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Career Development (Women)

Answer

[holding answer 23 January 2006]: The concentration of women in particular job sectors is one of the main causes of the gender pay gap, and we recognise the importance of working with business organisations to address this issue.Government are working with key partners on various initiatives to encourage schoolgirls to consider careers in sectors that are traditionally seen as male. The Manufacturing Forum is just one of the initiatives the Government are involved in. This is a partnership between Government, industry and stakeholders. The Forum highlighted the Image of Manufacturing as a priority area for action and set up a Image Subgroup which brought together key organisations already active in promoting science, engineering and technology to girls and women, in order to focus on how they can work together to improve the perception of manufacturing among girls and women to improve gender equality in occupations where women are currently under-represented.Computer Club for Girls (CC4G) is another successful initiative aimed at getting more young girls involved in IT. DTI, DfES and South East England Development Agency supported e-Skills UK with the original pilot projects. The DfES funded national roll-out of this programme was launched in June 2005. Initial research on the benefits of CC4G has indicated that 66 per cent. of the participants are now considering future IT careers.We acknowledge that there is still more work to do, and I look forward to the Women and Work Commission's findings and recommendations in their final report in the coming weeks, as they have looked at the occupational segregation as part of the gender pay gap.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

43390; 441 c1997-8W

Session

2005-06

Subjects

Children Career development Women Employment Vocational guidance Young people Pay differentials

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk