Eastern promise: gender lessons from the Islamic world

The very fact this magazine regularly publishes a Women in Engineering supplement is symptomatic of a problem that stubbornly persists.

Despite the best efforts of many figures both inside and outside the engineering industry, female participation in the sector as a whole remains at embarrassingly low levels in the UK.

A recent report, carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) on behalf of the Royal Academy of Engineering, ranked the UK 58th of 99 for gender parity, behind countries including Brazil and Greece. Statistics from EngineeringUK show that the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers across the whole of Europe, with just 9 per cent. According to UNESCO data from 2013, women make up just 22 per cent of engineering graduates. The statistics are simultaneously unsurprising and depressing, and the underlying issues are familiar.

“The UK has a disproportionately low share of women who study STEM subjects to 18,” Dr Hayaatun Sillem, deputy CEO and director of strategy at RAEng, told The Engineer. “Only around 20 per cent of A-level physics students are girls, for example, a percentage that has not changed significantly over the last 25 years.”