Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to promote the transport sector as a career to young women.

Improving gender balance in the sector is vital if we are to address skills challenges and support businesses to benefit from building a broader pool of talent. Building skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths is a fundamental part of this, as many jobs in the sector require these skills.

The Department for Transport is leading efforts to promote the exciting training and career opportunities in the transport sector to under-represented groups. These include:

• The Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy 2016 set stretching ambitions for apprentice starts and increasing diversity within the sector including for women to represent 20% of technology and engineering apprenticeship starts. The most recent Annual Report ‘Three Years of Progress’ published on 11th July 2019 set out that:

• 15.4% of technical and engineering roles are female, making good progress to STAT’s ambition of 20% and up from 3% in 2015.

• We are seeing a higher proportion of women at higher levels of training. 27% of all degree level apprenticeship starts were female in 2018/19.

• 23.6% of women undertake apprenticeships in the sector.

• An aviation programme ‘Reach for the Sky’ launched in October 2019, with the aim of making the aviation industry diverse, inclusive and accessible to all, with a focus on encouraging the next generation into the sector. The Department has appointed eleven ‘Aviation Ambassadors’, a group of outstanding aviation industry role models, who will work to inspire the next generation to take up aviation careers, champion diversity and social mobility within the industry, and develop initiatives to tackle barriers to aviation careers.

• The maritime sector has improved gender balance through the creation of a Women in Maritime Taskforce, committing maritime companies to act upon a Pledge and Charter.

• In 2017, DfT’s Rail Strategic Vision set out a commitment to use franchise competitions to support a range of measures to improve diversity of the workforce including how the franchisee will attract young people into rail and address underrepresentation of women across all levels and grades. The Rail Sector Deal set out plans to improve the diversity of the sector.

• The Department for Transport led a cross-government campaign to promote engineering to young people, including under-represented groups, through 2018’s successful Year of Engineering campaign. The Department now works in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Department for Education (DfE) to support the Engineering: Take a Closer Look legacy campaign, aimed at 13-16 year olds. This includes promoting engineering in transport, working with schools and the Girl Guides through design challenges and production of a booklet acknowledging aspirational female engineers from the transport sector.

• The Department’s Ministerial team and Permanent Secretary hosted a Women in Transport event to bring senior leaders from across industry together to tackle gender diversity issues on Monday 2^nd March and drive a co-ordinated sector response to International Women’s Day on 8^th March 2020.