Summary
The imperative
Science, engineering and technology are vital to Scotland’s future. They catalyse its development as a modern economy, support public policies for health, wellbeing and environmental sustainability, and contribute greatly to its intellectual vitality.
These roles are played by its research base, whose excellence depends on people: on the education and training that form them and the opportunities that stimulate their creativity.
Lost talent
Scotland fails to realise the full potential of its research base, and will continue to do so if it systematically fails to cope with the debilitating loss of talent represented by the high attrition rate of highly-trained women from employment. Although our universities now graduate large numbers of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), 73%of women graduates are lost from STEMcompared with 48%ofmale graduates, with a corresponding loss of researchers. In academia, expensively trained women are lost in larger proportions than men at every step of the postgraduate ladder and are under-represented in top positions across the spectrum of business, public service and academia.
Although this represents a loss of opportunity to individuals, it also represents a major, quantifiable loss to the economy and society. It is estimated that a doubling of women’s high-level skill contribution to the economy would be worth as much as £170million per annum to Scotland’s national income. It is an economic loss that Scotland can ill afford, but it also represents a loss of distinctive but less quantifiable qualities from key roles in the economy and society that women are demonstrably able to contribute. This rate of loss of highly-trained women from the workforce is taking place at a time when, even though the country is in near recession conditions, many of Scotland’s employers in the science and technology sectors are unable to find sufficient qualified, skilled and experienced workers.
What is the cause?
We have analysed the factors that cause this loss of talent. Some are the practical hurdles of family responsibility, but many are cultural factors that relate to attitudes in the workplace, the organisation of science and technology with concomitant difficulties in accessing career resources and, inevitably with such a low female representation at senior levels, a lack of role models.
Tapping women’s talents
There have been many laudable schemes that have attempted to stem this loss of talent, but which, because of their often ad hoc, partial and short-term nature, have failed to have a sustained impact. If applied with energy and determination as part of a coherent strategy, such initiatives have the potential to make Scotland one of the best places in the world to work in science and technology – a destination of choice for talented women from Scotland and abroad, and with spin-off benefits for the wider role of women in Scottish society.
We believe that Scotland has the means to develop an integrated, comprehensive and coordinated strategy for change. This will require political vision and commitment from leaders and organisations in academia and business. It will also require a major cultural change in attitude and approach. We make the following recommendations to key institutions as component parts of an action plan designed to achieve this change.
