Workforce data – May 2025
The latest statistics for women in STEM roles are promising with increased representation in most areas. As of December 2024, women make up 27.6% of the core STEM workforce which represents over 1.4 million women across the UK – an all-time high!
Whilst it’s positive to see the numbers rising, the increase is slow, and we still see vast underrepresentation of women in many areas..
Let’s dig a little deeper into specific areas to better understand how women are represented across different roles.
SET (science, engineering and technology) managers
The proportion of female SET managers now stands at 20% (its highest since June 2022). This is largely driven by increased representation in ‘Research and development managers’, at 49%. Managers and directors within manufacturing, construction and IT have significantly lower representation, at 16%, 12% and 19% respectively.
Science professionals
The proportion of women science professionals remains stable at 47.5%, the highest across the STEM fields. Over the past 17 years this has consistently been between 40 and 50% . There are now over 85,000 women science professionals.
Science and engineering technicians
Women in science and engineering technician roles currently represent 26% of these roles. However, the average masks stark disparities between disciplines.
In science women make up 51% of all laboratory technicians – showing a slight over-representation. In contrast, engineering technicians and electrical and electronics technician roles are overwhelmingly male dominated with women representing just 6% and 10% respectively. 33% of quality assurance technicians are women, with building and civil engineering technicians at 28%.
These figures reveal that while some areas are making progress, others are significantly lagging behind, impacting the overall average.
Engineering professionals
The percentage of has dropped once again and currently sits at 10.6%. Similarly to science and engineering technicians there are variances between the different engineering disciplines. For example, women represent 18% of engineering project managers and project engineers and 16% of aerospace engineers and only 3% of both electrical engineers and electronics engineers. Across the board, representation is much too low, highlighting that significant change needs to be made to ensure engineering is a sustainable and appealing profession for women.
IT professionals
The proportion of women IT professionals has increased slightly to 20.2% with a rWithin the category of IT professionals, the grouping with the highest proportion of women is IT project managers (34.9%) and the lowest IT network professionals (4.9%).
IT technicians
The proportion of women IT technicians currently sits at 25%, up from 23.4% in December 2023. Database administrators and web content technicians have the highest proportion of women at 38.6%, with computer system and equipment installers and servicers the lowest, at just 2.9%.
Conclusion
It is clear through the 2024 workforce data that there are stark contrasts within specific categories, highlighting that whilst some areas are thriving there is still a lot of work to do to ensure women are more equally, represented across the entire STEM sector.
It’s positive to see an upward trend in several areas but we should remain cautious, these increases are slight in some instances, and still way off gender parity in STEM.
Workforce
Note: the overall workforce is currently 47.8% female.
Data sources
All data is as of May 2025. This analysis has been produced based on government figures from the Annual Population Survey (APS), which is released quarterly. May 2025 data was released in July 2025.
Core STEM includes science, engineering, and information and communications technology. Health occupations and skilled trades are not included within the scope of core STEM. View the SOC codes for each defined category above.