What’s driving the latest push on women in science and engineering? A desire to open up science, or fuel the extractive industries?
There are so few women trying for jobs in the mining and engineering industries that the UK is being put at a competitive disadvantage compared with other countries. So warned BBC Radio Fours Today in Parliament last night.
They quoted Lib Dem business minister, Jenny Willott: We have far too few women going into STEM subjects, and we need to be accessing the whole of the population." Ive heard this line before, from Vince Cable, when I was part of a small group invited to talk to him about women in engineering last winter. He similarly tied it to the extractive industries (oil and gas) which I thought was a bit odd. I’m not sure why UK policy especially on women in STEM should be designed around the needs of one very particular, and controversial, industry. Dig back a bit further, and we can see it in an interview that the chairman of Shell UK gave to the Telegraph in March 2013: If you want more engineers, then not accessing half the population feels like a really bad idea.