WorldSkills UK, a report on gender bias

WorldSkills is the international beating heart of vocational skills across our planet Earth. Established in 1940 (under a no longer used name), its primary goal was to repair economies crippled by WWII by training young people in skills designed to create rather than destroy.

Through the organisation’s desire to rebuild, they also found reunification in a time that desperately needed more of it. The figurative Olympics of vocational skills began. Countries that once fought opposed and beside one another put down weapons, picked up tools, and challenged one another to do better. This biennial competition continues to this day, growing day by day. “Go further, faster”

WorldSkills UK (our own interface into this world stage), in partnership with the Careers & Enterprise Company, released a report that explores a perspective on the next challenge we as a global society are clumsily grappling with: gender. Female gender bias in particular.

[https://www.worldskillsuk.org/media/5050/wsuk_gender-bias-report_final.pdf]

It explores the efficacy of hands-on experience for young people of both genders, and the avenues for careers advice more commonly chosen according to gender (workplace-centric for males, educational sector for females). In that, they also find a near-equal desire for careers advice among young people. In summary of this point, they voice the desire to encourage more young women into the workplace.

A large portion of the report delves into the affects of the perceptions of parents on young people. Which, of all content presented in the report, is the least addressed in other reports of a similar nature. It quite comfortingly finds that almost two thirds of young people feel both supported and informed by parental figures. It found that 59% of careers advice is sourced from mothers as opposed to fathers, and also finds that fathers are more likely to consider their sons prepared for the workplace than their daughters. Almost equally, mothers are reversed in their estimation: more likely to consider their daughters to be prepared for the workplace than their sons. In summary of this point, they voice the value of parents engaging more with their children of an opposite gender to better grasp the experiences and expectations of their future career. As well as maintaining a full range of available career paths open for their children.

The report follows this with the approximate inverse: social attitudes of young people themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, their results suggest that young people are less liberal in terms of gender-based expectation than their parents. In summary of this section, they voice their desire to enforce the fact in young people that gender in itself is not a sole and ultimate indicator in terms of career path – as is amply supported by a growing number of studies.

Unfortunately, the source data of this research – the survey itself – is not made available to review. It does, however, stand as a significant part of the ongoing discussion that will punctuate our period of time in future history.

At New Trades Careers we want to encourage more women to enter into the construction industry. Find out more by going to our website https://newtradescareer.co.uk.