Why is it that girls are doing increasingly brilliantly in GCSE science and A-level physics and yet engineering and manufacturing businesses are stubbornly MIMO at management levels - men in at university, men out into jobs? Around one in ten engineering professionals in the UK are women, the lowest proportion across the EU and far behind Bulgaria and Sweden where over a quarter are female. The problem of women in manufacturing and engineering is cultural and political rather than genetic or neurological and we must treat it as such.
Despite recent advances, boys are still five times more likely to take physics on its own and girls to opt for biology. Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, points to the Engineering Barbie effect - i.e. there isn't one - as part of the problem (see: http://tinyurl.com/3ol3ppu). And there is no doubt that there is a deep perception problem that starts in childhood. Work the CIHE has done recently amongst second and third year female undergraduates confirms that women who chose not to study engineering at university in part did not do so because they see it as 'boring and male dominated'.
The role of women in engineering is a national strategic priority. If the economy is to re-balance, it must be loaded with high-calibre people who make and service complex stuff like computers, aircraft, cars, heart monitors, networks and everything else that makes the world go around. The issue of women being part of this cadre is not one of diversity it's one of necessity. It's not a question of opening up quotas, it's an issue of reaching out to some of the brightest people in our education system and telling them that manufacturing jobs are exciting, challenging, nurturing and well-paid.
These latter two facets in particular shift the perception needle and help solve the engineering Barbie effect. Our surveys strongly suggest that if strong female role models can get to girls early enough to explain that jobs exist that nurture the planet, save lives, and make society a better place, they are more able to connect it to the problem-solving sciences that achieve these breakthroughs. It's not so much a world of wonder, as a wonderful world. And if you can earn £80k a year in the process, then sign me up, sister.
We should celebrate talented girls forging ahead in GCSEs, but we need to focus on coherent policies and incentives to pull them through into industry. The UK needs them.