Exploring the Gender Gap in Engineering and How to Close It

The gender gap in engineering is the persistent underrepresentation of women across engineering and technology roles, in both the number of women employed and the seniority of the positions they hold. In the UK, women make up just "16.9% of the engineering and technology workforce", compared with 56% of workers in all other occupations. The gap is real, it is measurable, and it is one that employers have more power to close than the numbers might suggest.

This article looks at where the gap sits today, why women leave, what the pay picture looks like and the practical steps that help build more diverse engineering teams.

Progress has been slow and, in the 2025 data, it has stalled. EngineeringUK reported that the number of women in the engineering and technology workforce in 2010 was 10%, and has only increased to 16.9% in 2025, far behind the pace the sector needs. There are roughly "6.4 million people working in engineering and technology roles in the UK, about 19.3% of the total workforce", so the shortfall in women represents a large pool of talent the profession is not yet reaching.

The contrast with the rest of the economy is stark. While women hold under 17% of engineering roles, they make up "56% of workers in all other occupations". Engineering is not short of women in the wider labour market, it is short of women choosing it, and staying in it.

Representation by career stage

The gap is not evenly spread across a career. Younger age groups are the brighter spot: in 2023 more women entered engineering and technology in the 16 to 34 age bands, a sign that early recruitment is working better than it used to. The problem shows up later. EngineeringUK's analysis found the overall proportion of women dipped year on year, and the "decline was concentrated among women aged 35 to 44, a fall of 29,000 women in that group alone."

Registration data tells the same story from another angle. The Engineering Council reports that the "average age at which women leave its professional register is 43, compared with 60 for men". Women are leaving the profession almost two decades earlier than their male peers, a pattern that employers should know and understand.

The gender gap in engineering can be linked to two different sources, the first is centred around school and education, the second is in the office, usually when women get to mid-career. On the education side, perception hardens early. EngineeringUK's Science Education Tracker found that "just 16% of girls think engineering is suitable for them, compared with 44% of boys". That belief gap forms before secondary school and shapes subject choices later. Girls often outperform boys in relevant STEM subjects, yet fewer continue with them: "women make up only 20% of engineering apprenticeship starts and around 18 to 19% of engineering degree entrants". The early pipeline is widening, but slowly.

The second force is the one this article puts front and centre, because it is the one employers can move fastest on. EngineeringUK found no similar pattern of women exiting other sectors like they do in engineering, which points the finger at engineering workplaces themselves: culture, progression, flexibility and the daily experience of the job. Reframed that way, the gap stops being someone else's problem to fix in schools and becomes a challenge employers can act on now.

The gender pay gap in engineering

Pay is part of the retention story. In the civil engineering sector, the "median gender pay gap stood at 11.6% in 2025, meaning women in engineering roles earned on average 11.6% less than men", according to analysis by Integro reported in New Civil Engineer. Progress has been slow, with the gap only narrowing by around 1.1 percentage points in a decade, a pace at which it would take more than a century to close.

The Royal Academy of Engineering's "Closing the engineering gender pay gap report, which analysed pay data for nearly 42,000 UK engineers, found the gap widens at more senior career levels", as fewer women reach the senior technical and leadership roles where salaries climb. When progression stalls and pay follows, the case for staying weakens, particularly in the mid-career years when many professionals are also managing caring responsibilities. Employers who want to keep experienced women need to look hard at how pay and promotion decisions are made, not only at how many women they hire.

Why women leave the profession

The reasons are consistent across the research: limited flexibility, thin progression routes back after career breaks, workplace cultures that still feel male-dominated, and a shortage of senior role models. The AtkinsRéalis Career Deflection work brought national attention to the finding that women were leaving engineering at around twice the rate of men, and prompted practical change: flexible bank holidays, enhanced parental leave and targeted development for women at every level.

The organisations doing this well treat gender diversity in engineering as a workforce strategy, not a campaign. That means acting across three fronts at once: attract, retain and progress. Here is where to focus.

• Design roles for the whole career. Flexible working, strong parental leave and clear return-to-work routes keep experienced women in the profession through the years the data shows them leaving.
• Fix progression, not just recruitment. Track how women move through technical and leadership roles, and remove the bottlenecks that stall them before they reach senior pay.
• Make pay decisions transparent. Review pay and promotion criteria for bias, and act on what the review finds.
• Build visible role models. Women who can see senior women in the business are more likely to picture a long career there.
• Partner with the specialists. Organisations such as WISE, the Women's Engineering Society and EngineeringUK help employers turn commitment into practice.

Structured frameworks make this easier to sustain. Many UK engineering firms have signed up to the WISE Campaign's Ten Steps, a practical framework that helps organisations improve conditions for women in science, technology and engineering, retain and develop female talent, and apply the same discipline to recruitment, retention and career development. Events like International Women in Engineering Day, held each June and started by the Women's Engineering Society, keep the issue visible and give employers a moment to show their commitment is real.

Turning commitment into capability

Closing the gap takes more than good intentions; it takes the right expertise applied in the right places. This is where Vertage helps. By bringing expert talent and AI together in one engine, Vertage helps engineering employers find, attract and retain the specialist people they need, and build workforce strategies where each hire and each retention win strengthens the next. Through Professional Services and Specialist Recruitment and Direct Fill, Vertage connects organisations to the engineering expertise that closes today's gap while building the more diverse, resilient teams tomorrow's projects will demand.

Building a more diverse engineering team is a workforce challenge you can act on now. Talk to Vertage about the specialist talent and workforce strategy that help you attract, retain and progress the people who will move your projects forward.