RECRUITING WOMEN TO NUCLEAR | SUPPLY CHAIN
Addressing the nuclear gender gap
From the earliest days of nuclear and radiological scientists and engineers, women have been pioneers in the sector – so why, despite ongoing efforts to address the imbalance, are there still so few women working in the field? A new report, which features the first publicly available international data on gender balance in the nuclear sector, reflects the latest thinking
FOR NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGIES TO PARTICIPATE safely and effectively in the crucial project of global decarbonisation, current and future skills shortages in the sector must be addressed. So says the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in a new report, Gender Balance in the Nuclear Sector, which takes a deep dive into some of the reasons why such skills shortages exist. ‘There is a demand for more scientists and engineers with
Contributor Tildy Bayar
the capacity to support new projects, effective regulation, and advanced research and development, and who can also serve as key leaders in the future. The need is great and the fact that women are severely underrepresented in [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] STEM and leadership roles shows that many countries are losing access to a vast pool of talent,’ the report’s authors admonish, concluding that the sector’s lack of diversity ‘represents a loss of potential innovation and growth and a critical threat to the viability of the field.’ The report focuses on answering the question why, when women have made and continue to make important contributions to the field, there simply aren’t more of them in it – and why, where women are part of the workforce, their visibility in leadership roles is limited. This is especially true in STEM roles, the report found. In 2021 the NEA polled over 8,000 women in the nuclear workforce in 32 countries and collected human resources
data from 96 nuclear organisations in 17 countries. Gender Balance in the Nuclear Sector presents the first publicly available international data on the topic, with the aim of understanding workforce representation, career trajectories, and challenges facing women in the sector, especially in STEM and leadership positions.
Women in the workforce Women make up 25% of the nuclear workforce in NEA countries. Just one of the 32 countries surveyed – Norway – has a majority-female nuclear workforce, standing at 60%, although the report’s authors point out that Norway also has a significantly smaller total workforce. The country with the next-largest female nuclear workforce is Hungary, with 45%. France, the UK, Canada and Japan represent workforces with below-average numbers of women – even though France, the UK and Canada are in the top five countries in terms of their total workforce numbers. Women are underrepresented in STEM and leadership
roles across all 32 countries, the numbers show. Just 21% of the sector’s STEM workforce is female, while the situation for senior leadership roles (executive and upper management) is even more dire, with women making up just 18%. Non-STEM positions such as communications, HR and various support roles feature significantly more women, with almost half (48%) of non-STEM ‘professional’ roles – where the employee most likely has a university degree – going to women, contrasting with STEM ‘worker’ roles that typically do not require a degree, which stand at 16% women. In general, although the report points out that not all
countries follow this trend, women represent around a quarter respectively of lower (28%) and middle management (26%) positions, while fewer than one in five upper management and executive roles is occupied by a woman.
Above: Across the nuclear sector fewer than one in fi ve upper management and executive roles is occupied by a woman
Of new nuclear-sector hires, almost 30% are women – but women are, again, better represented in non-STEM (41%) than STEM (25%) new hires. The rate of women hired for STEM roles is higher than the number currently in role (21%), a positive trend, and women are also being hired for management positions at a much higher rate than current numbers. But the authors note that even the management levels with the highest rates of female new hires remain well below parity – and thus the increase will not result in balanced management if current trends continue.
www.neimagazine.com | August 2023 | 35
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