No muck and bullets

‘Quality and equality’ were the recurring themes during the launch of Thinking about an apprenticeship, Unite’s guide for young women considering a career in engineering and science.

The booklet sparked a debate around gender, jobs and education when it was unveiled this week (March 10) at Solihull College. Currently just seven per cent of apprentices in Britain are female, and just three per cent are on the road to becoming engineers.

Meg Stanley, a planning and control apprentice with Rolls-Royce in Derby, is one of that number. Talking about the discrimination still found in some quarters towards vocational training she said, “when I was leaving school and doing my A-levels, I was all set to go to university.

“I spoke to my school about going to do an apprenticeship and it was very much ‘oh well you are too clever to do that’.

“However once I explained that it was with Rolls-Royce their opinion changed and going back to see them since they are very much encouraging students into apprenticeships now.”

Stanley goes further, praising attitudes towards gender at the company: “I’ve never had any problem being a female in a male dominated environment” she says, “in fact I feel it is something that is celebrated within Rolls-Royce.

“I think it is a really good idea trying to get more women into engineering. Me and all the other women at Rolls Royce are very, very good at their jobs and highly capable.”

Redress balance

Gerard Coyne, Unite regional secretary in the West Midlands, thinks apprenticeships are “not necessarily a career path that young women are thinking about”, but says the balance must be redressed.

“Something is not right at the moment in the way apprenticeships are being approached. A lot of this relates to traditional stereotypes of what engineering is about.

“Certainly there’s no doubt that in terms of the teaching profession, very often their encouragement for young women is into the more traditional careers rather than seriously thinking about jobs in a manufacturing or engineering company.

“Modern engineering does not look anything like what people’s images of manufacturing and engineering is about” he says. “We need to show that it’s no longer muck and bullets in engineering, it’s a modern process with a broad range of skills required.”

The UK needs another 87,000 new apprentices every single year for the next decade to meet the global challenges of the future and Zoe Mayou, regional officer with Unite, thinks women will play a major role in meeting that challenge.

“I think the perception is changing” she says. “I think the generation of women we have got now, and men, are much more open and aware of equality balance.”

That’s a point reflected generally among the dozen or so young women apprentices at the launch who have taken time out to chat to Labour MP, Gloria De Piero, as part of the pink bus Women to Women tour which is criss-crossing the country.

Right move

They all feel they have every right to an apprenticeship – no matter the field. Poppy Wolfarth, from Liverpool, believes choosing not to go straight to university has “definitely” been the right move for her. She says her Advice and Guidance apprenticeship “has been a great stepping stone for my career.”

Happily no-one among the group disagrees with that view, though Betty Christie from Nottingham – an apprentice at the supermarket Aldi – sounds a warning note.

“I think people should choose carefully,” she says. “As far as I can see it’s not easy to spot the good from the bad and you can easily fall into that trap of doing a bad apprenticeship.”

That chimes with much of what both Unite officers and De Piero have been saying. The MP is explicit on the subject, saying, “they have to be good quality apprenticeships. There should be a job at the end of it, you should be doing day release at college, you should get that qualification.”

She also made it clear her party is serious about the vocational route into work. “Quality apprenticeships are vital and Labour say as many people should have those quality apprenticeships as go to university.”

As the pink bus is waved off to its next stop a strong sense remains that the gathering has not been about mutual backslapping but rather the future of the British workplace.

Little wonder, for the plain fact is our economy cannot afford to exclude women from engineering, science and apprenticeships in general.