Sue FernsOlder women who work in science and engineering (STEM) will not need telling that there is an enduring problem of gender segregation. Women make up around one half of the workforce overall but only 12% of all STEM employees, less than 7% of engineering professionals and 1% of skilled tradespeople. The ‘leaky pipeline’ means that a higher proportion of women than men either never use their STEM qualification or leave to work in other areas.
Prospect has around 14,000 female members working in STEM and, over the last couple of years, we’ve been investigating their experiences. A programme of qualitative research in 2011 was followed up by a large scale survey last year, to which 2,000 women replied.
