WISE in the News

Today, the campaign group Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) is celebrating the fact that for the first time ever there are more than 1 million women working in science and engineering roles in the UK.

The number of women in engineering has almost doubled in the last decade – from just over 25,000 to more than 50,000 ­– the campaign group said, as it marked #1ofTheMillion Day today (10 June). Thanks to an increase of more than 350,000 women in core Stem roles in the last 10 years, women now reportedly make up 24% of the core workforce.

The UK’s minister for women and equalities has downplayed concerns that female NHS staff are being placed at increased risk during the coronavirus crisis because protective gear has been designed for men...

Diversity refers to demographic differences of a group – such as age, disability, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. Inclusion is often defined as the extent to which everyone at work feels valued, supported and accepted, regardless of their background...

Research published today by the Royal Academy of Engineering indicates that the gender pay gap is smaller in the engineering profession than the UK employee average. The mean (10.8%) and median (11.4%) pay gap for engineers in the sample analysed is around two thirds the national average...

Britain’s technology industry is booming. Its tech firms attracted more than £6bn of venture capital funding in 2018, according to Tech Nation, more than any other European country...

Male scientists are more likely than female ones to publish work that describes itself as “excellent”, “unique” or “novel”, experts have found – a swagger that appears to reap dividends in respect of how often others reference the research...

Women make up only 16% of IT professionals, a trend that has remained the same for 10 years in a row, according to WISE, the campaign for gender balance in science and engineering...

Currently, women hold just over 24% of these roles. WISE’s analysis shows that the number of women in technology roles is a particular cause for concern with women representing just 16% of IT professionals; a figure that has remained almost static for ten years...

It has highlighted the issue as it made a called for employers, professional bodies and educators to set a target of achieving 30% of women in core STEM roles, compared with the current rate of 24%...

At the WISE 2019 awards ceremony, Norris-Grey said while science and engineering have “sped past” WISE’s goal to have one million women in science and engineering by 2020, the tech sector still leaves a lot to be desired...

WISE, the campaign for greater gender balance in STEM, says women are shaping our future with their technological, scientific and engineering discoveries and inventions. However, the organisation highlights that more needs to be done to ensure that more women do not miss out on these opportunities.

WISE Board Member and Borrow my doggy CEO Rikke Rosenlund talks about WISE resources My Skills My Life and Ten Steps.

It's easy to list some of the many everyday items invented and patented by women - the dishwasher, windscreen wipers, the board game Monopoly, to name but a few - but the world is still failing to take full advantage of women's innovative ideas, a report suggests.

Congratulations to all the inspiring women in tech who made the top 50 list. Including WISE CEO Helen, Chair of the WISE Board Trudy Norris Grey, WISE Ambassadors Jacky Wright, Sarah Wilkinson, Anne Boden and Hayaatun Sillem. Special mention to WISE Award winner Debbie Forster who topped the list and Devon from the WISE Young Professional Board who was chosen as a rising star. You are all amazing!

For the talent round of this year's Miss Virginia competition, most of the young female contestants chose to dance or sing.

But not biochemistry graduate Camille Schrier.

Instead of strutting her stuff, the 24 year-old performed a live experiment on stage - and was crowned the winner...

Bloomberg’s Marie Mawad sits down with Salesforce Architect, Ethical AI Practice, Kathy Baxter; WISE Membership Director, Dimitra Christakou; and McKinsey & Company, UK and Ireland, Managing Partner, Vivian Hunt to discuss driving diverse representation in tech companies as well as the impact of technology’s disruption on jobs on gender diversity. (Source: Bloomberg)

At the end of last year, we announced that there were 900,000 women working in core science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles; this is a great achievement and brings us ever closer to our target of 1M women working in these roles by 2020...

In research from WISE and The Lord Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Ruskin University, that was commissioned by Amazon, they found that 90 percent of female innovators experienced significant barriers in the career due to their gender.

The look of disbelief when Hayaatun Sillem tells people she is a chief executive in the engineering sector is all too familiar. “Some people are better at rearranging their faces than others, but the fact that can be frustrating at times,” she says...

Women now outnumber men at undergraduate level in medicine and the biological sciences. But in the physical sciences, the pattern is different: according to Ucas, only 23% of students starting physics degrees in 2016 were women, while for engineering, the figure was 17%....

The news was announced at the WISE 2018 Awards on November 15 by HRH Princess Anne, the campaign’s patron, who said that the goal was achievable as long as employers endeavoured to recruit at least half of the estimated 200,000 girls currently studying STEM subjects.

The annual WISE awards, now in its seventh year, showcases exceptional women from the science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) sectors to celebrate diversity in these industries and create visible and accessible role models.

Working with the WISE Campaign’s People Like Me initiative, the Agency has helped produce a resource pack for schools to boost the recruitment of girls into STEM subjects post-16, particularly those that girls typically do not choose, such as physics and engineering...

Across the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) industries, it’s well known that more needs to be done to encourage girls to study these subjects at school and beyond....

The school in Aveley teamed up with Women in Science and Engineering (Wise), a social enterprise which campaigns for better gender balance in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths sectors, to deliver a workshop for Year 9 and 10 female students to discuss qualifications and career routes.

This is compared to a global average of 30%. Encouragingly though, the research also found a 9% increase in the number of patents filed by women by publicly listed companies. This was 30% in 2016 and 21% in 2012. This figure has increased 500% since 1975.

Out of all the patents registered in the UK, fewer than 10% have women working on the teams involved in these patents, according to research by Wise, a campaign for gender balance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem).

The 2018 conference for Wise, a campaign for gender balance in technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem), highlighted some of the key failings of the Stem industries when it comes to gender imbalance and emphasised the need to call these issues out when they are apparent.

Forty years ago, before I embarked on my career in science, I sat in a chemistry lesson at secondary school and listened to my male teacher telling the class that women were good for only two things: cooking and breeding.

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, Aciel Eshky didn’t get the memo that science was for boys. When she was around ten years old, her aunt started to teach her basic computer programming. From there, going on to a degree in computer science seemed like a natural fit. So when a classmate in her master’s program abroad told her that women were weaker than men at math, it came as a shock. “I was really annoyed,” Eshky says. “I felt like I was being bullied.”

WOMEN working in science and engineering earn a fifth less than their male colleagues in the UK. And the gender pay gap increases with age and experience. That’s the disturbing finding revealed by the 2017 salary survey carried out by New Scientist and science recruitment specialists SRG.

In 2017, illustrator Adam Hargreaves brought the Mr Men and Little Miss series bang up to date with the creation of Little Miss Inventor. Not a moment too soon. Adam brought his father’s books tearing into the 21st Century with a bold new character ready to challenge the gender stereotypes of the workplace, complete with pencils and a spanner in her hair.