The Women Automotive Network Publishes Their 2022 Diversity Results

To celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) 2022, the Women Automotive Network used this year’s Spring Meetup to find out how people feel about diversity in the automotive industry, and… the results are in.

When asked, ‘why are there so few female mechanical engineers in the automotive industry?’ 53.4% of respondents believed that a ‘lack of education and industry awareness’ was to blame, which coincides nicely with another question the WAN asked: ‘how can we improve diversity within the automotive industry?’

46.8% quoted ‘education’ as the main problem.

Surprisingly, 40.3% of women in the automotive sector claimed that they turn to ‘outside of work mentors,’ as opposed to management or colleagues, indicating that a large number of women in the sector don’t feel as though they can trust their employer(s) for advice, and/or career development opportunities.

Again, this linked up nicely with 29.0% of women believing that mentor-ship programs are the ‘key to career success,’ NOT ‘training opportunities from their company’ (a low 11.3%). In fact, a shocking 67.9% of respondents claimed that they ‘take opportunities as they come,’ and as much as 20.3% feel as though their employer ‘lacks career opportunities.’

It’s not all bad news though, as 47.3% of respondents felt as though they ‘could keep this pace up for a while, though not forever,’ and 36.4% of people felt as though they ‘could keep this up indefinitely,’ suggesting that the automotive sector as a whole, – provides a great platform for long-term career stability.

The above results were taken from 408 attendees from 35 countries, who turned up to celebrate International Women’s Day with the Women Automotive Network, for their Spring Meetup (on March 7th, 2022).

The event featured talks from the likes of Dr Miranda K. Brawn (Non-Executive Director, Switch Mobility – Founder, TMBDLF), who spoke about “driving more women to the automotive boardroom,” to Fedra Ribeiro (COO, Mobilize, Renault Group), who spoke on “Growing New Mobility Business from a Historical core, and more.

The Spring Meetup brought together the world’s top diverse automotive experts virtually, each of whom shared their leadership advice to an international automotive community, to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD).

The Spring Meetup’s goal was to provide solutions, inspiration and actionable insights on how more women can rise through the ranks in their automotive career. This was done through a series of specialist, dedicated career and leadership workshops, personal success stories from automotive female leaders, and… speed networking for ALL attendees.

Soon, the Women Automotive Network will be announcing the agenda for their June 2022 Summit, which is all about automotive #technology trends, dedicated to bringing together the latest game changers and industry leaders over two days, whilst exploring how #DiversityDrivesInnovation, and connecting delegates with new contacts.

And, they’ll also be announcing their Summer mentor-ship program, soon.

To find out more, and to get involved, contact us here: womenauto@wwpartnerships.com