Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what recent estimate the Government has made of the proportion of women in work who are employed in the STEM sector.

It is difficult to give an accurate assessment of the proportion of women who are employed in the STEM sector as not all roles in the sector are STEM occupations. However, we want to ensure that women and girls can make informed choices about their career, including enabling more to work in STEM.

To enable more people into STEM sectors, the Government has introduced free courses through the National Skills Fund to enable adults to upskill and retrain.

In order to improve representation, we are encouraging more girls to take STEM subjects at school, college and university by rolling out several programmes and committing substantial funding to support STEM uptake.

In addition, we are improving careers advice in schools on routes into STEM careers, as well as sector specific action such as supporting the Tomorrow’s Engineers Code, managed by EngineeringUK.

Education and especially STEM is one of the key areas that the independent Gender Equality Advisory Council is looking at as part of our G7 Presidency and continues to be a key area for Government.