The experience of women in engineering apprenticeships | A scoping review

This scoping review aims to synthesise the existing literature on the experience of women in engineering and trade apprenticeships, discuss the common themes and highlight areas for future research. Apprenticeships are not only required to address the current skills shortage in the engineering profession which threatens to impede our ability to deliver on our sustainability goals and restrict economic growth they are also a proven pathway for women to enter engineering programmes. Despite growing social and political interest in increasing gender diversity in the workforce, data shows that women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering apprenticeship programs. This review followed the methodological framework put forward by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) and the PRISMA-ScR extension checklist for scoping reviews (Tricco et al. 2018) and examines studies from the SCOPUS, JSTOR and web of science databases between 2012 and 2023. Results were analysed using a General Induction Approach (Thomas 2006) to produce high-order themes and key messages. The findings highlight several challenges faced by women in engineering apprenticeships including limited access to information and opportunities, poor recruitment practices, negative attitudes and beliefs, discrimination, and a lack of role models. Despite the challenges, this analysis identifies several strategies that support the success of women in engineering apprenticeships notably mentorship, targeted recruitment and supportive policies and practices. The results of this scoping review revealed that while there are a small number of studies on the experience of women in engineering apprenticeships it is currently limited to work completed in Australia (Simon and Clarke 2016), United States of America (Wagner and Gordon 2013) (Kelly et al. 2015) (Denissen and Saguy 2014), South Africa (English and Le Jeune 2012), and Chile (Sevilla et al. 2023).