JIVE - Creating Change for Women & Girls in Science, Engineering, Construction and Technology

Pod Cast Transcripts

Project Purpose
“We set this project up because there are many, many more men working in Science, Engineering, Construction and Technology than there are women. We wanted to look at the reasons why this exists, why aren't there many women working in these sectors? Once we find out why, what can we do about it? What actions can we deliver to try and effect cultural change, to change the segregation that’s happening?”

Cultural Change
“To try and get more women into Science, Engineering, Construction and Technology means effecting cultural change and the way we do that is to adopt a holistic approach; that in order to solve this problem we’ve got to work with lots of different agencies, it’s not just one person’s or one sector’s responsibility. So we work with key influencers throughout the life cycle - that’s how we would describe it - the career life cycle of a woman.”

Cultural Analysis Tool
“One of the main areas, of course, is looking at working with employers, because in order for women to stay in the industries and work in the industries we need to look at what’s happening with employers. One of the things we’ve developed is the Cultural Analysis Tool, where we go in to an employer and we look at the culture that’s in their organisation. We ask them questions like, have you got women working here? If you have got women working here, where are they working? Where are they in the workplace and what is their experience of the workplace? Once we’ve managed to find the answers to that, we go back to the employer and together with them, we look at home we can start trying to address some of those issues.”

Sustainability
“Sustaining the work of the Development Partnership has always been crucial because obviously the Equal funding programme is running out at the end of 2007, and what we’ve always tried to do is build key partnerships within the regions and also nationally. So our delivery structure is that we have partners in the South East, in the North West and in Yorkshire and Humberside where we are based but also in Scotland and Wales, and one of the key things they’ve had to do is develop sustainable partnerships. So they’ll be working with people like the Regional Development Agencies, they’ll be working with the work based learning providers, getting employers engaged and committed to the changes, and effecting the cultural change we want to bring about. We talk to them and give them programmes and show them how to deliver and run their own programmes so that post 2007 they can be doing it for themselves.”

Employer Progress
“I think the employers in our sector are changing the way they recruit, they haven’t always accepted the fact that there is a need to have a diverse workforce and so they haven’t really considered the need to have women in the workforce. They’re now realising the benefits of that and so through the work of JIVE they’ve started to evaluate their practices and we are now seeing that some employers are recruiting more and more women.”

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