Women are under-represented in many STEM areas, but within the engineering sector the gender imbalance is particularly stark. Just 9% of the current engineering workforce is female, contributing to wider gender pay inequalities and posing significant challenges to the supply of skills into the economy.

Successfully tackling this imbalance will require the efforts of a wide range of stakeholders, including government, employers and education providers; and the effective use of all available levers. One such lever is the apprenticeship programme, where the government has made a commitment to achieve 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020.

In order to help better understand and tackle gender stereotypes in STEM apprenticeships, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation commissioned Learning and Work Institute to conduct an analysis of the government’s (SFA) Find an Apprenticeship dataset.