Attracting Women to the Male Dominated Manufacturing Industry

Currently, the manufacturing sector is made up of 27% women. This is the lowest number since the 1970s, so how can we even out the playing field in the industry?

Gender gaps are rampant throughout many of the engineering sectors, but in the manufacturing industry, the gap seems almost insurmountable. This gigantic leaning towards male workers isn’t necessarily the fault of discrimination, rather it has a lot more to do with stereotypes of the entire industry. Manufacturing began as an industry filled with manual labor, long hours, and ultimately an industry characterized by assembly line floors. If you were to ask the average person outside of the manufacturing sector to explain the industry, this is likely the image you would get. In fact, a study conducted by Women in Manufacturing (WiM) found that 68% of all women surveyed would not consider manufacturing as a career path, ultimately stemming back to the general stereotype of the industry. Among the external view of the industry, women surveyed also saw it as a male-dominated field where women couldn’t advance. Ultimately, the problem becomes that the manufacturing industry is currently characterized as a “guys only” world that involves long hours and manual labor.

Anyone in the industry now knows that this stereotype is no longer true, and it is rapidly changing. With the increase in additive manufacturing, CAM software and other higher level technological production techniques, the industry has enormous potential for a female workforce. We could delve into why having a diverse gender population in an industry is important to innovation, but that’s not what this post is about. Rather understanding that gender diversity is beneficial to engineering, let’s see how we can break down external stereotypes and attract women to the industry.

There are some key problems we have to address as an industry, and the first is creating an environment welcoming to women. Not that women need it more than men, but the current industry being male dominated doesn’t have any way of formally mentoring and sponsoring the female manufacturer. As an industry, it is important to create an engineering environment to welcome opposing viewpoints and methods. This drive isn’t to sound politically correct, rather it becomes necessary to the continuing innovation of manufacturing.

STEM initiatives are continually being pushed to younger generations, and ultimately this will help the manufacturing sector in the future. For further development, it will become important to present manufacturing as what it is to younger generations: a fast-paced innovation filled engineering industry with a wide variety of options. 

There’s no question that the manufacturing sector is growing, but while this growth is good, a problem is arising. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs are unfilled, and there simply aren’t enough male workers to fill them, according to Forbes. This huge lack of qualified workers means that there is a huge opening in the industry to recruit women. A survey from the Deloitte and Manufacturing institute found that 75% of women view the manufacturing sector as possibly being rewarding and fun. For the most part, women are can be ready to get into the industry, but we need a fundamental shift in the hiring practices of large firms in order to facilitate this growth. The good news on this is that these shifts in recruitment really aren’t that hard to make a reality. With a little nudging of the internal work climate away from a male-centric zone and getting recruiters to broaden their landscape, we could see an equal playing field in only a few years.

In the manufacturing industry, as a direct result of the abundance of men, internal company cultures tend to be male-oriented. Abolishing this culture and bringing in a more innovation-based collective mindset will help increase women’s interest in manufacturing. Fields like additive, computer modeling, simulation, design, can all be great paths for anyone. With a little collective nudging, we can increase innovation and attract women into one of the fastest growing fields across the world.

Sources: Industrial Marketer , Forbes, WomeninMFG

Image Sources: [1], [2]