Cable bemoans low number of women engineers

Mr Cable told a business audience that fewer than one in 10 engineers in the UK is female, compared with more than half the workforce in medicine.

The proportion of women engineers in the UK is lower than anywhere else in the European Union and compares with 25 per cent in Sweden, 19 per cent in Italy and 15 per cent in Germany.

Mr Cable told the annual dinner of the EEF manufacturers’ organisation that bright young women could benefit from pursuing careers in the engineering sector.

The main problems include youngsters leaving school without the necessary qualifications, “fragmented” messages to young people about engineering, and a culture that women are not suitable for the sector, he said. “Engineering sits at the heart of our plan for rebalancing the economy, so I am working across government and with industry to ensure the next decade is the decade of the engineer.

“In medicine, women represent more than half the workforce. Yet currently fewer than one in 10 professional engineers in UK are women – that is totally unacceptable. There is no reason why engineering should not aim for a comparable breakthrough.”

Women make up fewer than one in 20 apprentice engineers. Research shows that less than a third of 17 to 19-year-old girls think engineering is a desirable career.