Is The Industry Doing Enough To Encourage Women?
Although there are more women entering the trades than ever before, it has been brought to attention that, more needs to be done in order to give these women the help and encouragement they need to succeed within these male-dominated environments.
There has been a great period of change in the heating industry due to the government proposing new policies and the development of new technologies such as renewables. This period of change is bringing with it a requirement to build upon its work force by adding new and additional skills. The opportunity now is greater than ever before for women to be trained across a wide variety of roles within the industry.
Preventing gender divides in the industry
Although much evidence indicates a high improvement in women entering the industry now, many critics have argued that there are still gender divides in play which is preventing women from catching up with men’s pay. According to The Women and Work Commission (WWC), the gender pay gap has actually widened to 22.6% from 21.9% in 2007.
One way of tackling this problem is to encourage women to get into adult apprenticeships. The government has taken a massive step forward in spending over 1 billion on apprenticeships and the reaction to this development has been positive.
However, although the government has been working hard in developing strategies in order to get more women into the industry, some organizations claim that there is still a long way to go and not enough is being done. For example the WWC are still sceptical about the level of progress made and state that there is still a gender divide in the work place.
Employers taking a leap forward
Many employers have responded to the situation by taking some positive steps forward in preventing this discrimination. For example, Construction Skills ran a national advertising campaign to promote the construction industry as a attractive and lucrative career option for women.
British Gas have also taken the initiative by trebling the number of women starting an apprenticeship in order to redress the balance.
Are women themselves not that interested?
Quite a few of the UK construction and engineering companies argue that despite plans put forward to encourage more women to get into the industry, the job applications from women themselves are quite low. This comes after it was found that although 80% of women have stated that they would be interested in considering a non-traditional career path, the applications coming in are still relatively low.
It has been argued that many of these gender stereotypes come from schools where enough is not being done to promote non-traditional careers for girls. There are some organisations that are set up for the purpose of encouraging these women to enter non-traditional career paths. For instance, the Women in Science & Construction (WISE) is set up to encourage young girls up to the age of 19 to pursue careers in science, engineering and construction.
Tal Potishman, editor of Heating Central, writes articles about combi boiler, central heating, plumber Maidstone, underfloor heating and solar thermal. He specializes in helping save money by advising on efficient heating.
