way we see the future for girls and young women and offer them a better opportunity to learn and contribute to our future.  The young women in Engineering that I have met are talented, capable and bright.  They are valued for their ability and effort and rewarded accordingly.  Engineering is neither dirty, oil stained nor physically hard work.  In this age of financial austerity, it is well paid.  So let us encourage parents and teachers to be open minded about the future of their children and to positively encourage them to understand and marvel at the wonders of the world around us.  

- Howard Railton, SATRO Trustee

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