Advancing Women in Manufacturing: Perspectives from the Shop Floor

Need to recruit more women to your community college’s manufacturing program? You’ll love this … 

I’m working with a Robotics Manufacturing Program in a community college in the Northeast. Like many manufacturing programs, they are under-enrolled despite the excellent high-demand career opportunities. Even worse, they have very few women – and are in deep need of enrolling more.

So, for their WomenTech Training, I re-reviewed the literature on women in manufacturing – and dug up a true gemstone that will help them enroll more women, which also means more students in general. 

The gemstone is this excellent 64-page report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, published in November 2023. In the survey that informs this report, 442 women give a treasure trove of unfiltered information about what attracted them into manufacturing programs. 

. From their highly-specific responses, you’ll learn:

• What attracts women to manufacturing 

• How women heard about a program  in the first place 

• What causes women to leave 

• … and a whole lot more 

If you’re working to recruit and/or retain more women in manufacturing education or industry, this is a highly-valuable, enlightening, must-read report.

Read the Report