An Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) skills report has shown that only seven percent of IT engineers in the UK are female.
Worse than that, that percentage has only risen by two percent over the last five years.
We’re lagging behind Spain (18%), Italy (20%) and Sweden (26%), the survey shows.
Scott Fletcher, chairman and founder of cloud company ANS Group, said: “We need to increase the flow of young talent into tech and engineering industries and attracting more women is an obvious answer. Currently a large proportion of female Stem graduates (science, technical, engineering and mathematics) are choosing careers in other industries.”
And there’s even worse news because a report from the Institute of Physics earlier this showed half of all the co-educational schools in the UK hadn’t entered a single female student to sit A level physics.
“It seems that Britain’s schools have pigeon holed physics as a ‘boys’ subject which is a notion that needs to be eradicated immediately,” he said. “The IT industry is obviously fluid and businesses need to re-invent themselves every few years. There is no sitting back on past glories in our industry and young talent is the essential fuel for that re-invention.”
Fletcher said the ANS Group has formed a “Cloud Academy” providing training for 60 apprentices a year. The firm is based in Manchester.
