How to Bridge UK's Gender Gap in IT - Building Gender Balanced Business

• A National Skills Forum report on women, skills and productivity urges government, employers, broadcasters and educationalists to support initiatives aimed at removing barriers to better IT training for women.

• Such barriers are especially high for those with children wanting to return to work and women in their forties or older who have missed out on training opportunities in the past.

• In the UK, just over a third (36.8%) of science, engineering and technology undergraduates and around 1 in 40 of engineering apprentices are women. This even as the National Skills Forum declares there to be critical shortage of skilled workers in science, engineering and IT.

• There are at least 27 ways to attract women to these sectors, according to the NSF, including:
1. “More needs to be done to challenge young women’s perceptions about traditionally ‘male’ sectors like IT.”
2. The “long-hours” culture must stop penalising those who have commitments to provide care for families and others outside of work, primarily through flexible work schedules.
3. Extend recent extensions to maternity leave to fathers so that women are less likely to take more time out from work than men — and then offering men nontransferrable time off to persuade them to use paternity leave instead of having their partners stop working.
4. Provide childcare for parents of young children so they can learn IT skills for a re-entry into the work force.
5. Besides ongoing plans to expand apprenticeship programmes, such efforts must be gender-blind and allow for part-time scheduling.
6. Reverse recent cutbacks and reinvesting in adult and community learning (ACL) schemes. Over three-quarters of ACL subscribers are women.
7. Broadcasters should include positive portrayals of women in science, engineering and technology in their programming.

A summary of the 57-page report and a link to download it