In this way, more women can be attracted to MINT professions

Apprentices in a metal company

There is a shortage of hundreds of thousands of skilled workers in the STEM field.

(Photo: imago images/Rupert Oberhäuser)

Berlin “I didn’t even know that women could become electricians,” said a ten-year-old when she heard the word “electrician” – as the Education Director of the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, says of an experimental course at a primary school.

For years, the economy has been trying to get more women interested in jobs related to math, IT, technology and natural sciences (MINT). The background is the lack of staff: According to the data from the IW, around 326,000 specialists were recently missing in the area. Without these, neither the energy transition nor digitization will be manageable.

So far, efforts have had little fruit: “The proportion of women in MINT professions nationwide is 15.8 percent,” said Edith Wolf, co-spokeswoman of the National MINT Forum, which brings together leading business associations, educational institutions and foundations. That is “a sad number”, because these professions offer a lot of potential, especially for women: “They are very well paid and can often be practiced flexibly.”

Marcel Fratzscher, President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), therefore warns that companies, politics and society should remove the many obstacles for women on the job market. “That would not only release enormous economic potential for Germany, but also create more freedom and equal opportunities for women,” he told the Handelsblatt. MINT professions in particular offer an enormous opportunity for this.

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OECD Education Director Schleicher explained that it is important to get girls interested in supposedly “male jobs” at an early age. In puberty it is too late, because then gender stereotypes can hardly be broken. “Primary school is therefore crucial,” says Schleicher. Even here, the girls should learn about possible professions, ideally from female practitioners. But “the German school is unfortunately good at keeping reality out of it”.

Better training for teachers called for

Anna Christmann, digital politician for the Greens and co-initiator of the “#SheTransformsIT” initiative, calls for girls in secondary schools to be systematically introduced to STEM training occupations and courses “so that they are taken for granted”. For this, computer science is a compulsory subject in schools.

>> Read here: Germany lacks around 326,000 STEM experts

The MINT-Forum recommends “already paying attention to cliché-free and gender-sensitive support for children in daycare and kindergarten”. This is what it says in a plan of action that is available to the Handelsblatt. In order to get girls excited about the MINT field, teachers need to be trained accordingly, the forum demands. This is the only way that “disadvantaging structures and patterns – which are often unconsciously expressed in language and in gender stereotypes – can be recognized and changed”.

It is also crucial to get MINT role models – from journeymen and students to engineers and company bosses – into schools. And it is much more important to draw the girls’ parents’ attention to the opportunities offered by these professions. In addition, there has been a lack of opportunities for longer internships, the forum warns.

But even if girls dare to take the leap into a MINT apprenticeship or a MINT degree, there are still many hurdles preventing them from staying in these professions. This is only possible with supportive networks – and generally an “organizational culture that makes it clear to women that they are just as welcome as men”.

More: Olaf Scholz: More older employees should work until the official retirement age

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