More young women are developing careers in engineering, thanks to unions and employers working together to challenge gender stereotyping in apprenticeships.

Unite member Nicola Greaves joined the apprenticeship programme at Jaguar Land Rover three years ago after seeing a poster advertising opportunities near where she lives in Castle Bromwich, close to the world-famous factory.

It was the reputation of the company that attracted her, she says:

A lot of people want to get into Jaguar Land Rover because it’s a good company to work for, their reputation is good and they pay well.

I have a general interest in cars anyway, and with the factory being local to where I live, I jumped at the chance of trying to get a job there."

After researching further online, Nicola applied for the mechatronics technician apprenticeship, a four-year programme that she will finish next year.

During her first year, Nicola spent five days a week studying in college with occasional week-long placements in the factory where she had the chance to shadow a qualified tradesman.

But since she embarked on her second year, Nicola has spent the majority of her time on the shopfloor, where she is being trained on the body construction processes she will be overseeing by the time she completes the programme. 

Nicola said:

Now that I’ve started to be trained on specific tools and machinery, that’s more of an eye-opener about what my role will be."

With Jaguar Land Rover’s female engineers now making up 11 per cent of the total workforce, Nicola says she hasn’t faced any problems as a young woman in a majority male shopfloor environment. 

Nicola added:

We are treated just the same as men and rewarded according to how well we do our job: being a woman doesn’t even come into it and everyone I work with is really supportive."

Nicola has also supported union learning by attending unionlearn’s Voice of the Apprentice event in Warrington and helping to launch unionlearn’s Use-IT online assessment tool in Birmingham last year. 

Unite National Officer for Equalities Siobhan Endean says it’s vital to tackle the unconscious bias among teachers, parents and employers that combines with out-dated perceptions about the industry to deter the women engineers of tomorrow.

Siobhan said:

If we are to get the 87,000 new apprentices that the UK economy needs in engineering every year for the next decade, then we need to tackle the gender stereotyping of apprenticeships. Unite works hard with our members and employers to secure decent pay and good apprenticeships with high-level skills and the prospect of a real job at the end of it.

There is a huge wealth of untapped potential among the nation’s young women, which parents and teachers need to encourage and employers need to harness."

Committed to recruiting more young women like Nicola, Jaguar Land Rover runs a Young Women In The Know scheme that has engaged more than 200 participants since it was launched in 2012, more than 40 of whom have gone on to become apprentices at the company. 

Ninety young women aged 15-18 took part in the latest Young Women in the Know four-day event at five Jaguar Land Rover Education Business Partnership Centres in the Midlands and Merseyside in December 2016. 

They were able to tour design and manufacturing facilities, network with women employees, spend a day on work placement with a female mentor and brush up their employability skills with CV writing and interview practice.

This case study first appeared in “Unionlearn - Unions supporting high-quality Apprenticeships” which can be downloaded from the unionlearn website: https://www.unionlearn.org.uk/publications